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RUSH: Here’s the latest from the AP on immigration. The headline: ‘Immigration deal survives GOP threat.’ Listen to this. ‘A bipartisan immigration bill narrowly survived a potentially fatal challenge on Wednesday when the Senate turned back a Republican bid to limit the illegal immigrants who could gain lawful status. The close vote on a proposal by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to bar felons — including those court-ordered to be deported — from legalization reflected the delicate position of the contentious immigration bill, which remains under threat from the right and the left.’ So Cornyn proposed an amendment barring felons, and it loses! ‘The vote was 51-46 against the amendment. Democrats succeeded in sucking support from Cornyn’s proposal by winning adoption of a rival version that would bar a more limited set of criminals, including certain gang members and sex offenders, from gaining legalization,’ which is hooey because it’s not going to do that, either.
There’s no incentive to do any of this in the bill. We’ve got plenty of immigration laws on the books now, and because they’re not working, we have do this? What’s the magic in this new set of laws? So Cornyn proposes an amendment that would bar felons including those court-ordered to be deported for legalization, and it loses! It loses. Did you hear me? An amendment to bar felons and those who are court-ordered to get out of the country failed! We welcome you felons into America, and if you’re a felon and an illegal already here, we want you to stay. United States Senate, June 6th. You know, if anybody’s still alive out there from D-Day, the anniversary is today, 63 years ago, what are you thinking here? More on that as the program unfolds.
Now, we still have the story, this ran yesterday at TheHill.com, Capitol Hill newspaper. ‘Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) yesterday set the stage for a vote to limit debate on the immigration bill, a move that risks destroying the fragile reform deal. Reid told reporters that he plans to file for cloture on the immigration bill by today at the latest, frustrating Republicans who have blasted what they consider sluggish progress on their priority amendments. While the bipartisan team of immigration negotiators have won reprieves from Reid before, the Democratic leader was unruffled by the threat of GOP ‘grand bargainers’ joining a filibuster.’ Now, Reid said he planned to set a Senate vote for Thursday — actually that’s tomorrow. Not today. I’ve been saying today. I’m sorry. That’s because I read this last night. Okay, this is still my mistake. But it is an honest mistake, it’s not understandable mistake, it’s a mistake anybody would have made so it’s not going to take away from my new accuracy rating. But the vote is tomorrow. Dingy Harry said he planned to set a Senate vote for Thursday on his motion to limit debate. It was unclear with Republican objections it would garner the 60 votes needed in order to shut off debate and vote on the thing. Now, why?
The conventional wisdom — and it’s worth what it’s costing you, by the way — the conventional wisdom is that it’s not going to survive this, that if it doesn’t get 60 votes, the thing is dead. Why would Dingy Harry do this? It’s anybody’s guess. I think one of the things that’s happening is that more and more people are finding out how abominable this thing is. They didn’t want this to be known. Their plan was to negotiate this behind closed doors, in secret, and then ram it through with no debate, as McCain called it, no extracurricular politics, to try to keep people from finding out what was in it. Last night McCain admitted at the debate that it was not the bill he would have written, but until somebody got a better idea… I got a better idea, enforce the current law that we’ve got now. Common sense, though, has no place in this, obviously. The second thing is, possibly, that, you know, have you seen the latest round of congressional ratings? They are in the toilet, folks. Don’t think these guys aren’t aware of that. There’s also a third thing. This is a slight possibility, not very likely, but it’s possible.
If this bill gets beaten back, if we stop this bill, this is going to be the biggest victory conservatives have had against this administration since the Harriet Miers nomination. That got us the Justice Alito nomination. Could we get a Justice Alito equivalent in a new immigration bill? Don’t think for a moment that the libs and the Drive-Bys would not love to see a huge conservative beat-back of President Bush and his administration on anything. You know they would make hay about that. I don’t think this is one of the reasons, because I think that they’re more concerned about their plummeting poll numbers in Congress and the fact that as people start to learn the details of this, it will have an impact on the next election. But they’re torn because it’s a whole bunch of new voters out there. This is a built-in expansion of the Democrat Party, and as I called it earlier, it’s the Comprehensive Destroy the Republican Party Act of 2007.
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