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https://townhall.com/columnists/ej-antoni/2026/04/29/the-opec-cartel-crackup-n2675213

Then why is it* “going nowhere”? It’s a certain subset that would like that, but if “the top of the party” wanted it, it probably would happen. I see only a small subset supporting it.

— neo

*Referring to the Dignidad Act.

Because they don’t want to Flake themselves over.

The GOP has had their nose rubbed hard in the fact that their own voters do not like amnesty. So even a lot of them who would privately like to pass an amnesty to make their business donors happy are afraid to try. It’s not an accident that Don Bacon, one of the GOP cosponsors, isn’t running for reelection, nor are some of the other GOPers backing this.

Don Bacon is not running again. Neither is Dan Newhouse. Brian FItzpatrick has stated that if Pennsylvania would open their primaries, he would leave the GOP and run as an independent:

https://www.thecentersquare.com/pennsylvania/article_92637f19-8d79-4476-923d-f8cd4fe7d678.html

I’m not saying that every GOPer is pro-amnesty as heart, but I’m pretty sure that most of the Old Guard are, because the business/corporate world is. We’ve seen them try, over and over, to pass amnesty bills, in 2006, 2007, 2013, 2017, 2024, and now here we go again. Negative reaction, over and over, just doesn’t seem to penetrate, at least with a lot of them, because business wants cheap labor.

Those previous incidents mean that when a group like this tries again, it reminds GOP voters of the earlier efforts.

You write, “Of course, the DIGNIDAD bill is probably going nowhere, but just the attempt hurts the GOP in the 2026 elections. It reminds GOP voters that the top of the Party, at heart, wants to go back to the open borders model.”

Then why is it “going nowhere”? It’s a certain subset that would like that, but if “the top of the party” wanted it, it probably would happen. I see only a small subset supporting it.

Bill Maher Nails it – New Rule: Rich, Please | ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’ (HBO) – Video

https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2026/04/bill-maher-nails-it-new-rule-rich.html

— SD

Maher has been getting more and more honest in his humor over the last few years. He’s a huge progressive himself, but reality is rubbing his nose in it.

That said, this is a bipartisan problem that cuts across the left/right divide. What we actually have is an aristocrat/commoner divide, which partly overlaps the left/right one. It’s hard to fix because the same economic/social class runs both sides of the left/right debate, and they get richer and richer because, ever since the 1970s, that common class has run things economically, and they’ve been in full political control since the 1990s.

You can tell who really runs a society by which groups the money, both governmental and private, flows toward. The ultra-rich keep getting richer because they make the rules in their own interest. It’s not a conspiracy, just a natural side effect of having a single class/group in control for sixty years.

That class divide makes the traditional talking points, i.e. ‘big government vs. small government’, ‘private sector vs. public sector’, Democrat vs. Republican’, somewhat irrelevant (though Trump has made that last more relevant since 2016 again).

You can tell the class interest of the ruling class by what isn’t talked about. For years, the press and academia and every institutional power, Dem and GOP, kept framing the immigration debate as ‘amnesty vs. amnesty’. That is, what kind of amnesty do you want? They refused even to discuss just closing the border, insisting that the only alternative to amnesty was mass deportation which would not ever happen.

That rather backfired on them, but it was the framing they wanted.

For several years in the 20teens, FOXNews and a lot of the institutional Right kept trying to redefine the national debate as ‘libertarian vs. statist’. Mitt Romney tried to run his whole general-election campaign on that. They liked that because it kept the borders open either way. The electorate had no interest in it, and eventually they gave up trying to make that narrative fly, but they tried for several futile years.

Right now, Maria Salazar and Don Bacon are pushing yet another attempt at an immigration amnesty. They keep claiming it isn’t amnesty because it doesn’t grant citizenship, but that’s obviously beside the point. Bacon is even out insulting voters again trying to drum up support for it. (He isn’t worried about the election because he isn’t running again.)

Of course, the DIGNIDAD bill is probably going nowhere, but just the attempt hurts the GOP in the 2026 elections. It reminds GOP voters that the top of the Party, at heart, wants to go back to the open borders model, because that’s what the donors and business community and agricultural interests want. Cheap Scared Labor Forever.

Politics keeps trying to realign and the governing class of each Party struggles to restore the status quo, because the latter serves their interests. There are a numbered of shared interests across the GOP and Dem working class voters, just as the elite class shares counter-interests.

When you look at politics though that lens, it suddenly all makes sense.

We don’t know what the new world will look like yet, but we can see the old one disintegrating before our eyes.

Qatar and the ICC Prosecutor
https://archive.fo/SvVEV

https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2026/04/bill-maher-nails-it-new-rule-rich.html

“A regional scramble to borrow from Iran’s playbook;
“Iran’s weakening leaves a vacuum. Will its role be filled by countries waiting to emulate its use of proxies, armament and pressure to sow chaos and increase their own power, or by a different view leading to prosperity and peace in the region?”—
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/426192