Politics Blog

Given that the amnesty bill is now dead, probably until at least 2009, where does that leave us conservatives? A few observations:

• Sam Brownback is a big time political coward.
• Red State’s Leon Wolf would defend just about any elected Republican for just about anything.
• John McCain has slipped into political irrelevancy for a cause that not only was not worthy, but suffered a resounding political defeat. I find this sad in a way as he does have instructive things to say regarding the GWOT. I can’t imagine he’s going to run for his Senate seat again.
• John Kyl damaged his conservative credentials to a very high degree. Maybe this is repairable and maybe it is not.
• Lindsey Graham may as well caucus with the Democrats or Lieberman and Sanders for all I care. Anyone supporting this clown when he runs again is a Leon Wolf clone.
• The Senate would be a better place without Trent Lott.
• Harry Reid got outmaneuvered by members of his own party on the clay pigeon.

Finally, I’m left wondering why the political class almost did this to the country? Were there sinister forces at work, or was this a moral crusade?

Feel free to post your observations on the amnesty aftermath.

— The Ace

Reader Dan:

If George Bush had half a brain, tomorrow he would fly to the border, fly to where the border fence is being constructed, pick up a shovel, and start digging a hole for the pilings needed for the fence.

Let the image of him digging a hole for the fence be broadcast.

Let the image of him DIRECTLY overseeing the rapid construction of the fence be broadcast.

Let the image of him MAKING REAL his many utterances about border security be broadcast.

Let the fence be completed.

Let additional manpower by the tens of thousands be retained.

Let the invasion be stopped.

Then, and only then might the American people be in a mood to hear anyone in this administration speak about the problem of illegal immigration.

But Rove and his henchmen are blockheads. Snow spins instead of being a conviction conservative.

And throughout the entire White House staff, NO IMAGINATION is to be found.

— PoliPundit

The Senate GOP has issued a Missing Person’s alert for their ineffective Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Last seen trying to strong arm opponents of the Senate Amnesty bill in voting for cloture, then realizing it was a lost cause, ended up voting against cloture on a bill he thought was better then the one from last year, which he voted for!!

Concern started this week when the Republicans were without the aid of their own leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell. The Kentucky Republican ducked the fight, not speaking on the floor at all Wednesday and waiting until late afternoon yesterday, long after the debate had ended, to explain himself.

When he is found, please tell him to resign his position as Senate Minority Leader and get someone who has some backbone and leadership skills to you know, be a LEADER.

— ‘The Commish’ A.J. Sparxx

Good analysis here on how the younger, more in-tune with America GOP Senators defeated the Old Guard - the older, crusty, been in Washington to long elitists from both parties:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy could establish a new civil rights legacy to rival his brothers’; Sen. John McCain could show leadership and accomplishment by standing up to his party’s base; and President Bush could secure a major domestic achievement for his second term.

Instead, the young guns — a small, wily group of junior Republican senators, most of them with less than a full term in the upper chamber — sent the bill into a tailspin, tying Democratic leaders into legislative knots and earning enough opposition among senators to block the Senate bill, culminating in yesterday’s vote to kill the measure.

“Those of us who have been on the campaign trail in the last couple of years have had to talk about immigration reform and we’ve campaigned — [Sen. David] Vitter made campaign promises, I made campaign promises — we should not reward those who came here illegally with a path to citizenship,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican.

DeMint, a true hero, recognizes the Kennedy - Bush relationship on major initiatives of the Adminstration:

“The president’s major initiatives — No Child Left Behind started withKennedy and a few Republicans; the prescription drug bill was Kennedy and a few Republicans. And so he was going back to his standby of Kennedy and a few Republicans,” Mr. DeMint said. “The idea was to marginalize the conservatives. And we would have been railroaded, run over, completely flat, if the American people hadn’t gotten so mad about this.”

Meet the GOP Young Guns:

Mr. DeMint, Mr. Vitter of Louisiana and Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, all of them in the class of 2004, spent hours camped on the Senate floor protecting their rights, objecting to Democratic requests and generally making life difficult for Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat.

They were often joined by Sen. Elizabeth Dole, North Carolina Republican from the class of 2002, and Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican who completes his second term next year.

Sen. John Thune, South Dakota Republican and another member of the class of 2004 who fought the bill, said the first-termers are coming of age.

McConnell is still hiding:

Throughout the debate this week the Republicans were without the aid of their own leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell. The Kentucky Republican ducked the fight, not speaking on the floor at all Wednesday and waiting until late afternoon yesterday, long after the debate had ended, to explain himself.

But he never explained his own vote yesterday to block the bill, after supporting it earlier this week, and after having said repeatedly it was a better bill than last year’s — a bill he voted for.

“I had hoped for a bipartisan accomplishment and what we got was a bipartisan defeat,” he said.

Rule of thumb - If it has Kennedy’s name on it, it CAN’T be good for America.

— ‘The Commish’ A.J. Sparxx

Illegal Immigrants flooded the phones of Pro-Amnesty groups with calls of concern, disappointment and fear:

Phone calls flooded advocacy groups across the state yesterday as distraught illegal immigrants tried to come to terms with the implications of yesterday’s failure in the Senate of a bill that would have legalized some 12 million unlawful immigrants.

Some immigrant groups vowed to redouble efforts to lobby for immigration reform with protests and rallies. But with most observers saying that the prospects for another vote on the measure are effectively doomed this year, many who live in the netherworld of illegal status had to confront a cold reality that after having their hopes raised, they were plunged again into uncertainty.

Hey, how about wiretapping those phones and getting a lead on these illegal immigrants making the call. Other’s applauded the outcome:

Meanwhile, opponents of the bill applauded. Steve Kropper, cochairman of Massachusetts Citizens for Immigration Reform, said the bill’s plan to allow for the legalization of 12 million unlawful immigrants would have eroded wages for poor workers in Massachusetts.

“If you live in Boston and you clean hotel rooms or you’re a nurse in a hospital or a worker in food preparation, the death of this bill means you have a better chance to own a house, drive a car, or afford health insurance,” he said.

Maybe these people will be scared enough to go back to where they came from and try it again .. LEGALLY this time.

— ‘The Commish’ A.J. Sparxx

ALERT: 4:30am EST - It appears a suicide car bombing in Central London has beenaverted. A mercedes was driving erratically before crashing into some dust bins. Driver was seen fleeing the scene. Upon investigation, police discover car filled with gas canisters and nails. Explosive device has been defused.

More details to follow.

— ‘The Commish’ A.J. Sparxx

Way back during RatherGate™, as Dan Rather drove himself into increasingly tighter corners and self-destructed, Jonah Goldberg wrote:

I love the CBS News forged-document story. To paraphrase the abominable snowman from the Bugs Bunny cartoons, I want to hug it and squeeze it and name it George. Okay, I don’t want to name it George, but you get my drift. If this story were hot fudge, I would smear it all over my body and then roll around in nougat.

Reminds me very much of the Bush-Kennedy amnesty story.

— PoliPundit

For months now, Presidente Jorge Arbusto’s minion, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, has been busy pushing amnesty for illegal aliens in the US Congress, instead of building the fence that Congress mandated last year.

Now that his pet bill has died, Chertoff says he doesn’t have the tools to enforce the laws:

Chertoff said the administration will continue trying to enforce existing immigration laws, building border fences and beefing up border patrols. But, he said, without the additional resources in the bill and its much more stringent system to verify the legality of job applicants, the flood of illegal immigration is not likely to recede. Employers will still have no real way to unmask undocumented job applicants. Texas ranchers will continue to protest efforts to build fences on their land, and Arizonans will continue to try to block radar towers, he warned.

Chertoff angrily dismissed critics, especially conservatives, who said they could not support the bill until the administration shows it can enforce the laws on the books, accusing them of saying, “We need better weapons, but we’ll give you the weapons after you win the war.”

Virtually every enforcement measure in the Bush-Kennedy bill is already authorized or mandated by existing law. If there are any measures the Secretary needs, we will be glad to support them in every way possible, just like we supported passage of the Secure Fence Act through Congress last year.

For starters, the president should call for $4.4 billion in “emergency supplemental” funding from Congress. Arbusto attached the funding request to the Bush-Kennedy bill in the last couple of weeks in order to buy some Republican votes for amnesty. We will be glad to still support $4.4 billion in “emergency” funding, and to make sure that Democrats are held accountable in 2008 - a presidential election year - if they oppose it. All el Presidente has to do is ask.

And surely el Presidente and his henchmen could twist a few Congressional arms to get these new enforcement measures enacted; after all, they were certainly willing to go to the mat for amnesty…

— PoliPundit

Sam Brownback first voted Yea on cloture today, and then Nay when he realized that the cloture motion was going to be defeated.

It now turns out that his presidential campaign had even prepared a statement to explain his Yea vote! They tried to erase the statement from their web site, but Google remembers all. From a Google-cached version of the statement:

Senator Brownback voted in favor of cloture on the motion to proceed to the immigration bill today. That means he voted to bring the bill back to the floor for debate and for amendments to be offered.

This does NOT mean that Senator Brownback supports the immigration bill itself – he feels the bill needs to be improved.

In other words, Brownback actually thought he could fool us yahoos by voting for cloture and then voting against the bill! And he didn’t even realize that cloture itself would fail!

And we thought Brownback’s colleagues were out of touch…

I didn’t dig up any of this, these guys did.

UPDATE: Red State’s Leon Wolf showed up in the Comments section. While I have the deepest regard for Red State, Leon’s defense of Brownback’s flip-flopping is indefensible. So, in the spirit of Brownback’s vote-switching, I banned Leon before I unbanned him. Unfortunately, that had the effect of deleting all his comments, just like amnesty-related pages on Brownback and Martinez’s web sites.

— PoliPundit

Betsy Newmark:

Anamendment introduced by Mike Pence passed 309-115 to bar the FCC from imposing the Fairness Doctrine.

Some people have said that this was just a fake issue trumped up by talk radio hosts to scare their listeners. Perhaps, but when you have several powerful senators talking about how they want to bring back the Fairness Doctrine and Representatives also talking about it, it seems more than just blowhard paranoia.

All in all, this has been a very good day for conservatives from the death of the immigration bill, defeated by a bipartisan majority to the Supreme Court decision on barring the use of race in school assignments. And the Pence amendment is just icing on the cake. We conservatives need to savor today because we don’t get many days like this.

— PoliPundit