In September, Obama signs an executive order that expands the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrival program (DACA) to cover an additional hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of undocumented immigrants, including parents and family members of DREAMers, and older DREAMers (who were over 30 years old when Obama first announced the deferrals).

The GOP, which voted to end DACA before the start of the August recess, would respond by “exploding in anger,” which is in quotes because their anger is as much for show as it is about any principled solution to the immigration crisis.

The Republican voting base would demand that the House GOP punish Obama for acting like a king. Nativists would get traction on talk radio. The debate inside the party would be about how, not whether, to respond, and quickly.

And — look at this — they have ten working days to figure out a way to fund the government for the rest of the budget year. That’s a coincidental result of the last major stalemate.

The only way to punish Obama, really, is to punish his constituency, the thinking goes. Punish the people who get the most from Obama: So shut the government down, again.