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 bump
Saxby lost sight of why he was put in that office. Like most Senators he started thinking the office elevated him to some special status, a kind of House of Lords mentality.
We’ll do worse than melt down their phones next time.
“I say,...I say,...nahl. You little peoples thinks you got us on the run, nahl? I say!”
The only solution I know would be a massive grassroots movement to impeach these Congressmen and the President—or perhaps a threat to do so. It would be very difficult to get such a movement going and to succeed with it. Is there any other way to bring pressure on them to enforce the laws?
Next Time?
Next time is now! They're still coming across the border while we're waiting for NEXT TIME!!
“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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
He might be right,but when I get tired of those goats jumping the fence I can shoot them and have them for dinner.
...and my rant, “the US Senate is the most dangerous body of men and women on the face of the earth”.
So many pompous donkeys under one roof who think they are hung, when in reality there are a majority that ought to be.
There are at least two others on this forum with like commentary, I should know them by name, in order to ping, but at the moment I don’t.
I hope everyone against the travesty thinks as you do! We would have to get organized. Maybe a 501c3 revolution committee.
When I read that I thought about ancient Rome. Specter must like gladiator movies.
Would Haley Barbour take on Lott?
How about a massive grassroots movement to repeal the 17th Amendment?
I seem to recall that when the Chinese built the Great Wall they used human bodies as part to the fill in the wall. Including him in our wall seems a satisfactory termination to Vacant Lotts tenure as one of the “Lords of the Senate” to me. If however we are too squeamish to bury him all the way we could at least do it from the neck down and could feed him on goat milk and cheese. I would volunteer to do the honors until his inevitable change of mind.
I think the senators compartmentalize their thinking and move on. When Reid outlined what they had to get done, none of it semed important to me. I heard Voinovich talk to Hannity and he concluded with a shrug, better luck next time on another issue. Then Lieberman suggested London style cameras in NYC when a major support for immigration reform comes from 911 families. They move on at their own peril, because Americans get the connections even if they do not and will insist on fixing this.
80% of 300 million people is a lot of people to cross. I included that in my messages to our would-be-rulers.
Chip Pickering will replace Trent in 2012... unless Lott retires early. He almost quit this past time and there is little doubt in his retirement in 2012. I hope he yearns for early retirement.
LLS
Hope that 80 percent is still angry in November.
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