A prominent D.C. lobbyist who advises House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) believes Republicans opposed to President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty must have a “total and complete defeat” in their defunding efforts.
In an interview with The Hill before a federal judge halted Obama’s executive amnesty on Monday evening, John Feehery said that anti-amnesty Republicans “are going to have a total and compete defeat” on attaching the defunding provisions to the Homeland Security funding bill. He said that Republicans will have to pass an unencumbered spending bill because Obama’s war resolution will be up for a vote around the same time.
Speaking of Senators like Jeff Sessions (R-AL) who believe Republicans can win the defunding fight, Feehery simply said, “that’s not going to happen.”
He said every Republican “with any type of sense” knows that a clean Homeland Security funding bill must be passed. Since House Republicans do not want to be put in a position of voting for a bill if their Senators will not vote for it, Feehery said Republicans have to be “all-in” on an unencumbered funding bill because it would be “catastrophically stupid” if the Department of Homeland Security shuts down for a couple of days. He said the “the less Republicans talk about immigration the better off they are.”
As Breitbart News has noted, “Feehery has supported Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey and favored Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio,” and he “works at a lobbying firm founded by a Bill Clinton adviser who persuaded Clinton to infamously pardon Marc Rich.“
Feehery said previously said that the new Republican majority in Congress should pass comprehensive amnesty legislation “pronto” and referred to Tea Partiers as “haters” and the “bad guys.” As Breitbart News noted, Feehery “worked for former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-IL), whom Rush Limbaugh has described a ‘sweetly irrelevant’ pushover who was the ‘most compliant loser on the face of the earth”:
Michel infamously used to tell freshman Republicans, “Every day I wake up, I look in the mirror, and I say to myself, ‘Today you’re going to be a loser.’ And after you’re here awhile [freshmen], you’ll start to feel the same way. But don’t let it bother you. You’ll get used to it.’”
Feehery also suggested last year that the new Republican leadership should start punishing conservative insurgents like Cruz, who said on Tuesday that it is the “height of irresponsibility” for Democrats to “to block DHS funding to protect Obama’s amnesty,” which he noted a judge has ruled illegal.
Senate Democrats have filibustered efforts to fund the Homeland Security Department three times and they reportedly will not back down from filibustering again next week over protecting federal funds for Obama’s executive amnesty.