Clinton Allies Think Support for Obama’s Amnesty Was ‘Smart Move’

In a lengthy piece at The Hill this weekend, Amie Parnes takes a look at “What Hillary allies fear the most.” Such analyses are always to be taken with a grain of salt, since the default assumption must be that the mainstream media are generally interested in seeing a Hillary Clinton candidacy succeed. Still, one of the more interesting tidbits is that the Clinton camp apparently believes she was right to embrace Obama’s executive amnesty.

Parnes writes: 

Clinton’s immediate support of Obama’s executive action on Thursday night was a good first step, they said. 

“It was a smart move,” one longtime former Clinton aide said. 

The logic here is that Clinton needs to motivate Hispanic voters to turn out at the polls. In addition, the Clinton camp is eager to re-establish the Democratic Party brand as being the party of the “little guy,” a label that Republicans have begun to claim.

Yet the obvious problem with this analysis is that many of the “little guys” stand to be directly harmed by Obama’s executive amnesty, partly through economic competition. Furthermore, Clinton’s eagerness to embrace amnesty–after years of decrying the expansion of executive power–while remaining studiously silent on the Keystone XL pipeline, suggests pandering to special interests, not concern for the “little guy.”

What we have here is more likely an illustration of one of Clinton’s key flaws, a mistake demonstrated repeatedly throughout her career and especially the 2008 election–namely, a tendency to be too reactive to the politics of the moment. She supported the Iraq War, for example, then opposed it, earning the suspicion of voters who wanted clearer leadership. 

Her support for executive amnesty is more of the same, and will remain a burden.

Senior Editor-at-Large Joel B. Pollak edits Breitbart California and is the author of the new ebook, Wacko Birds: The Fall (and Rise) of the Tea Party, available for Amazon Kindle.

Follow Joel on Twitter: @joelpollak