Ruben Navarrette: Boehner Not Pushing Hard on Immigration

House Speaker John Boehner was right on the money when he mocked conservatives for opposing immigration reform — but he's not being completely candid, syndicated columnist and CNN contributor Ruben Navarrette, Jr. says.

"He makes it seems as if he's taking all these arrows and shots from people for bringing up this issue," Navarrette told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.  "In fact, he hasn't done much to push this issue.

"This is not something he's pushed very hard. He simply talked about maybe revisiting the topic over the last several months saying, we need to do it, we ought to do it, but he really hasn't put his elbow behind it, his shoulder to the wheel."

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Boehner poked fun at fellow GOP congressmen for being afraid of immigration reform as he spoke to the Middletown Rotary Club in Ohio.

"Here's the attitude. Ohhhh. Don't make me do this. Ohhhh. This is too hard," Boehner brayed to the amused crowd. "We get elected to make choices. We get elected to solve problems, and it's remarkable to me how many of my colleagues just don't want to …"

Navarrette said Boehner was making a point that is true about both political parties.

That "is that nobody in Washington wants to take on the tough issues. That's the big point, right? And one of the tough issues is on the right, fiscal responsibility, dealing with the debt, cutting spending, or whether it's on the left dealing with immigration reform," Navarrette said.

"It's a fair argument to say that given everything we've seen, there's a lack of guts and commitment in both parties. Nobody in Washington wants to do the tough issues, so that part he's right about."

He believes Democrats are quietly working to torpedo an immigration reform bill.

"Democrats will quietly, discretely, secretly in the dead of night kill any immigration reform, just as they did in 2006 and 2007. [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid will never, ever, ever let there be an immigration reform coming out of the Senate that's in a meaningful way," Navarrette said.

"Democrats are known as the amnesty party, so Democrats are never, ever going to let an amnesty go through because they know it will hurt them."

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