Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman joins with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, resists post-constitutional attempt by Obama to rewrite US immigration law

Of course, that’s just what’s happening — not how it will be spun. For instance, University of Houston “immigration law expert” Michael Olivas calls the driver’s license ban “just sheer political pandering to largely nativist and restrictionist forces,” while Jeff Rogers, Pima County Democratic Party chair, told Arizona reporters that Governor Brewer is “George Wallace in a skirt” and asks “what’s next? Will she personally stand outside the Motor Vehicle office and block entry to qualified ‘DREAMers’?”

– Both of which responses, I should add, are as natural to race-baiting progressives as is breathing, and every bit as predictable.

CSM:

Two days after Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer declared her state won’t confer driver’s licenses and other state benefits to newly-documented immigrants under Obama’s “deferred action” immigration policy, Nebraska, too, put its foot down.

Echoing Gov. Brewer, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman (R) said on Saturday that Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program does not make successful applicants “legal citizens,” meaning they remain ineligible for state benefits like driver’s licenses and other services.

The deferred action plan, which took effect on Wednesday, could make as many as 1.7 illegal immigrants eligible for “deferred action” status, meaning they’re eligible to receive work papers and driver’s licenses. Applicants have to be no more than 31 years old, must have arrived in the US before the age of 16, and have no major crimes on their record.

The opposition stances taken by Nebraska and Arizona seem to at least partially challenge federal law, specifically the 2005 Real ID Act, which lists “deferred action” recipients as being eligible for driver’s licenses.

Experts, however, admit there are gray areas in the Real ID Act, especially as neither Arizona nor Nebraska lawmakers have ratified it. That means the moves by the two states amount to a “Constitutional throwdown” [...]

[...]

George Wallace is the late Alabama governor who made his “stand in the schoolhouse door” at the University of Alabama to block African-American students from entering, and who, upon his inauguration, insisted, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

Harsh as it is, the Wallace analogy will ring true for many Americans. But it also suggests another underlying problem with Obama’s policy.

In the case of Wallace, he was challenging Congress. In the case of Arizona and Nebraska, the governors are challenging what some conservatives see as an extra-constitutional gambit orchestrated by Obama alone as a way to implement the failed DREAM Act through bureaucratic fiat.

That debate is one that Brewer and Heineman may be trying to force Obama to have ahead of the election, says Mark Krikorian, director of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies. “It’s a broader challenge to the government … and also makes sense for electoral purposes,” he says.

[...]

[...] therein lays one big test for Obama’s new immigration policy. In order for “deferred action” immigrants to get in-state tuition benefits – a key selling point – the bulk of state legislatures will have to pass legislation to make that possible.

At the very least, the moves by Arizona and Nebraska suggest that the state-by-state debate over what some are calling DREAM Act-lite will continue and likely intensify.

Ordinarily, we might, as classical liberals / constitutional conservatives, look at such a stand being taken by two very brave Republican governors in the face of a lawless imperial President, his race-baiting party, and a hostile media, as a positive sign — the beginning to the kind of state pushback I’ve been arguing is required to stop a rogue President and the increasingly politicized and politically correct courts from “fundamentally transforming” the US into just another democratic socialist welfare state, a soul-sucking bureaucratically-run hellhole where liberty and autonomy has been surrendered for ruling-class redistributed largess.

But the devil is in the details: where, for instance, is Rick Perry, touted by so many “conservative” opinion leaders as our best presidential candidate? Where is Chris Christie, GOP Convention keynote speaker, and the choice of uberconservative Ann Coulter (and many of the former Bushies)?

Let’s face it, folks: there’s a reason that Jan Brewer and Dave Heineman and Michele Bachmann weren’t invited to speak at the GOP Convention, while we’re being treated to Chris Christie, John McCain, and Jeb Bush, of all people.

The fact of the matter is, Christie and Bush and Perry and much of the “pragmatic” GOP Establishment have bought into the demographic tracking and identity politicking of the left; and in the case of the Bushes and many of their establishment disciples, they are actually in favor of a complete overhaul of our immigration laws to allow for millions of erstwhile lawbreakers to profit from their lawbreaking — not only gaining citizenship and benefits, but pushing those would be immigrants who respected the process to the back of the proverbial line.

Yet another reason why the GOP as a Party needs to be either cleansed or renounced — along with many of its online fluffers and cheerleaders. Two Republican governors are taking a stand against an imperial President ruling by fiat, and they are using state sovereignty and federalism to do so.

That the GOP establishment is either ignoring them or actively working against them, is suggestive of where the GOP really stands on limited government and constitutionalism.

And it ain’t with us.

It’s the ruling class vs the rest of us, as I’ve said a million times now. Party doesn’t have much left to do with it.

(h/t BBH)