the executive director of English First, has sent out an e-mail written 10 o’clock Thursday night that offers several interesting angles on the inside workings of the Senate in the immigration debate, especially when it comes to the difficult-to-understand motives of Sen. Reid. According to Boulet, Reid was never committed to this bill. He saw the bill as dividing the Republicans. It was the Republicans who were passionately consumed by this debate, it was Republican voters who were furious at pro-amnesty Republicans. So Reid just sat back and let the debate run, which damaged the Republicans and helped increase the Democrats’ chances to hold the Senate in 2008. However, if that is the case, why did the Democratic eulogists on the Senate floor last night blame Republicans for the bill’s failure, rather than their own leader? Were they also playing a cynical partisan game? It didn’t seem that way. They seemed deeply emotional about their desire to pass this bill. There are many unresolved questions.
Mr. Boulet writes:
The Senate refused to limit debate on the immigration bill for the third time tonight, 45 to 50 (60 votes are required).
Seven Republican Senators voted for cloture: Graham (SC), Hagel (NE), Lugar (IN), Martinez (FL), McCain (AZ), Specter (PA) and Voinovich (OH). (Martinez is also National Chairman of the Republican National Committee.)
Twelve Democrats voted against cloture: Baucus (MT), Bingaman (NM), Boxer (CA), Byrd (WV), Dorgan (SD), Landrieu (LA), McCaskill (MO), Pryor (AR), Rockefeller (WV), Sanders (VT), Tester (MT), and Webb (VA). (Note that Byrd and Pryor also voted for the Inhofe official English amendment last night.)
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has now pulled the bill off the Senate floor, at least for a little while. He also called it “the President’s bill” and demanded the White House get involved: “I will do everything I can to make this part of his legacy.”
Behind closed doors
There were rumors of still more closed door negotiations today in which a new 400 page(!) substitute amendment for the immigration bill would be sprung onto the Senate floor tonight.
This amendment would strip “deal breakers” that passed yesterday, like the Inhofe amendment repealing E.O. 13166 and the Obama/Dorgan five year “sunset” on the guest worker program.
Senate Republicans would not vote for amnesty without guest worker. And Senator Salazar (D-CO) threatened to desert the gang of 12 who drafted the compromise if the Inhofe amendment was even considered.
Republicans were tired of debate limits
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said earlier today, “On this date in the 109th Congress, Republicans had sought to limit debate nine times. … And on this date in the Congress before that, Republicans had filed for cloture only two times.
“Contrast that with the current regime. To date in this Congress, the Democratic Leadership has sought to cut off debate not two times, not nine times, but 32 times—32 times.
Did Senate Democrats really want to pass an immigration bill?
Michelle Malkin’s live blog of the Senate debate today has been invaluable to me, as I have spent most of the day on Capitol Hill. Malkin reports a fascinating comment from Senate Majority Leader Reid at 2:19 Eastern time today: “Let the record reflect that this bill isn’t going anyplace and it’s not our fault.”
Reid used to be a boxer. Boxers know how to look like they are trying to win a fight, without really trying to actually win it.
Senate Democrats don’t like the immigration bill much more than the Republicans do. (Their offices have telephones and those telephones have been ringing.) However, for political reasons, the Democrats want the Republicans to bear the blame for killing amnesty.
This bill has never been handled like serious legislation.
On May 19th, we were told that a 323-page bill transforming immigration policy that no one had even read was to be voted on in one week without a single hearing or committee markup? And remember, one week in Senate time is Tuesday to Thursday.
Then Reid magnanimously gave the Senate the week of the Memorial Day recess to read the bill and four extra days of debate this week.
Conducting the immigration debate in this rushed way has two major advantages for Senate Democrats:
(1) They have a one-vote majority, a group of freshmen who won in places like Montana and Virginia and three Senators running for President. This is not a group that seeks to cast lots of controversial votes. Senate Democrats are united on the Iraq war and not much else, period.
So pretend you are Harry Reid. You can’t vote on Iraq every single week the Senate is in session. So you need to kill some floor time, without actually looking like you are killing floor time. Immigration is the perfect issue.
The immigration debate looks and sounds Senatorial, complete with breathless articles in the New York Times written in “Perils of Pauline” style: “The fragile Senate immigration compromise survived two more attempts to kill it …”
The immigration debate also drains the energy from the GOP while not affecting your team. Senate Democratic staff enjoyed a fairly restful Memorial Day recess, while Senate Republican staff burned the midnight oil reviewing the monstrosity that was the Senate immigration bill.
GOP staff are running on coffee, adrenaline and fumes with three more weeks to go before the July 4th recess. Staff tends to be young, but are not inexhaustible. A wise man warned me this past weekend, “tired people make mistakes.”
(2) Immigration badly divides Republicans; not so Democrats. Visit the Daily Kos or any other liberal blog this week and try to find any discussion of the Senate immigration bill. Not so on National Review Online or most other conservative or GOP web sites.
Callers to C-SPAN this morning were literally yelling at Republican National Chairman and Florida Senator Mel Martinez. None of the “with all due respect” stuff. One caller I heard said: “you people don’t get it. We don’t trust you. And you don’t listen. But there is an election coming up.” This stuff has to be music to Reid’s ears.
Passing the immigration bill in the Senate would move the fight to the House, where 61 freshmen Democrats, many of whom ran on the issue of controlling immigration, would be forced to choose between their campaign rhetoric and the good of their party. While immigration may help the Democrats keep control of the Senate, thanks to disgust with the immigration bill, that is not so in the House. [LA adds: I don’t understand why the bill would have a different effect on the House than on the Senate.]
Good job. Well done.
I’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile, great work team.