Following his work with Democrats to compromise on a gun control bill that's now being rushed through the United States Senate, GOP Senator John Cornyn — who was booed by his own state party convention last week and formally rebuked by its platform committee — made a comment on the Senate floor Tuesday previewing what anti-conservative policy he's going to partner with Democrats to force through before the midterms.
A "smiling Cornyn" — while on the floor during Tuesday evening's rushed procedural vote to move the squishy-sounding "Bipartisan Safer Communities Act" ahead less than an hour after the text was made public — told Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) "First guns, now it's immigration." Yes, really. "That's right, we're going to do it," Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) chimed in.
More positive ~~ vibes ~~ on Senate floor.
— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) June 21, 2022
A smiling Cornyn tells Padilla, “First guns, now it’s immigration”
“That’s right, we’re going to do it,” Sinema added
Well, the jig is up. Squishy Republicans who'd rather play nice with Democrats to maintain their cozy Hill friendships than stick up for their voter base — Cornyn recently referred to pro-Second Amendment Texas Republicans as a "mob" he refused to cave to. But it's not new. An unholy alliance between soft Republicans and Democrats had previously formed to work on immigration, but those plans were temporarily back-burnered to allow them to focus on rushing headlong into a bill that has been castigated by *actual* conservatives who know the government can't be trusted — a reality that's only becoming more clear as more information comes to light about the Uvalde shooting that instigated the new gun control bill.
A million political years ago in April, Vespa covered the plan for Republicans to get all buddy-buddy with Democrats in order to advance a sweeping immigration bill that is antithetical to what Republican voters today want or what the country needs. When Republicans are in the minority and compromising with Democrats, conservative Americans lose. Always.
Here's what the "talks" earlier this year were shaping up to be, and apparently where Cornyn is grinningly eager to pick them up again in order to betray conservatives again, as Vespa and Roll Call explained:
A bipartisan group of senators has resumed efforts to revise the U.S. immigration system, following years of failed attempts to pass legislation on the politically divisive topic.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Richard J. Durbin of Illinois met with panel members Sens. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, on Thursday morning to discuss which immigration bills could garner 60 votes, the minimum needed to overcome a filibuster in the evenly divided Senate.
The senators said they discussed several topics, such as changes for migrant farmworkers critical to the U.S. economy and changes for foreign workers stuck in a yearslong green card backlog, as well as for their children who grew up on legal visas but “aged out” before their parents’ green cards became available.
It was the first in what will likely be a “series of ongoing meetings,” Tillis said.
The push comes less than a year after Democrats attempted to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants through a party-line reconciliation bill but were thwarted by internal divisions and a Senate advisor's rulings barring the inclusion of immigration provisions.
They’re going to try and legalize these people again with these talks. Now, the Left can say there’s a bipartisan interest in this or something. It’s a mess. The Democrats will try to run down the clock as much as they can, hurl provisions the GOP cannot support, and then trash the whole effort. By that time, Election Day could be weeks away.
Seeing that 14 Republicans went along with the gun control bill on Tuesday night, Democrat leaders and Republicans like Cornyn and Tillis are likely to smell the RINO blood in the water and think they'll have the same luck forcing through a "bipartisan" compromise bill revamping immigration law. Cornyn's smile on the Senate floor Tuesday night when he told Padilla "now it's immigration" proves it. Will any Republicans try to put a stop to the glad-handing with Democrats to ignore conservative Republican voters with less than five months to go before the midterms? Apparently the will of their constituents — or mobs, as Cornyn called his — don't matter anymore.
UPDATE - 3:25 p.m.
On Wednesday afternoon, Senator Cornyn's office reached out to Townhall, claiming that the story above is inaccurate — not based on what was said but in the spirit of what was said... or something. The senator's office claimed that the comments about Cornyn resuming work on an immigration bill with Democrats was merely a joke that has been twisted by liberal media. Separately, Senator Cornyn tried to minimize his comments saying "The Democrats and their allies in the media really can’t take a joke."
Well, Townhall had some followup questions to that explanation from Cornyn's office after conservatives responded to his alleged "joke" about as well as attendees at the Republican Party of Texas convention did last weekend.
We asked in response to their email:
...why the senator would think that the immigration crisis that has spiraled out of control under Democrats would warrant working with them on a deal, as his previously reported talks demonstrate?
And regarding this clarification, why would the senator joke about immigration when all Americans — especially Texans — are dealing with a fentanyl crisis, cartel violence, and a record number of illegal immigrant apprehensions including convicted criminals and individuals on terror watch lists?
Cornyn's office had not responded at time of publication.
UPDATE - 4:10 p.m.
Cornyn's office partially responded to Townhall's inquiry — denying that the senator is working on an immigration bill with Senator Padilla or any other Democrat — but ignored Townhall's question about why Cornyn thought it appropriate to joke about a crisis as serious as immigration.