Despite Boehner’s eagerness to make a deal on immigration, Steve King believes that we shouldn’t even have the immigration debate right now because there’s no way to get good immigration legislation to Obama’s desk. Even more than that, though, he argues that Obama will talk about three things in the SOTU that are intended to split the Republican Party and Republicans don’t see it coming:
KING: There’s no good pathway that I can see that good immigration legislation can get to the president’s desk without amnesty attached, without the gang of eight’s bill in the Senate being attached in many of its nefarious forms.
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We shouldn’t talk about it Wolf. There’s no reason to have the debate. All it does is split the Republican Party.
BLITZER: Well, that debate is going to happen. The president will make a big issue out of it. It looks like Boehner is ready to try to make a piece-meal deal. We’ll see if they can despite your opposition.
KING: Oh watch the president’s State of the Union address, he will bring up three things: unemployment benefits, increasing the minimum wage and immigration. All of them, Democrats are essentially unanimous on, and all of them split the Republican Party right down the middle. That’s their attempt. We’ll see that coming and Republicans ought to see it coming. It’s a pretty obvious play.
Watch the full clip as King talks in more detail about Republicans and the immigration debate: