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By Repair Man Jack Posted in Immigration — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

The cloture vote on the 2007 Immigration Reform Bill looks like it will kick off at approximately 1100 hours. It will come down to four votes or less. Like I predicted several weeks ago, this one is going down like The Edmund Fitzgerald, the October 1929 DJIA and Senator Lindsey Graham’s favorability ratings.

Most of the GOP gets this and understands well. The voters will remember and will punish those who betray us. Careers will end abruptly, if incumbent GOP Senators think they can ram this down our throats.

While the proponents of the bill call the opponents a vocal minority (drunk rednecks) driven by cultural concerns (Ruben Navaratte speak for wearing Senator Byrd’s old Klan uniform), three Freshman Democratic Senators who came to power on the waves of voter outrage get this issue. They see the reaction of the American People for what it is. Not all anger is stupid, and Senators Webb, McCaskill and Tester are smart enough to take this more seriously than Arlen Specter, Lindsey Graham and Edward Kennedy.

The proponents of this “comprehensive reform” did themselves no favors when they swatted proposed amendments from Senators Hutchison and Webb. Senator Burr, Senator Bond and probably three or four others, switched course right there. The pro-reform caucus only had 64 votes on Tuesday. They might get 59 now.

I not only predict this bill’s demise, I predict a fundamental realignment of the GOP as a result thereof. The candidate we ultimately nominate will have to come back to the people. That person won’t govern by opinion poll, but he’d better not look at them with utter disdain.

In 2000, after gagging for eight years on Bill Clinton’s poll-driven governance, GOP voters wanted the candidate who did it his own way. We don’t want that any more. On the issue of immigration reform, George W. Bush took that philosophical idea to its logical limit.

The electorate as a whole rejected this governing philosophy in 2006 and is rejecting it even more vociferously now. No one in power appeals to more than ¼ of the country. That happens when you don’t listen. Arlen Specter can talk in mystical terms about “The Will of The Senate”, but he relies on a lot of very average, very hard working and very angry people to keep him there.

This bill is where Senator’s Vitter, Corker, Coburn, Cornyn and Sessions fundamentally alter which members of the GOP Congressional Minority set policies and establish goals. It’s not just a small fraction of the base that hates McCain, Specter and Voinovich for their arrogance. It’s the entire volunteer organization of the GOP that wants this defeated. That’s more power than McCain et al. can dissemble in the face of.