President Obama has regularly been scorned by Democrats for his lack of interest in raw, naked politicking, but in announcing an executive action that will likely shield just under five million undocumented immigrants from deportation, he may have simultaneously altered the trajectory of the immigration debate while increasing the probability of party system change in places with large Hispanic populations, like Texas. Setting aside the moral or biblical imperatives cited for his decision, it's clear that the political calculus behind Obama's action was well thought out. With a single move, he has provided an answer to a question that has vexed many – what will make Hispanics start participating at higher rates? And if they do, for whom will they vote? – while concurrently shining a spotlight directly on the major problem facing the Republican Party: the horizontal cleavage between rank and file GOP voters who have been very clear about their preferences on immigration on the one hand, and on the other, their elected officials who have a sustained interest in the long-term health of the party.

Obama's executive action focuses on keeping the undocumented parents of children born in the United States here without giving these individuals voting rights or a clear path to citizenship. Florida Senator Marco Rubio, when still at the forefront of an immigration reform push that he has since jettisoned, had an important insight about the Hispanic population in America: "It's really hard to get people to listen to you on economic growth, on tax rates, on healthcare if they think you want to deport their grandmother." In many ways, this insight manifested itself in one of Governor-Elect Abbott's better strategic decisions of 2014: the advertisement featuring a hearty endorsement of Abbott from his Madrina. Message received: Greg Abbott is not going to deport your grandmother. But now Obama has pressed the case, asking Republicans directly if they really want to have a public fight over whether to deport someone's madre? 

While the Republican messaging has begun to coalesce around Obama's alleged executive overreach in an attempt to shift the focus away from its inherently problematic course, arguments about the separation of powers and constitutional authority are likely to fall on deaf ears for a young Hispanic citizen whose parent, or parents, may get deported. And these young Hispanics can, or will be able, to vote regardless of what President Obama or Congressional Republicans choose to do in the coming months. This has huge implications for Texas, and especially for Texas Democrats in their hope of turning Texas blue, a dream somewhat diminished after the recent election. Party system change (a fundamental shift in the relative power or vote share of the parties) is what the Democrats are striving for, and is usually the result of one of two processes. Either, an issue emerges that creates a new fissure across the traditional party cleavage, forcing voters to choose whether to remain allied with their former party; or, the party systems changes through the influx of a large number of new voters in a way that re-balances the distribution of partisanship within the system. 

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With a focus on the latter process, asking what issue, or set of issues, will finally increase Hispanic turnout to rates comparable with other racial/ethnic groups has been the big question in Texas, as elsewhere, but it's easy (now) to see how the answer may lie in forcing young Hispanics to choose between one party that is trying to keep their parents in the country and one that is trying to deport them immediately. While this formulation may sound stark, it's clearly reflected in Texas public opinion, and points to why Republican elites have had a hard time coming up with a response to the President's move.

In the October 2014 University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll, 64 percent of Texas Republicans said that immigration or border security was the most important issue facing the state and 49 percent said that one of those two was the most important issue in their gubernatorial vote choice. In that same poll, 80 percent of Republicans agreed with the statement, "Undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States should be deported immediately." For Republican officeholders, the message from their voters is clear, and after campaigning aggressively on the issue for years in both primary and in some cases general elections, a non-response to the President's action is an open invitation for a primary challenge. 

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Should Republicans fail at shifting the focus of Obama's action to a discussion of executive power and overreach, GOP officeholders will have to make the uncomfortable decision of whether to turn their backs on their voters' clear preferences, or turn their backs on a large and growing population of young Hispanics in a way that likely cedes that group to the Democratic Party for a generation. The brilliance of Obama's executive action as a political move is that it forces the GOP to have this internal fight sooner rather than later. In the unlikely event that the Republican establishment fends off the strong desire to have a fight with the president now (likely driven by Republicans in expertly drawn, safe, and overwhelmingly white house districts), you can expect the most conservative elements of the GOP to revolt, and that revolt will likely manifest in the selection of a "truly conservative" nominee in 2016 (maybe Ted Cruz). If this is the case, the likely definition of what it means to be a true conservative in that contest will be dependent upon who establishes themselves as the most conservative on immigration. This is not the primary contest that Republicans want to have going into the 2016 election after their dismal performance with Hispanics in 2012. But should Republicans choose to have this fight now, they will provide Democrats with the messaging they've been so desperately seeking to motivate young Hispanics in Texas and beyond to vote Democratic, and we should expect that messaging to start immediately and continue for the next two years (and beyond).

This is not to say that this approach is costless for Democrats, especially in the short-term. White voters overwhelmingly rejected the Democratic Party in the 2014 midterm elections, and it's not yet clear whether they can continue to perform as poorly, or worse, with Anglos and remain as dominant as they have been in Presidential contests – let alone in midterm elections or in contests for the many statehouses and governor's mansions across the country that they've vacated or failed to control for years. But even acknowledging these caveats, the President did something last night that he has rarely done over the course of his presidency: he defined the lines of the immigration debate in a way that squarely benefits the Democratic Party while painting the GOP into a corner with their current electoral coalition. In the short-term, the true benefactor will likely be a function of who is more successful at framing the relevant considerations in this debate. But regardless of who prevails in this opening skirmish, the political terrain has shifted with real, and distinctively near-term, implications for party system change.