But it could still cause the GOP trouble in the next presidential election. And to understand why, just look at how Rep. Cory Gardner voted on Friday night.
Faced with a similar vote in 2013, the Colorado Republican stuck with his party and voted to end the program. But this time, facing a tough Senate campaign in the one 2014 battleground state that most epitomizes a rapidly diversifying America, Gardner split from party leaders to oppose the GOP effort to kill the immigration program.
What happened Friday night is, in many ways, representative of how congressional Republicans have hurt their party's attempts to win back the White House in 2016.
But Colorado is the one major 2014 state that illustrates the GOP's longer-term problem on immigration. While several vulnerable red-state Democrats have cautioned Obama not to move too far, too fast on immigration unilaterally, Sen. Mark Udall has leaned hard in the other direction. In June, the Colorado Democrat took to Latino radio to urge the president to unilaterally do more to stop deportations of undocumented immigrants if the House didn't act. And while most House Republicans didn't budge on "deferred action" between 2013 and 2014, Gardner did.
Unlike their Senate counterparts across the country, Udall and Gardner are competing in a state that mirrors the growing Hispanic vote nationally. According to exit polls in Colorado's last Senate election in 2010, 12 percent of voters were Hispanic--almost exactly the same share of the national electorate that Latinos will likely comprise in the next presidential race. And though most House Republicans' districts are shielded from these demographic changes, their votes still affect their party's chances of improving on Mitt Romney's 27 percent showing among Latinos in the last presidential race.
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