"...a Bush candidacy would guarantee immigration comes back to the fore in the presidential primary, just as it did in 2012, which is exactly what Republicans don’t want."
If she knows this, then Obama certainly does too, and he is getting ready to slam a sledge hammer into that wedge, and split the dry log of the GOP in two.
Issuing an executive order that will give legal status to millions of Bush era illegal immigrants (he will shrewdly limit it to those who have been in the USA, without criminal trouble, for several years) will both enrage the Republican Party's nativist base, and panic the GOP establishment.
Boehner and McConnell already hate Obama (and no doubt that hatred is reciprocated), and they will hate him ever more for making their lives a living hell next year.
Obama's actions will put the GOP in an essentially checkmated position for 2016. Either the establishment forces the nomination of JEB! and alienates their enraged base, or the base gets so riled up they prevent JEB!'s nomination and nominate someone like Ted Cruz. Either way, a certain massive loss in two years, when turnout will be closer to 50 percent, instead of 36 percent (the lowest mid-term turnout since the 1940s).
JEB! cannot easily campaign both against Obama's order, and in favor of his default position of open borders and a peonage guest worker card. The Democrats will claim the nativist base is anti-Hispanic and will forever prevent the GOP Congress from passing a legislative solution to the problem, and then claim the GOP establishment does not favor a solution where these immigrants, illegal but yet vigorously lured here by American business interests during both Bush (and yes Clinton) presidencies, have a real chance at full assimilation and citizenship: the GOP elites just want to make them "guest workers."
The strategy is a potentially brilliant political one, even if it is not the correct policy solution. It will further drive Hispanic voters away from the Republican Party generally, and it will make it nearly impossible for JEB! to make an successful appeal to Hispanics as the establishment nominee.
Hillary will then rout JEB! in 2016 due to two factors:
1. An overall higher voter turnout with proportionally fewer old white people, which puts the increasingly reactionary and divided GOP (able to win in low turnout elections) at an inherent disadvantage.
2. A classic wedge strategy that "suppresses" a crucial amount of the GOP core base any Republican needs to maximize for victory by alienating the nativists from the establishment nominee, whom many will dislike almost as much as Hillary. If just ten percent of the GOP base either stays home or votes for an opportunistic independent nativist candidate (rather likely in a Hillary-Jeb matchup), it's over. In the alternative scenario, the base nominates a nativist which alienates the political center.
The one real threat to Hillary is the same threat posed to Gore in 2000. A general election attack from her left flank. It won't come from Nadar this time, but the "iceberg spotters" had better keep a keen eye, and an open wallet, trained on Bernie Sanders. The Hildabeast is no earth toned Al, and she and her machine will figure out a way to buy Bernie off early.
Wall Street Journal: White House Considers Timing of Executive Action on Immigration
Chicago Tribune: Jeb Bush is the wrong Republican for 2016
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