BUSH'S IMMIGRATION BILL-- R.I.P.

Our political class was not ready for this bill. So both sides conspired to kill it. It was so compromised that, although it semi-solved some important problems, it didn't really address the overall situation forthrightly or in a way that would satisfy anyone. Ten minutes ago the Washington Post reported that the compromise collapsed. I'm sure otherwise safe Republicans endangered by this third rail legislation, like Saxby Chamberpot (GA) and Lindsey Graham (SC) breathed a sign of relief that they won't have to continue confronting this political nightmare that cleaved them away from their extreme right base.

The defeat came after months of tedious negotiations and weeks of debate when a 45-50 procedural vote fell well short of the 60 needed to break the filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) then pulled the bill from the floor, while holding out hope that the Senate could resurrect the measure within weeks.

Bush left the bill in the hands of his pathetic Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff, who alienated conservatives by calling them names, and his ineffectual Commerce Secretary, Carlos Gutierrez. "They watched from Vice President Cheney's ceremonial office just off the Senate chamber as the president's most important priority stalled." In the end only 7 Republicans plus Lieberman joined 37 Democrats to give Bush's bill a chance. That was 45 votes-- and they needed 60. RIP.

The NY Times also painted it as another failure for the Bush Regime.

The outcome, which followed an outpouring of criticism of the measure from core Republican voters and from liberal Democrats as well, was a significant setback for the president. It came mainly at the hands of members of his own party after he championed the measure in the hope of claiming it as a major achievement on domestic policy in the last months of his administration.

It was also a disappointment for a bipartisan group of about one dozen senators who met privately for three months to broker a compromise that tried to balance a call for stricter border enforcement with the push to find a way for many of the 12 million people who are illegally in the country to qualify for citizenship eventually.

Senate conservatives fought the legislation from the start, saying that it rewarded those who broke the law by their illegal entry into the country. After winning a few important changes in the measure, Republican critics demanded more time and colleagues supported their calls for more opportunity to fight it out on the Senate floor.

Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada and the majority leader, said the critics of the bill were simply stalling and would never be satisfied. He attributed the failure of the bill to Republican recalcitrance.

“We’ve done more than our share,” Mr. Reid said. “We’ve sent all the signals we can to get the president to help. It’s his bill.”

Mr. Reid did leave the door open to returning to the bill later this year.

It makes a lot more sense to elect a Democratic president, defeat 5-6 more Republican senators and a few dozen GOP House members and then get down to structuring a rational and useful bill that would forthrightly address real issues without having to worry about John McCain's presidential bid or George Bush's "legacy."

Republicans who stuck with the bill 'til the bitter end: McCain (even though he was abandoned by Jon Kyl), Martinez, Lugar, Hagel, Voinovich, Specter, and McCain's boy Lindsey. The dozen Democrats who voted no included an odd combination of reactionaries (Mark Pryor, Mary Landrieu, Max Baucus),
progressives and populists (Babara Boxer, Bernie Sanders, Byron Dorgan, Jon Tester) and a few who just couldn't face the heat (Claire McCaskill, Jeff Bingaman, Jim Webb, Robert Byrd and John Rockefeller).


WHO KILLED IMMIGRATION REFORM?

Well, most people think the bill just sucked any way you looked at it. Today's Washington Post calls it a failure of leadership in a flawed political culture which "represents a scathing indictment of the political culture of Washington."

The defeat of the legislation can be laid at the doorstep of opponents on the right and left, on congressional leaders who couldn't move their troops and on an increasingly weakened president and his White House team. But together it added up to another example of a polarized political system in which the center could not hold.

The Know Nothings who want to congratulate someone for killing it, though, are turning to backward South Carolina racist and xenophobe, Jim DeMint, whose tactics, they boast, derailed the compromise legislation.