A mushy catchphrase

Victor Davis Hanson writes:

Everyone finds a lesson in the Republican midterm tsunami.

One message was that so-called comprehensive immigration reform and broad amnesty have little national public support. Polls have long shown that, but so do last week’s election results.

In reaction, President Obama sulked, threatening to quickly push through an unpopular amnesty by executive order. Obama apparently knows that he enjoys neither public nor congressional support for his planned executive fiat.

Voters assume that liberal-elite advocates of open borders who mock finishing the border fence still count on the fences around their own estates — whether Hollywood grandees, the former mayor of Los Angeles, or the president of the United States.

But will reform advocates say whether they would favor deporting those who just arrived in the cynical expectation of amnesty? Will they deport to their countries of origin those who sought public assistance instead of work in the U.S., or those who abused their guest status by committing crimes in their host country? So far, advocates of reform stay mostly mum on those topics. The result is that “comprehensive immigration reform” remains a mushy catchphrase that can mean anything and therefore means nothing.

Read more here.