Senate on Immigration: ¡No!

Well it looks like all the crazy right-wingers (the National Review writers have been particularly insane for weeks) got to their Senators between Tuesday and today, because the temporarily-resurrected immigration bill has again been murdered, maybe for good this time-

The Senate drove a stake Thursday through President Bush's plan to legalize millions of unlawful immigrants, likely postponing major action on immigration until after the 2008 elections...

...Senators in both parties said the issue is so volatile that Congress is highly unlikely to revisit it this fall or next year, when the presidential election will increasingly dominate American politics...

...It was a victory for Republican conservatives who strongly criticized the bill's provisions that would have established pathways to lawful status for many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. They were aided by talk radio and TV hosts who repeatedly attacked the bill and urged listeners to flood Congress with calls, faxes and e-mails....

Thank God, the country is safe again from Mexicans... but for how long!??!??!

On Tuesday, Mark Kleiman shook his head at how the GOP was allowing its crazy base to force it to commit political suicide in killing this bill (that's karma for you... they spent years feeding this beast, and now are shocked that it finally bit them back).

I had a similar conversation with a friend last night. The shortsightedness of the conservative base is, as always, stupifying. This bill-- while unquestionably flawed; hampered down with corporate garbage like the "guest worker" program-- was probably the best bill one could hope for under a Republican president. The base wants a tougher bill... one that is enforcement-only and tells the illegal immigrants to go back home. But they aren't getting that bill. As the article notes, we aren't getting any bill for the remainder of the Bush presidency.

In all likelihood, the next President will be a Democrat [*knock on wood*]. The more the Republican party reminds Americans how insane and out of touch they are-- which is more and more, according to polls-- the likelier that outcome is. And do conservatives expect that the immigration reform bill to come out of the next administration, and under what will still likely be a Democratic House and Senate, will treat immigrants like petty criminals and build a brick wall along every inch of our southern border? If so, give me some of what they're smoking.

Without realizing it, these xenophobic conservatives have helped lead the path to an immigration bill in 2009 or 2010 that I will feel more comfortable with... paths to citizenship, saner security measures and employer sanctions, no guest-worker paid slaves. I appreciate that, but I don't think that's what they had in mind.

Conservatives should've taken this bill when they had the chance. The implosion continues.