Posted on 07/08/2007 4:45:28 AM PDT by Tom D.
Bearish Voters Get Senate's Goat
July 8, 2007
BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist
On the eve of Independence Day, the people of this great republic declared their independence from the United States Senate under the stirring battle-cry, "No legislation without explanation!" The geniuses who'd cooked up the "comprehensive" immigration bill's "grand bargain" behind the scenes in the pork-filled rooms had originally planned to ram it through in 48 hours before Memorial Day. And, right to the end, the bipartisan Emirs-for-life of Incumbistan gave the strong impression they regarded it as an affront to be required by the impertinent whippersnappers of the citizenry to address the actual content of the legislation.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) dismissed critics of the bill as "racist." Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) complained that the peasants had somehow got hold of his phone number and he felt "intimidated."
Sen. Trenthorn Lotthorn (R-Lottissippi) said: Who cares if they call? They could call 1-800-BLOWHARD (and leave off the "D" for "Deal's already done") 24 hours a day and he still wasn't going to listen to them. "To think that you're going to intimidate a senator," he scoffed, "into voting one way or the other by gorging your phones with phone calls -- most of whom don't even know where Gulfport is." (Gulfport is a port in the Gulf emirate whose grateful people Sultan Trent has ruled o'er lo these many years.)
More artfully, the Democrats' leader Harry Reid, instead of insulting his old base, invented a new one. Among the torrent of calls from racist intimidatory talk-radio listeners who don't know where Gulfport is, Reid had somehow managed to get through to the one constituent worth staying on the line for, a man who supports the bill. Who is he? Well, according to the Senate majority leader, his name is, er, "Tommy."
Tommy Hilfiger? Tommy Lasorda? Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra with vocal refrain by Jo Stafford and the Pied Pipers? Tommy Lee in the director's cut, where in the hitherto deleted scene right at the end he says to Pamela Anderson, "Sorry, honey, I'd love to carry on for another 20 minutes but I gotta call Sen. Reid in Washington. If you hardworking Canadians are going to do the jobs Americans won't do, I need to get your X-visa sorted out?"
Ah, but Reid explained that he couldn't identify the Tommy in question in case he was arrested and deported. This Tommy has to stay "living in the shadows," like Tommy Lee in the bit where he's partly obscured by Pamela's embonpoint. Alas, this heartwarming vignette left many cynics unmoved. On the radio, Laura Ingraham suggested that "Tommy" might be entirely fictional and merely Reid's imaginary friend. I proposed to Laura that "Tommy" might like to start dating John Edwards' "coatless girl," whose Dickensian tale of woe figures in every Edwards stump speech: Apparently she goes to sleep shivering every night because her daddy was laid off at the mill and she can't afford a winter coat. If Tommy and the coatless girl married, he could buy her a coat for $9.99 at Wal-Mart and she could fill in a routine Spousal Application form with U.S. Immigration, which only takes 10 years to process, as opposed to the cumbersome and time-consuming 24-hour instant amnesty visa for seasonal fruit-pickers and seasonal jihadists contained in the Senate bill.
Sen. Trenthorn Lotthorn, meanwhile, thinks America is a nation of goatless girls. They don't understand goats the way an experienced goat-farmer such as himself does. "If the answer is 'build a fence,' " Lotthorn declared, "I've got two goats on my place in Mississippi. There ain't no fence big enough, high enough, strong enough, that you can keep those goats in that fence.
"Now people are at least as smart as goats,'' the senator told Mario Recio of the Sun Herald. ''Maybe not as agile. Build a fence? We should have a virtual fence. Now one of the ways I keep those goats in the fence is I electrified them. Once they got popped a couple of times they quit trying to jump it. I'm not proposing an electrified goat fence,'' the Lottly Goatherd added. ''I'm just trying, there's an analogy there.''
By now, his analogy had jumped the fence. But what an awesome monument to the senator's reign it would be: Hadrian's Wall, the Great Wall of China, the Great Electrified Goat Fence of the Rio Grande. They would sing songs about it:
''Grab your goat and get your hat
Leave your worries on the
doorstep
Just direct your feet
To the sunny side of the fence . . ."
For "the world's greatest deliberative body,'' this was a much more ominous popular insurrection than the conservative backlash against the president's nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court. Time and again, the remote insulated emirs were offered the opportunity to rise above their condescension and declined to do so. Sen. John McCain (R-Maverickistan) confidently asserted that he'd worked hard on this bill and knew it better than all these no-account nonentities riled up about it and then had to have it explained to him -- by bloggers on a conference call -- that he'd misunderstood a key provision of his own legislation: There was no requirement for illegal immigrants to pay back taxes. Their amnesty would come tax-free. Blustering senators who claimed to have drafted this thing had to be told what was in it by critics who'd actually taken the trouble to look at it.
Immigration isn't going away: Human capital is the great issue facing all advanced societies. But it's unbecoming for a mature democracy to discuss a critical matter in such a fraudulent way. It's insulting to tell people that to oppose this bill is to oppose border enforcement. There are immigration laws on the books right now, and they are flouted with impunity by "sanctuary cities," states and the federal government itself. The political class tells us that a nation on permanent "orange alert" at ports of entry can't enforce its borders, and a broken immigration bureaucracy that can't process existing levels of applicants can reliably handle another 20 million people.
If the senators have any sense of why they lost, they'll learn their lesson. But initial indications are not encouraging. Predicting victory, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) declared gravely and portentously that "the will of the Senate" would prevail. And that's what matters, isn't it? As the rebel colonists cried all those years ago, "No legislation without self-congratulation!"
© Mark Steyn 2007
Steyn ping
“Blustering senators who claimed to have drafted this thing had to be told what was in it by critics who’d actually taken the trouble to look at it.”
I was astounded that the full bill wasn’t available to the Senators and that they hadn’t even read it. I told Burr’s office my grandfather’s advice was NEVER buy a pig in a poke, which was what this clearly was.
Thanks.
Do you believe in term limits for Congress?
Despite a recent House vote against it, talk radio is still being threatened by the resurrection of the Fairness Doctrine. With the near evisceration of McCain - Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act by the Supreme Court and the failure of the comprehensive "Shamnesty" in the Senate, the neoCOMs will be pushing harder for the Fairness Doctrine. Call talk radio. Use that as an opening to push for a Constitutional Amendment to give Congress term limits.
More good LOLs from Mark
I was already very cynical about our congressfolk — yet these would-be tinpot dictators were still able to surprise me with their arrogance. These people dare to equate voter communication with their elected representatives with intimidation?!?! They forget themselves — these ignorant, arrrogant fools need to be unceremoniously tossed out on their ears in the next primaries.
Great stuff, and thanks so much for the ping!
LOL. And this is more consideration that Traitor Lott deserves!
Great column by Steyn!
LMAO! I voted for Bush twice because there no doubt he was a better choice than asshats Gore and Kerry, but comparable “to Washington, Lincoln, Reagan, Jefferson, T. Roosevelt, Truman, and Churchill?” Man, you were pwned.
If there ain’t no fence high enough, big enough, etc., how come he has these goats? Oh, that’s right. I momentarily forgot. They’re electrified. Therefore, might I conclude that there IS a fence that allows Lott to have 2 goats? Hmm, I might yet be, like Lott, smarter than a goat, though, also like Lott, not by much.
Yes. I was fooled.
So very true and it will be up to us to bring him down to earth and boot his backside out.He is also abismal on pork barrel spending.
Thanks for the ping.
I think that's giving him too much credit. Several senators changed their vote to cover their ass after it was clear that the bill was going to fail. I'm pretty sure he was one of this group.
Steyn Rocks BTTT
“It’s like a game to them. Especially the ones who have been there many, many terms. I’m fed up with that attitude.”
Maybe they need reform, too, reckon? How about...
Plan 1: Term limit Senate members to one 6yr term, House members to two 3yr terms...and require all of them to physically be in their districts at least 50% of the time.
(That’s right...phone it in, fax it in, tele-conference, IM, whatever. “All politics is local”, right? Welcome home, Boss Hogs.)
or
Plan 2: Require House members to apply for salary/staff funding every four months. Defund the Senate, caulk up the chamber & fill it with fish.
He is such a testament to logic, I am amazed that Tony Snow hasn't just thrown in the towel already and admitted he and his boss are out of their leagues trying to bandy words over these foundational issues.
Pretty much a given. Every time he cuts a deal with Mexico...it's to reassure them that there will soon be amnesty, and absolutely no limits on the rest of them. John McCain clearly spoke from private knowledge obtained from no where else than the White House itself...when he said..."We aren't going to build no *@#$ Damn Fence!"
If he continues to refuse to enforce these laws, he should be removed from office. I know of no other remedy for a President--or a Congressman--who does such as this.
Agreed. And we need to start getting seriously in the face of the pundits who are running cover for this insanity. All of the WSJ editorial board, the so-called Beltway Boys, Robert Novak, Michael Medved, and without them...he will be left only with his admitted liberal MSM media (such as Geraldo Rivera or Chris Matthews). Liberals who won't provide cover for this White House...no matter how much they agree with W.
Without the cover of the fifth columnists ...W would be exposed to the call for removal for willful misfeasance and neglect in office...or to put it mildly...bad behavior.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.