One important decision regarding the bipartisan immigration bill working its way through the Senate's Gang of Eight: what to name it?
The art of naming a bill is a delicate balancing act. Names often convey the central issues of a bill's contents to a public that rarely gets a chance to read them in their entirety. The name of a bill often becomes a way for opponents to vilify it, and the choice of a name can become a dangerous guessing game.
Think of the USA PATRIOT Act, and all the baggage that comes from a simple phrase that used to mean loyalty to country: now it means warrantless wiretaps and abuses if federal power, at least to most of the public.
In the media, Republicans tried to rename the Affordable Care Act, and the moniker ObamaCare stuck. The president was forced to adopt it himself, left hatred for the bill now bearing his name turn into hatred of him.
And that is perhaps why politicians are so careful about naming bills. Often a bill bears the names of two of its sponsors, one from the left and one from the right. Think McCain-Feingold.
But many Republicans, while they want to pass the immigration reform bill, don't want their name attached to it. They understand it needs to pass in order for the party to have any hope of winning national elections, but no one individual wants to take the fall if more conservative elements in the party turn on the bill and start parading its name across cable news.
Any Republican who allowed their name to be attached to the Senate bill will likely face a primary challenge the next time they are up for reelection. Perhaps the least likely person to advocate for naming rights is Marco Rubio, the only member of the Gang of Eight who is likely to run for president in 2016.
More than likely, the immigration bill will have a nondescript acronym or a jingoistic phrase as its title. Hopefully its contents will have more meaning.
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