Speaker of the House John Boehner recently offered an interesting perspective on how Republicans should approach the immigration bill: “I don’t see any way of bringing an immigration bill to the floor that doesn’t have a majority support of Republicans.” Instead, he wants to pass a bill in the House with a “majority of the majority.”

That makes a lot of sense, and it makes you wonder why none of the Republican leaders in the Senate seem to have thought of it. Instead, they spent all of their time negotiating with Chuck Schumer in the Gang of Eight, instead of first figuring out what they needed to do to get their own people on board. But perhaps that would have required guys like John McCain and Lindsey Graham to sit down and take seriously the hotheads and “wacko birds” like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.

As I have argued, this was an issue on which the Republicans really needed a leader or leaders who would show they could bridge the divisions in their party and get everyone to back a common approach. The fact that no one rose to that leadership challenge is a bad sign for 2016, because it means that none of the rising stars in Congress was able to demonstrate the leadership skills that would really qualify him for a future presidential run.