During an appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, former House Speaker and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich confirmed the source of Republicans’ opposition to Barack Obama’s immigration plan: they just don’t like the president.

Over the weekend, USA Today published the details of the Obama administration’s alternative immigration proposal, which could be introduced if the bipartisan Senate plan stalls in Congress. Despite having broad similarities to the Senate plan, Senator Marco Rubio immediately denounced the plan, saying it would be “would be dead on arrival in Congress.” On Sunday, Gingrich explained Rubio and his Republican colleagues’ reasoning.

“An Obama immigration plan is not going to pass the House,” Gingrich declared. “An Obama plan led and driven by Obama in this atmosphere with the level of hostility towards the president and the way he goads the hostility, I think is very hard to imagine that bill, that his bill is going to pass the House.”

Video of Gingrich’s comments is below, via NewsBusters:

Gingrich’s assertion backs up a recent Washington Post poll, which found that Republicans are 21 percent less likely to support an immigration bill  that includes a path to citizenship if President Obama’s name is attached to the proposal.

Perhaps, as Taegan Goddard suggests at The Cloakroom, reverse psychology may be the president’s best hope of passing his legislative agenda.