Money quotes from the article:
"Republican and Democratic negotiators believe they can reach agreement by early next week..."
"Rep. Joe Baca (D-Calif.), the caucus chairman, and Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (Ill.), the chief Democratic author of a major House immigration bill, dashed over to the Senate. But Reid did not see them until 6:30 p.m. Gutierrez implored him not to pull the bill from the Senate floor. To the millions of illegal immigrants in this country, it was "a matter of life and death," he said...."
"Republicans were no less panicked. For several hours Thursday afternoon, McConnell huddled in his office with Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the bill's lead Republican backer, along with more than half a dozen hard-line opponents...."
"DeMint then went to the Senate floor to refuse every offer Reid would make on further amendments...."
"The move infuriated some senior Republicans, including Minority Whip Trent Lott (Miss.), who was urging the GOP leadership to take a harder line with the conservatives. But McConnell was reluctant to push too hard...."
"Chertoff rejected the suggestions that the administration had not hustled. 'They are going to have to fumigate the room because we were basically living there. Anyone who says we weren't engaged is ignorant of the facts.'"
"Bush will speak to Senate Republicans on Tuesday about immigration in a previously scheduled lunch."
ladership=leadeship
Well, next time, Trent Lott should run as a Democrat and see how much support he gets.
We are well into the brink of the most significant crisis in the history of our country.
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
July 4, 1776
The most disgusting thing about the whole article......
Chertoff, our head of Homeland Security, lobbying the senators to make his job a rubber stamp of criminals.
“Chertoff rejected the suggestions that the administration had not hustled. ‘They are going to have to fumigate the room because we were basically living there.”
Who said Chertoff’s a liar? They couldn’t prove it based on this statement. “Hustled”, “fumigate”, ah, so true.
George Bush = Jimmy Carter.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/03/20060331.html
And they’re going to sit down and carefully consider the opinions of every interested party......except the American people.
With a Congress like this, who needs enemies?
Who is the retard who thought this would happen?
The only way Bush revives some public support is by acting like a Conservative. Bush will never get the left to say he is doing a good job. He could get the Right to say he is doing a good job, if he showed us some love.
I am really starting to get annoyed with Bush on this and several other issues.
One of the major fallacies in this bill and anything else that offers citizenship to illegals is that as long as they’re illegal, they’re cheap labor, which is the root cause of all this stuff to begin with.
But once they’re citizens or even green-card “guest” workers, they’re just as subject to the minimum-wage laws we are. They then become part of the landscape of people who won’t do the grunt labor, and a whole new crop of illegals will be dashing across the border to do the work that the rest of us “won’t do.”
It’s all a bunch of self-perpetuating bovine scatology unless and until the border is secure, which MUST be done, and soon, no matter what else happens. That is the keystone issue.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
I think the Rasmussen Reports put it best:
“...The immigration bill failed because a broad cross-section of the American people are opposed to it.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1847400/posts
“...Elite newspapers and countless bloggers are writing their own explanations of why the compromise immigration legislation failed last night. Most of the write-ups discuss legislative tactics, an amendment offered by Senator Byron Dorgan (D), or some particular provision of the bill dealing with amnesty or guest workers.”
“The reality is much simpler and has nothing to do with legislative tactics. The immigration bill failed because a broad cross-section of the American people are opposed to it. Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated voters are opposed. Men are opposed. So are women. The young don’t like it; neither do the no-longer-young. White Americans are opposed. Americans of color are opposed...”
ROFLMAO!
McConnell knows full well that if he and Lott were to push the conservatives "too hard", that they would likely be voted out of the leadership and replaced as Republican Leader and Whip by these very same conservatives in a very short period of time.
McConnell likes being the Senate Republican Leader and wishes to remain so for a while longer. He doens't want to face to public disgrace of being fired as Leader or forced to resign his Leader post in lieu of being fired by his own caucus.
He and Lott MUST HAVE the support of 25 out of the 49 members of their caucus for them to keep their jobs if they are challenged and have to face a no-conficence vote by their own caucus. If 25 or more of their own caucus vote against them, then they are out!!!
If these conservatives were to fire McConnell and Lott from their leadership positions over this "compromise" Amnesty Bill, then I hope they replace them with dedicated opponents of the bill, such as Sessions. Sessions has been around long enough to be elevated to the Leader position.
