Amnesty Prophet

Looks like my whipping math....

....was correct.

Man, I wish I'd been wrong.

Why? Because here's my next prediction: this travesty of an immigration bill will gain sufficient momentum from its Senate passage [Yes, there is another cloture vote next week and then another vote on final passage, but I'm trying to save myself some keystrokes....] to pull enough "bipartisan support" over to the "yea" side to pass the House, probably by a single-digit margin.

Not exactly a snappy epitaph for a 153-year-old political party, is it?

Give me time, though, I'm sure I'll think of something.

UPDATE: David Frum observes that President Bush has spent whatever political capital he had left plus that of his party and has borrowed decades ahead, all for the sake of this stupid, ruinously unpopular amnesty bill. He (Frum) then asks a salient question:

What happens when the surge comes up for review in September? Has the President in effect sacrificed Iraq for immigration amnesty?

Just a warning to friend and foe alike: Please don't ever compliment Bush's political judgment in my presence ever again.

UPDATE II: JASmius echo syndrome strikes again:

AmSpecBlog:

In all my decades of closely watching politics, I have never, EVER seen Congress so directly contravene the overwhelming, strongly expressed will of its constituents as it is doing by continuing with this immigration charade.

The Corner:

Something about this immigration battle doesn’t sit well. For all the bitterness of our political battles, there’s at least the sense that the government responds to the drift of public opinion. The Republicans in Congress turned into big spenders and the war in Iraq went poorly. As a result the Democrats prospered in 2006, if narrowly. That’s how democracy works. Our politics are often angry and ugly (and that’s a problem), but this is because the public is deeply divided on issues of great importance. Deep down, we understand that our political problems reflect our own divisions.

Somehow this immigration battle feels different. The bill is wildly unpopular, yet it’s close to passing. The contrast with the high-school textbook version of democracy is not only glaring and maddening, it’s downright embarrassing. Usually, even when we’re at each others’ throats, there’s still an underlying pride in the democratic process. This immigration battle strips us of even that pride....

Supporters of this bill sell it as a compromise that will heal America’s divisions. I fear it’s quite the reverse. This bill is infuriating the public and undermining faith in government itself. You can see it in the polling on confidence in Congress and the President. If this bill passes, it’s going to aggravate and embitter politics for years to come. Passing a measure over such overwhelming opposition is like slapping the public in the face.

You can’t solve an argument by imposing a "compromise" on parties who don’t actually view it as a compromise. You can’t heal social divisions by forcing your version of a "solution" down the public’s throats.

The last such "compromise" of this magnitude that I can recall was the Compromise of 1850. That measure, if you'll also recall, pounded the final nail in the coffin of the Whig Party, which the GOP replaced four years later. Seven years beyond that, the nation was at war with itself.

Maybe that parallel is a bit overwrought, but not by all that much, as the next decade will regrettably illustrate.

UPDATE III: Here's what Republicide looks like (although I won't be sorry to see this piece of trash go).



UPDATE IV: If ever there was a picture worth a thousand words....

FINAL UPDATE: Here's the list of Republican senators who voted to resurrect this bill, with the ones up for re-election next year asterisked (*):

Bennett, UT
Bond, MO
Brownback, KS
Burr, NC
Coleman, MN (*)
Collins, ME (*)
Craig, ID (*)
Domenici, NM (*)
Ensign, NV
Graham, SC (*)
Gregg, NH
Hagel, NE (*)
Kyl, AZ
Lott, MS
Lugar, IN
Martinez, FL
McCain, AZ
McConnell, KY (*)
Murkowski, AK
Snowe, ME
Specter, PA
Stevens, AK (*)
Voinovich, OH
Warner, VA (*)

That's a total of nine of the twenty-five. You can scratch Coleman, Collins, Domenici, and Grahamnesty after '08. The other five can expect much more competitive re-election bids than they ever would have anticipated.

Oh, did I mention that Senator Ensign is this cycle's chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee? Think their coffers are gathering dust right about now? Certainly seems to be the case at the RNC, which is laying people off:

The Republican National Committee, hit by a grass-roots donors' rebellion over President Bush's immigration policy, has fired all sixty-five of its telephone solicitors, the Washington Times has learned.

Faced with an estimated 40% falloff in small-donor contributions and aging phone-bank equipment that the RNC said would cost too much to update, Anne Hathaway, the committee's chief of staff, summoned the solicitations staff and told them they were out of work, effective immediately, fired staff members told the Times.

Several of the solicitors fired at the May 24 meeting reported declining contributions and a donor backlash against the immigration proposals now being pushed by Mr. Bush and Senate Republicans.

"Every donor in fifty states we reached has been angry, especially in the last month and a half, and for 99% of them immigration is the #1 issue," said a fired phone bank employee who said the severance pay the RNC agreed to pay him was contingent on his not criticizing the national committee. [emphasis added]

That was over three weeks ago.

After this mass political self-hanging, I think the GOP will be luckier than King Midas to only lose four senate seats next year, even if their House counterparts somehow bail them out. Unlike those prodigal Pachyderms, we grassroots elephants still retain our loooooong memories.