Obama Says Immigration Plan is "Middle Ground"
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Mass amnesty would be unfair. Mass deportation would be both impossible and contrary to our character. What I'm describing is accountability, a common-sense, middle-ground approach.</s>HARLOW: That's President Obama speaking, saying he is staking out the middle ground in the immigration debate. But his decision to work around Congress and issue an executive order has unleashed a new round of post-election political bickering. Let's bring in Mickey Kaus, columnist from "The Daily Caller." He joins us from Los Angeles. Thanks for coming in. We appreciate it, Mickey.</s>MICKEY KAUS, COLUMNIST, THE DAILY CALLER: Thanks, Poppy.</s>HARLOW: What do you make of the timing here? We've heard the president say that he was going to do this from way before the midterms, and then it came after. Obviously, there's politics involved here. But was it purely political, the timing?</s>KAUS: Well, the delay was political. It's not a popular thing. And he delayed it in the hope that some his Democratic Senate fellow party members would win. And they lost, anyway. Now he's been -- he's been very impatient about this. And I think he's made a strategic blunder. It seems to me he had about a 40 percent chance of getting the bill he wanted through the House, and that's gone now. So he's blown that chance. And I think there's a good chance this will get overturned by the courts. The Constitution doesn't say if the president doesn't get what he wants he gets to impose it unilaterally. He's supposed to have to go through Congress. And the Supreme Court I think will be very sensitive to that. And even his own office of legal counsel thought that the 2012 program, the so-called DACA program for the Dreamers, was very questionable, of questionable constitutionality. So I think it was a mistake on his part.</s>HARLOW: Do you think that there is any chance, though, that it actually does get Congress to move on immigration because they don't want what he has put through himself?</s>KAUS: Sure, there's a chance. And you never know what's going to happen in the perverse world of Washington.</s>HARLOW: Let me get your response from this piece in "Politico" arguing the president acted for several reasons but, quote, but also this, "It is very possible that the president has another motive as well, blowing up the GOP. No issue has more potential than immigration to ignite the hard right base and embarrass Speaker John Boehner, especially after the speaker's post-election warning to Obama not to play with matches or to cause headaches for the GOP heading into the 2016 elections." Fair? Is this an attempt to blow up the GOP?</s>KAUS: I think that's fair. It was a very smart article. I think one of Obama's goals is to so-called troll the GOP. That's sort of what he's best at. He's met with the birth certificate. He's very good at angering the Republicans and getting them to make fools of themselves. He's hoping somebody, like Steve King of Iowa, will talk about how people crossing the border have calves the size of cantaloupes because they're drug runners and say things like that. Unfortunately, they know that he's hoping that they'll do this and they're on their best behavior. So I don't think he will trigger the sort of inflammatory statements that he might be hoping to trigger. The Republicans, I think, will behave very respectfully in this.</s>HARLOW: Mickey, don't go anywhere. We'll talk about this more after a quick break. And is the president's plan amnesty? Republicans, who oppose it, say, yes, it is. The president has a different definition of that word. Who's right? We'll debate ahead.