"Kudos to the new kids on the block----who actually listened to the people and who are continuing to reek havoc in the Senate!!

"The immigration-reform bill was supposed to be a defining moment for the old guard.

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."

"They went up against the full array of Senate tools, including blocking amendments, denying floor time and even a rarely used technique called the "clay pigeon" — named after the target in skeet shooting, because it allows its author to launch a complicated amendment and then split it into many different parts."

"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.


"There's a steep learning curve here in the Senate and we're getting more and more familiarized all the time with what those powers are and how we can use them, and you saw a demonstration of that," he said.


He also said while they aren't looking to make a name as obstructionists, senators should be ready for a fight if leaders try "ramming something down people's throats."


"It's not going to be the old way of doing business. This is a group that you're going to have to deal with, you're going to have to reckon with, and going along to get along probably isn't going to be the M.O.," he said.


Democrats were deflated by the defeat.

"The big winner today was obstruction," Mr. Reid said."

And it continues.....

"Yesterday afternoon Mr. DeMint turned his attention to pork-barrel spending, holding up Democrats' effort to form a House-Senate conference on an ethics bill without assurances from the Democrats they won't water down rules on earmarks that the Senate has already approved.


Democrats were enraged, accusing Republicans of trying to hold up the chamber.


Sen. Barbara Boxer, California Democrat and, like Mr. DeMint, Mr. Vitter and Mr. Thune, a former House member, said the Republicans were abusing their newfound freedoms in the Senate.


"Some people come over here from the House, and they decide that they're going to just use the rules of the Senate to call attention to what they think is the issue of the day," she said."

Uh, oh. Sounds like Ms. Boxer is mad. Ahhhhhh....


http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/...plate=nextpage

__________________
"This is a time for a national imperative not to fail in Iraq." Condoleeza Rice, January 11, 2007

Awwwwwww......

I guess the ILLEGAL migrants will stay ILLEGAL.

(Good job, taking this bill down)

What I never understood was when polticians said they were gonna vote for this bill, because it's what the people want. WHICH people? I certainly don't know ANY folks who were for this piece of trife, Commucrat or Demopublican.

I actually hoped it would pass. Not because I believed it a perfect bill....but because it was at least a start. And I believed it could have been improved as we went along. But like others, I was unsure they would really follow-through with the "securing the borders" part based on past experience. That's the fault of the Congress and the Senate. My Senator......Kaye Bailey Hutchison....offered up an Amendment that focused more on "security first" but failed. So, until the Senate REALLY listens to the people, we continue down the same road.

But "the people" spoke and spoke loudly. So, we'll see an increase in raids of businesses, etc.....and arrests made. But for the most part, it will remain at the status quo at least for another couple of years.

NOT good for the country. Kinda sad, actually.

__________________
"This is a time for a national imperative not to fail in Iraq." Condoleeza Rice, January 11, 2007

jp's thread title: jp's conclusion:so which is it jp ... something to celebrate or to disappoint?

terrible amnesty bill, which will be viewed as defeated by the pubs to assure the Hispanic vote stays demo ... i think i understand your sadness. tell your team to keep up the "good" work!!!!!!!!!!!!!

__________________

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bushfan http://www.politicalforum.com/images...s/viewpost.gif Pelosi calls Mr. Bush a Failure in Eeverything. You just can't hide a public eduation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rusticus Rove is s the slime on which this whole administration slid.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raharu Haruha And spending money is nothing more than another form of voting.

Why won't they just write a simple border security bill? Why do they have to write a novel? Anyone who voted against it would lose their jobs in the next election.

__________________
Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive. - Theodore Roosevelt

2 differet subjects and focuses.
Flip flopping is contradictory positions taken on the same issue. Which clearly did not happen here.





First is focused on Junior Republican Senators being able to stand up and defeat Senior Democrats old schools..much exemplified by the Reid whine.

IE
"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"




Second is focused on the actual Bill and how JP5 thought it was better then nothing.

IE
"Not because I believed it a perfect bill....but because it was at least a start. And I believed it could have been improved as we went along"


Harry Reid/John Kerry are two wonderful exmaples of flip floppers.
Though in reality they are simply liars.

__________________
McCain 2008
"We make war that we may live in peace"
"...peace is the highest aspiration of the American People. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it, we will never surrender for it, now or ever."
"Oderint dum metuant"
"Inartful: clear and straightforward, lacking the artistry that allows subsequent self-refutation and denial."
http://members.cox.net/neddy/bobhope_kerfuffles.wmv
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RnfflRNpwKA
http://youtube.com/watch?v=j-QYIP7o2-A

We need term limits for all politicians. The longer they are in the worse they get.

__________________
HELP STOP ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION.......MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD.......FAX CONGRESS FOR FREE FROM YOUR COMPUTER! http://www.numbersusa.com/dfax?serie...FSgtagodA3cbCA

Here we have it....a dimocrat that admits that they want illegals to have the right to vote in America no matter what the laws of this country read........

They are so hard up for votes that they will do anything, even if it destroys this country in the mean while, to grab power.

What's the matter libs, you know that the American people have rejected the stupid communist based liberal idea so you must pander to illegals for your voter base?

Then you wonder why people say "liberalism is a mental disorder" and " liberalism will be the death of this country". Your post proves it.

This immigration bill, and the way that it died, reveals a lot of interesting changes in our political system. Ever since Bush-Chaney took office and their NeoCon philosophy became clear, the Republican Party has truly been split in two pieces. For one thing, Bush campaigned on "no nation building",yet in the name of bringing Democracy to the world, he decided to do just that in Iraq and Afghanistan. In that whole debacle, the national debt has risen dramatically. A primary Republican philosophy is fiscal conservatism...so a lot of Republicans/ Conservatives find it difficult to associate with Bush's ideas. Yet, as President, Bush has a lot of control over everyone who calls himself a Republican - and thus the "old Republican Guard" has been arm-twisted to support Bush's agenda. The newly elected Republicans can see that Bush is taking the Republican party down the wrong path - and found a in this immigration bill a chance to buck the Bush Republicans. In essence they are bring the Republican Party back to its old roots again.

At the same time, we see the "old Guard Democrats" supporting the same old government give-a-way programs that hearken back to the Lyndon Johnson "War on Poverty" era. I think this extreme social Democratic program is also starting to die. I do believe most Americans support some sort of social safety net for those citizens who, for some good reason, cannot support themselves. But programs like never-ending welfare for able bodied workers and amnesty for illegal aliens is overly generous. I recall that the American people were not happy with the package of pork that the Democrats attached to the supplemental spending bill that funded the Iraq War.

Times are changing; ideas are changing. We have seen the new generation of Republican who watched as Bush destroyed a lot of the good-ole-boys network that used to insure reelection to anyone who voted with the party. I think we will see a new kind of Democrat emerge as well that supports social causes to some degree, but is not willing to just use government money to raise everyone's standard of living.

When you consider that only 30% of the American people supported the Immigration Bill, the fact that a bunch of Senators and Congress members still tried to pass that crazy, jumbled bill shows you how many legislators are hopelessly out of touch.

Hopefully this marks the start of a new era where legislators start using their brains to vote, and stop following only what the "party leaders" think.

__________________
Hobo
Charter member of 'Republicans Who Hate Bush" Club

The immigration bill was an effort to deal with a complex, difficult problem. Reasonable people on both sides could take issue with its provisions, some of which were well-intentioned but unworkable and some of which were silly symbolic posturing. It was defeated not on its merits (nor its problems) by xenophobic ranting.

The effect is two-fold. It marks the end of the Bush presidency as anything other than an obstruction. It also more or less assures that the Republican party will sink into increasing irrelevance as an electoral choice. George Bush don't know much about history, but he does know (or Karl Rove knows) that becoming the 21st century equivalent of the Know Nothings is not a path to electoral success.

Globalization is a force that may be affected at the margins. It's not a force that can be stopped. Immigration, whether legal or illegal, will continue as long as economic forces continue to draw workers to this country. Significant limitations can be imposed only in the context of economic decline.

The growth of Hispanic culture in the US cannot be stopped. A party that insults and disrespects it will fail in the long run. The defeat of the immigration bill is less important in terms of its specific provisions than in the message it sends to Hispanics. The Republican Party doesn't want you. Republicans can try to dress it up in other ways. But that's the message.

GWB recognized that. It's ironic that his mojo has so completely disappeared that he couldn't convince his own party about an issue that, in the long run, is far more important than whether to build a 50 or a 55 foot fence on the Mexican border.

__________________
"To announce that..we are to stand by the president whether right or wrong..is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1918