President Obama appears to be straddling both sides of the rhetorical border as he tries to explain why he’s pushing off executive action on immigration until after the November elections.
Obama, speaking June 30 in the Rose Garden, initially said he planned to use executive action and pointed to the border crisis as a reason to act — blasting Republicans for using the surge of illegal immigrant kids as an “excuse to do nothing.”
“Their argument seems to be that because the system is broken, we shouldn’t make an effort to fix it. … It’s just politics, plain and simple,” Obama said at the time. The president said the humanitarian crisis “only underscores the need to drop the politics and fix our immigration system once and for all.”
The president flatly denied that the real reason he’s waiting is he wants to protect vulnerable Democrats facing tough Senate reelection battles.
His critics aren’t buying it.