We win, they lose: Today's second and most crucial cloture vote in the Senate to ramrod through the Kennedy-Bush amnesty bill not only failed to get the required 60 votes, it lost outright, 45-50! It's not quite dead, but it's comatose.
GOP Senators voted 7-38 against cloture, Democrats 38-12 for. Republicans voting for cloture (i.e., for the bill) were Graham, Hagel, Lugar,
Last year, an even worse bill passed the Senate 62-36. And since then, the Democrats took control of the Senate. So, we are making sizable progress in mobilizing public opinion.
Thank God for the Internet and talk radio. Back on Monday, the Washington Post tried to sleaze the Kennedy-Bush bill through by running a wholly biased frontpage article in order to whip up a false sense of momentum:
Backers of Immigration Bill More Optimistic
Lawmakers Cite Sense of Urgency
By Jonathan Weisman Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, June 4, 2007; Page A01
After a week at home with their constituents, the Senate architects of a delicate immigration compromise are increasingly convinced that they will hold together this week to pass an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, with momentum building behind one unifying theme: Today's immigration system is too broken to go unaddressed.
Funny how they didn't cite any opponents of amnesty in the article agreeing with its contention ... That the public was telling the Senate that this bill would make the system worse was not for
Tonight, the Washington Post is beside itself that the public shot down its plan to push through an enormous amnesty bill concocted in Senator Kennedy's Red Bull-filled room without even holding hearings. Dan Balz, a Washington Post "reporter," spins madly:
But to those far removed from the backrooms of Capitol Hill, what happened will fuel cynicism toward a political system that appears incapable of finding ways to resolve the nation's big challenges.
If
Voters wanted an immigration deal, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) acknowledged as he pulled the measure after 9 last night: "The problem was on the inside of this Senate chamber."
Isn't it about time that the Washington Post fire their pollsters and hire somebody (e.g., Scott Rasmussen) who won't rig the questions to provide the answers the Establishment wants to hear?
The collective failure of the two parties already appears to have stimulated interest in a third-party candidate for president in 2008 whose main promise would be to make
Is there a better example of the reality distortion field that surrounds
Now, having (apparently) dodged this bullet, we've got to actually accomplish something ...
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My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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27 comments:
Seems to me that it was Harry Reid who actually killed Bush's stupid Immigration/Amnesty bill by (A) unexpectedly saying he'd call a cloture vote after just a couple of days and (B) saying he'd immediately pull the bill if it lost cloture. The Republicans bitterly denounced this plan.
I'd think that all the many excitable anti-immigrationists should be talking about drafting Reid for the Presidency...
That is some righteous anger! Good for you, Steve. The cretins have become insufferable. The depth of their antipathy toward a free and open society cannot be plumbed. It is 100% lies now.
Chin up. I saw Mickey "The Slammer!" Kaus on Lou Dobbs tonight. It may take another five years, but eventually the MSM will be forced by sheer magnitude of events to bring Steve Sailer in from the cold.
"I'd think that all the many excitable anti-immigrationists should be talking about drafting Reid for the Presidency"
Why not? He couldn't be any worse than Bush.
Isn't it about time that the Washington Post fire their pollsters and hire somebody (e.g., Scott Rasmussen) who won't rig the questions to provide the answer the Establishment wants to hear?
Left wingers are never banished from newsrooms no matter what kind of a tailspin the operation goes into. From the chronic also-ran status of MSNBC to the rotting hulk of the NYT, the goal of these organizations is dissemination of kool-aid. Push-pollers and propaganda writers get raises and pats on the back.
The owners of print media, radio and TV all understand that moving away from the Left increases readership and ratings. But they refuse on principle!
I'm actually kinda sad about the bill dying (it's actually gone into suspended animation - since it wasn't formally killed, I think it could be resurrected before the end of this Congress, possibly in the lame duck session after the elections).
Like I've said before, I don't think we'll ever get a Congress that's serious about immigration enforcement (and reducing legal immigration) until we have a Congress that's stupid enough to pass an amnesty first.
Passing the amnesty would've stunk, but it also might've incited a revolt against our current overlords. As it is now, that's less likely to happen - and we're likely to keep getting the non-enforcement we've had all along.
The most important Senate debate of the year was on CSPAN-2 instead of CSPAN. What a joke.
This was a good battle to see exactly where people stand. Lines have been drawn.
Thank God for those who fought the good fight over the past couple weeks. Among MSM hosts it was only Dobbs and Glenn Beck and who else? I guess Hannity. O'Reilly threw in the towel the first night. What a disgrace. And Fox has had an immigration news ban on their website. Pathetic.
The no-capitulation MSM commentators were Malkin, Heather Mac Donald and several others. Heather Mac really kicked the guys at WSJ in the nuts last week.
A lot of bloggers on the web fought the good fight. And most of them have been educated by a very small core of clear thinkers: iSteve, Auster, Pat Buchanan, Brimelow and all of the other purge victims from the 90s. Farah refuses to knuckle under also. That whole crew has been toughing it out in the wilderness for 10 years or more (OK, Buchanan and Farah are not exactly wilderness).
Sen Sessions is an honest, rational, traditionally-minded person. And that makes him stand out like Superman in the United States Senate. What a state of affairs. He's a hero. But he really only displayed plain decency. It's a major problem when plain decency makes a person a hero. It means society is crumbling down around you.
People like Derbyshire and Steyn are not going to save our civilization. I have learned that much.
Barone, George Will, Buckley, Limbaugh etc. got us into this mess by taking the money instead of fighting the good fight. They are revolting, hollow men.
Like every other civilization, it is the moral decisions of only a very small group of people who determine the fate of us all.
OK, I missed it. What is this "kool-aid" everybody is talking about?
You remind me a little bit of Brad Delong here. He's had a hard-on for Jonathan Weisman for years:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=com.ubuntu%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=asH&q=%22jonathan+weisman%22+site%3Adelong.typepad.com&btnG=Search
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Now that I've discovered the joys of calling and faxing congress, I don't think I'll be able to give it up.
Of the 7 Repuglicans who voted for cloture, two - Chuck Hagel and Lindsey "tell the bigots to shut up" Graham - are up for re-election next year. Don't forget that when their primary opponents announce their candidacies. If you have the money, support them.
Another Repuglican cloture voter - John McCain - thinks he can be president. His candidacy is dead and buried. I've heard some polls putting him in 4th place in the GOP nationwide.
In addition, a far better measure of which Senators supported the amnesty can be found here:66 senators voted against removing the amnesty provisions from the bill. And of the 29 who voted for removing amnesty, many only did so because they're up for re-election next year. Are we to believe that Senators Landrieu, Pryor, Rockefeller and Baucus - all of whom voted for the 2006 amnesty - have suddenly, miraculously had a change of heart in the year leading up to their re-election? Don't be a fool.
The most important Senate debate of the year was on CSPAN-2 instead of CSPAN. What a joke.
Ummm...that's because CSPAN2 is the one that covers the senate. You can also watch on-line if you don't get CSPAN2.
And Fox has had an immigration news ban on their website. Pathetic.
I'm fairly certain Murdoch is pro-open borders. The conservative commentators are almost always tho open-borders ones. Hell, even the Wall Street Urinal has a regular column by an opponent of open borders - Peggy Noonan, who can verbally beat up all those dreary, white neofeudalists at the Urinal with one larynx tied behind her back.
Barone, George Will, Buckley, Limbaugh etc. got us into this mess by taking the money instead of fighting the good fight. They are revolting, hollow men.
Ummm...Buckley, Will, and Limbaugh all came out against the amnesty. Will's piece marked a major turning point in the bill's prospects. I do wish they'd oppose the GOP more often, though. Will has written some dumb immigration pieces, however.
What I find particularly annoying is that the newsmedia tries to spin it so that opponents of amnesty and liberal Democrats who wanted less restrictions on relative importation were equally prominent in the opposition.
From looking at the roll call, it appears to me that all 50 votes against the bill were votes against amnesty. Every single Democrat carping about family-based immigration (Menendez, Hitlary, Yomama, etc.) voted for cloture.
Many here are counting their chickens far too early. This immigration bill is far from being defeated by filibuster or withdrawn because of that likelihood.
So far the votes against cloture have had a heavy component of actually wanting more time for amendments and debate. Many who voted for those reasons won’t necessarily vote against cloture to sustain a filibuster in a few days.
A lot of the delicate balance and this thing could fall apart noise is just a pressure tactic of the Dems and Repubs who want no sunset provisions in the guest worker program, etc. They won’t really withdraw their support over that in the end.
If any bill passes the Senate, look for it to be greatly liberalized in the house and the Dem controlled House–Senate conference, very possibly to a much worse extent than the original bill. E.g. look for a real effort to strip out the merit point system instead of extended family chain immigration. It’s got to get killed by cloture failure in the Senate, or it will end up being a mess regardless of what amendments pass in the Senate.
The following Banana Republicans are the ones who did not relent with the second cloture vote and who need to be removed from office at first opportunity:
Lindsay Graham
Chuck Hagel
Richard Lugar
Mel Martinez
John McCain
Arlen Specter
George Voinovich
We need people to challenge these guys for their respective nominations. I've already heard that someone is seriously considering going up against Hagel in Nebraska.
Unfortunately, there is little we can do about the Big Banana himself, El Presidente Jorge Arbusto. He's going to ride out his term.
The list of Mexicrats is too extensive to even go into here. All of the Democrats here on the west coast, except for Boxer (surprise!), got behind the motion for cloture.
Now that I've discovered the joys of calling and faxing congress, I don't think I'll be able to give it up.
Most cellphones these days have room for about 500 phone numbers. Is your congressworm's in there? Are your senators in there?
They should be.
Ummm...Buckley, Will, and Limbaugh all came out against the amnesty
The original post was obviously referencing the consistent actions of these people over the past 15 years or so.
Must be reassuring for the other side to know that a person can spend an entire career sandbagging the immigration battle, but as long as they show up at the cease-fire negotiations (with reluctant throw-in-the-towel laced bromides), there will always be guys like Mark who consider asses sufficiently covered.
Hey Mark, you seem like a smart guy when it comes to the media. Yeah, you're really savvy. Why don't you share your thoughts on the Strange Case of Matt "I'm a conservative" Drudge:
Drudge web site dutifully reports isolated immigration raids for months leading up to the Senate Amnesty push. He reports utterly trivial numbers of arrested illegals in BIG BOLD HEADLINES!!!
Simultaneously Drudge radio show dutifully pronounces that the permanent residence of gigantic illegal alien populations is inevitable, that nothing can be done to reverse the trend, that we all just have to adjust to the new reality.
Then Drudge web site in the wake of the anti-Amnesty victory Drudge goes huge with ... wait for it ... PARIS HILTON.
The Balz on that guy!
Anytime someone starts talking about a "Washington that works", what they mean is one that isn't hindered by all of that democratic process.
"what happened will fuel cynicism toward a political system that appears incapable of finding ways to resolve the nation's big challenges."
And we can't have that!
Fellow Paleo-cons,
I hope some of you take the time to DONATE a couple of sawbucks to whomever runs against "Graham, Hagel, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, Specter, and Voinovich" in their next primaries. We can at least make these folks spend some of their campaign dough to survive re-election.
I also hope you guys and gals dont forget that Kennedy and Bush will probably try this at least one more time in earnest before Bush gets out of office. Bush plainly does not care what people think of him, so well insultated he is from the rest of us. I also hope you folks who read Steve's blog regularily send Steve a magazine subscript worth of money for providing publish-worthy content of high quality for free. Its a shame the folks like Kevin Phillips and Steve Sailer are not recieving the accolades they deserve for telling it like it is.
"I hope some of you take the time to DONATE a couple of sawbucks to whomever runs against "Graham, Hagel, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, Specter, and Voinovich" in their next primaries."
The obnoxious Hagel is up for reelection in 2008 and has already drawn a top tier primary opponent, Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning who seems opposed to Comprehensive Suicide:
http://www.jonbruning.com/
The deplorable Chris Cannon already has about four primary opponents lining up to take his seat.
Old Right
I stopped paying attention to the WaPo's "reporting" on immigration when they ran an article an MS-13. The theme of this article was not the importation of a criminal alien underclass, but blaming the U.S. for "exporting" Salvadoran gang violence back to El Salvador. 'Nuff said.
Democracy works!* Whoda thunkit?
* The fact that it doesn't work perfectly ain't the point. The point is that The People aroused win.
How does it feel, Ted Kennedy?
Must be reassuring for the other side to know that a person can spend an entire career sandbagging the immigration battle, but as long as they show up at the cease-fire negotiations (with reluctant throw-in-the-towel laced bromides), there will always be guys like Mark who consider asses sufficiently covered.
I'm more interested in stopping amnesty than I am in making out an enemies' list or purging converts.
How does it feel, Ted Kennedy?
Oh, I'm sure Teddy still feels pretty good. Whether or not the immigration acceleration bill passes, the demographics are still moving in the direction he wants them to. He must feel a certain satisfaction that, even after having been proven a liar so many times, the press and many of the voters still buy his lies. He lied about the 1965 immigration bill. He lied about the 1986 bill. Yet, still, the press refuses to call him out on his claims.
The problem is that while most Republicans in congress are playing checkers, Teddy is playing chess. He's saying "Let's go from Point A to Point B," and Republicans, for their various reasons, are going along. But he doesn't care about Point B - he's trying to get to Point Z - and he knows that once you get to Point B, it'll be impossible, given the political dynamics, not to move on to point C, D, E,F...all the way to Z.
Ted Kennedy is perhaps the most ideological member of Congress we've ever had; and, quite possibly, the most effective at getting his way - whether that is in the best interests of Americans or not.
Structural overhaul to provide a lawful procedure for a majority of people in OTHER states to "take out" destructive career legislators is needed.
I propose we create s third legislative body, the "Senate Emeritus". (Other terms may be better.)
On every two year federal ballot, Senators, representatives, and Supreme Court Justices would be automatically eligible for election after being in there for a certain length of time-perhaps five terms for Senators, twenty for Representatives, or any member of the Supreme Court who has been in there for a certan length of time relative to the average tenure of the Court. They could not turn down the nomination nor the election if they win the national vote. They would be ineligible for life to hold any other legislative position, but they could retire with full pay.
The Senate Emeritus would have one duty-it gets by a majority vote, the ability to cast one vote in the event of a tie in either House. No other duties.
The Founding Fathers would never have imagined such a thing because they assumed a Ted Kennedy would sinply be dealt with as were his brothers. But we are a more civilized people and cannot countenance that.
This would provide a way to "whack" pernicious old bastards like Kennedy, Byrd, (and the long time pests) Thurmond and Helms, who are rightly detested outside their home states.
Well, like the Bush Dynasty, the Kennedy "Dynasty" - how can it be a dynasty if it's only one generation? - is also pretty much dead. When Teddy goes, that'll be it. Teddy had a Kennedy niece who ran for governor of rather liberal Maryland. She was beaten by a conservative Republican.
So now there is only one other Kennedy in major public office: Teddy's son, Patrick, a congressmen from Rhode Island, whose career has been marked by nothing spectacular.
As for dealing with such senators, that's up to the body of the senate. The senate has no obligation to hand out chairmanships by seniority - but it does (you can call that Incumbent Protection Scheme). And senators have no obligation to work with or support guys like Kenendy - but they do.
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