It's not the first time Rep. Troy Nehls has seemed to say the quiet part of loud: In December he suggested impeachment was about giving "ammo" to Trump.

As senators work on a compromise deal to address border security and immigration, at least one Republican is suggesting politics is a key motivator for him.

“Let me tell you, I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating,” Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas told CNN this week. “I will not help the Democrats try to improve this man’s dismal approval ratings. I’m not going to do it. Why would I?”

Nehls indicated he’d accept only a proposal similar to HR 2, a hardline immigration bill that got zero Democratic votes when it passed the House last year.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      72·
      10 months ago

      And yet people vote for them. They are just admitting they aren’t interested in helping people and the country and they still get voted for.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
          31·
          10 months ago

          Maybe in their limited thinking catered by Fox News, but a lot of them are working class and they’re the ones getting hurt the most by Republicans. They don’t even know it.

          • Bonehead@kbin.social
            171·
            10 months ago

            If it owns the libs, then it’s good. If they suffer any consequences, it’s the libs fault for making Republicans do it. It’s simple circular logic, but you’ll find it’s quite unbreakable.

          • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
            2·
            10 months ago

            Our great challenge has been showing this to them, and it remains incredibly difficult. To highlight how much of a problem it is, you still have white collar knowledge workers who think that they’ll have to pay more money in taxes if they get a raise vs before. They don’t understand tax brackets.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
      21·
      10 months ago

      Trump over donors, donors over religion, religion over party, party over family, family over so-called conservative principles (oxymoron)and country several steps lower than that.

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
    642·
    10 months ago

    You mean to tell me that Republicans are operating in bad faith, and that Democrats fell for it?

        • HubertManne@kbin.social
          82·
          10 months ago

          simply by going forward and having yahoos like him admit they don’t actually want to solve the problem. Calling out or calling a bluff is just going ahead with the thing.

          • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
            81·
            10 months ago

            That’s not what he said and not what anyone sympathetic to his dumbass viewpoint is going to hear. He said the House solved “the problem” back when they passed HR2, that if Senate Democrats actually wanted to solve “the problem” they would just pass that, and that the bipartisan deal moderate Dems are seeking is only for the purposes of improving Biden’s poll numbers, which is why he has no interest in passing it.

            You and I know HR1 is a psychotic pile of xenophobic trash that should never get passed, but the fact that Dems are making a big show out of working with the political party that produced it muddies the waters for anyone that doesn’t follow politics closely. The fact that they’ve gotten Democratic lawmakers to concede that “securing the border” is a problem (as opposed to staying focused on how our immigration system can’t process people in a timely manner and our social care systems are all too underfunded to deal with climate refugees) has been a massive win for them (makes it very easy for them to just say “securing the border” is “the (only) problem”), as is the fact that we’re talking about the border at all right now instead of Ukraine aid.

            • HubertManne@kbin.social
              32·
              10 months ago

              yeah which is him admiting they don’t want to work with anyone to solve it. its their way or the highway. so they are responsible for the highway status. its not a win. it makes them look even worse and makes anything biden does look better. Im still blown away but what he has been able to do sans congress for his term.

    • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.worldEnglish
      73·
      10 months ago

      Democrats fell for what exactly, doing their job in a lame duck government so people can see what Republicans are really about yet still somehow being blamed by fake Democrats?

  • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
    632·
    10 months ago

    I never thought I would, but I kinda miss the time when Republicans would lie about their motivations for being awful.

    This whole “mask off but still no consequences” bullshit is even more frustrating than when everyone knew but most people refused to acknowledge it 😮‍💨

  • Melllvar@startrek.websiteEnglish
    461·
    10 months ago

    If it improves the President’s approval rating, doesn’t that suggest that it’s something Americans need or want?

    “[…] I’m not going to do it. Why would I?”

    Indeed. Why help the American people, Congressman?

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    37·
    10 months ago

    i mean that’s pretty much the same story about immigration for the last 40 years and it’s why nothing has gotten done. they’d rather use immigrants as wedge issues then do something about the problem.

    • CodeName@infosec.pub
      6·
      10 months ago

      They also like to use them as cheap labor. The American system can’t function without them. But hush, hush, we don’t like to talk about that part.

  • eran_morad@lemmy.world
    32·
    10 months ago

    It is high time we treat the republican traitor swine with the same contempt that they show the American people.

  • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    10 months ago

    This is standard, decades-long GOP mantra, championed by Mitch McConnell. It’s also quite effective. Give a man a boogeyman to blame for all of his problems, and he’ll follow you anywhere.

    • frezik@midwest.social
      14·
      10 months ago

      It’s worse than that now. Democrats rolled their eyes, started setting up a deal to address their boogeyman, and now there’s Republicans saying they refuse because it might help the other side.

      The GOP has nothing useful to say or do.

    • TurtleJoe@lemmy.world
      10·
      10 months ago

      1. Enact policies that create pain in your own supporters.

      2. Create an “enemy.”

      3. Blame the pain on the “enemies.”

      4. Present themselves as strongmen who can defeat the “enemies.”

    • samus12345@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      If he’s an idiot who believes that there’s a boogeyman to blame for all his problems, anyway.

  • Rapidcreek@lemmy.world
    243·
    10 months ago

    They’re going to blame a government shut down, due to their inability to govern, on the “border crisis”.

  • Glitch777@lemmy.world
    93·
    10 months ago

    What the hell lol it probally would hurt Biden but it will hurt the country and also the gop will just hurt themselves too God I hate the two party system

    • SCB@lemmy.world
      12·
      10 months ago

      How would immigration reform not written by Republicans hurt Biden politically? It’s yet another win he can tout.

      I do agree, though, that any form of immigration restrictions hurts the country.

      • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
        2·
        10 months ago

        Probably because immigration reform almost never means just throwing down the borders and reverting to the old rules where you only had to prove a few years of residency to be eligible for citizenship.

        Partially because racism, and partially because even a decent number of our allies would take extreme umbridge with the US doing that because of how it’d brain drain basically everything where the US offers a more competitive standard of living for given income.

        The European tech sector would more or less instantly vanish because of how much more well paid American coders are by comparison, and Mexico would find itself losing every scrap of development and progress it has achieved over the last century as every educated professional files straight across the border.

        Would do wonders screwing over America’s adversaries though considering how literally all of them have such a worse standard of living that they have to set up structures to keep their people in as opposed to keeping the rest of the world out.

        Basically the platonic ideal is to brain drain our adversaries, and strike a state by state balance with everyone else for what sort of freedom of movement arrangement most benefits both countries, the Philippines for example would be over the moon for a more open immigration system with the US since brain drain impacts them a lot less given how prevalent remittance is among Philippines expats.

        Vietnam likewise would probably negotiate something more akin to a military exchange program since the war has become water under the bridge when compared to the ever present threat China presents to them, and Americans are some of the only foreigners the Japanese are able to tolerate enough to not actively scare off expats and immigrants. Brazil would LOVE an incentivization for American rocket scientists to brush up on their Portuguese, the idea of becoming a space port super power makes Brazilian state leaders drool over themselves at the possibilities, especially if French Guyana stops cooperating with the ESA.

        • SCB@lemmy.world
          1·
          10 months ago

          This is all geopolitical consideration, which is valuable, but generally not impactful in a campaign.