Cleaning Up After The Party

Mmmmboy, that barbeque was good. Compared to last year, the teriyaki chicken breast was enormous. Some might say (as I did this morning) that I blew off my diet, but the truth is I'm not on a diet, but rather trying to change what, and how much, I eat, with the emphasis being on lowering my sodium intake. For me that's a fate worse than....well, not death, since that's what I'm trying to defer, but let's just say my childhood nickname "saltaholic" wasn't unearned. Which is fine when you're in grade school, but not so fine when you're middle-aged and your systolic blood pressure reading is indeterminable.

I suppose that still makes BBQ a no-no. But it was free and I ran out of time to have my normal bowl of Special K (i.e. ricecakes in skim milk), so I indulged. Besides, I had additional good reason.

There are a few loose ends that I'd like to tug on before the page is turned on this sorry episode, though. Such as the national self-humiliation of Ohio Republican Senator George Voinovich. And the principled, monolithic courage of wannabe POTUS Sam Brownback:



Then there was this little detail in the $4.4 billion the Bush Administration threw into the kitty as a "border enforcement" sweetener to buy off GOP fence-sitters:

U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) released Wednesday a report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) which says the new Senate immigration bill contains a major loophole in border security. Supporters of the bill say it provides $4.4 billion in immediate mandatory spending for border enforcement, but according to the CRS analysis, the funds could also be used immediately to implement the amnesty provisions [of the] bill.

“This is just another example of how this bill claims to do one thing but does something else entirely. It’s another example of an empty promise being used to buy votes for amnesty,” said Senator DeMint. “The supporters of this bill have been running around trying to convince people that this money will be used to secure the border first, but now we know that’s not the case. If you read the fine print, the bill says this money can also be used for amnesty.

According to the CRS report provided to Senator DeMint, the mandatory spending in the bill could immediately be used for Z visas. It says, “(r)eceiving, processing, and adjudicating applications for the Z visa authorized by Title VI of the Act is one of the trigger mechanisms outlined in Section 1; this means that funding from the Immigration Security Account could be used for this purpose.”

In addition, the report says the funds could be used for Y visas and other programs once the trigger mechanisms have been met but it does not require the Secretary of Homeland Security to certify the trigger. The report says, “S. 1639 does not explicitly stipulate whether the certification required by Section 1 would have to take place prior to funding being made available for the additional purposes outlined in Section 2(C).”

“Not only can this money be used for things other than border security and enforcement, it looks like another backdoor trick to promote amnesty,” said Senator DeMint. “If Congress appropriates money later this year for the border, the money provided in this bill will turn into a slush fund the Administration can use to ensure illegal immigrants are legalized.” [emphases added]

Which is, of course, the border erasure crowd's definition of "legal immigration."

A former boss and mentor of mine had a very direct way of dealing with people who tried to BS him. He'd get right in their faces, thump two fingers in their chests, and exclaim, "You're a LIAR!" Given that he was a former IRS agent, I imagine he got ample opportunity to practice that little mannerism. Given that he is also hugely passionate about border control and enforcement and was doubtless driven up the wall by this amnesty crapola, well, I can't imagine what he'd have done to Ted Kennedy when the latter vomited his "Gestapo" slur in his morning rant. But I know it would have justified C-SPAN going on pay-per-view.

Dean Barnett has the winners and losers. Pretty standard for anybody who's followed this onrolling fiasco over the past month, but he did have two very pregnant points:

I’ve admired this President for a long time, but I’ve reached a point where I’ve had it up to here (my hand is at my forehead) with this Administration’s chronic obtuseness and arrogance. The top priority right now for the Administration should be the war. And yet the President spent what little political capital he had trying to shove this atrocious immigration bill down the country’s throat....

President Bush is going to need a united base come September if he wants to stay the course in Iraq. Given that consideration, calling 90% of that base bigots probably wasn’t a very good idea....

Will the Republican base forgive the Administration for its actions surrounding this bill? My guess is no. We’re moving on to finding another leader for the party, and in 7 months or so we’ll have one. In the meantime, thanks to this idiotic gambit, there’s a power vacuum right now in the White House.

All I can add is what I said last Saturday: We all knew that Dubya was a huge open-borders guy. He never made any secret of it going clear back to the genesis of his presidency in early 1999. But the 9/11 attacks HAD to change that priority. If he wanted his amnesty and his guest-worker program, both his responsibility as Commander-in-Chief and the politics of the issue demanded that he establish a track record of vigorous border control and enforcement of existing immigration laws at a minimum. With that baseline any White House-backed immigration legislation would then have had to augment the enforcement side first; the combination of both would then have laid the foundation for an advocacy of amnesty that the public could have reasonably accepted.

The President had better than six years to do this. He did none of it. Instead he whipped out a reprise of the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli amnesty, only this time his Senate proxies pursued its enactment with a level of dishonesty, dishonor, and arrogance worthy of....well, the Democrats, which is what made Uncle Teddy's sodden prominence in this saga so appropriate. And since Bush let Ted Kennedy write his education bill ("No Child Left Behind"), that's an appropo closing of a very disgusting "bipartisan" loop.

Here's the POTUS expressing his "disappointment" over the stuffing of his legacy quest. Cry me a river, Mr. President. Because that's all this was to you, a legacy quest, an ego trip, an additional page in the history books. I suppose all two-termers succumb to that itch at this stage of their presidencies, but you did so at the cost of your honor, your credibility, your leadership, and the imperilment of who knows how many American civilian lives that have already been endangered by your utter disinterest in recognizing that border control is a lynchpin of national security in an age of nuclear terrorism.

And you lost.

Too bad for you, but not for the rest of us, which brings us to DB's second slice of salience:

Now, the Democrats have given us the greatest gift of all – an issue that moves the country much more than members of the political class realize and on which the Democrats find themselves on the wrong side. The Republican congressional candidates should be able to have a lot of fun with the issue of border security in 2008. So should the Republican presidential nominee....

That would take a bit of jiu-jitsuing to pull off, but it's hard not to notice the shrill haste with which, for example, Crazy Nancy tried to "blame" the killing of a "shamnesty" bill that nearly four Americans out of every five detested on the Republicans. Which means the Dems are all but handing a winning issue to the GOP for the rest of this election cycle, if they'll only have the brains to take it and run with it.

Winning the Senate back next year after this mess ain't happening (any more than retaining it in '06 was likely after the McCain Mutiny), but the House might be a different matter. Ditto overcoming the Hillary threat and retaining the White House. If Republicans embrace and tout border control/enforcement leavened with favorable bromides toward legal immigration, and get out of the way of the increasingly irrelevant Donk Bushophobic jihad, while Fred or Mitt takes the Reaganian path free of any need to defend the man who would be their predecessor, the Dems and all their tiresome extremism, rage, and hatred could be lumped in with Dubya as "old news," a chapter from which the American people want to turn the page and, well, "move on" from. Particularly if Mrs. Clinton heads the Democrat ticket.

Yeah, it's laboring optimism, not unlike listening to me run up a flight of stairs. But Congress' approval rating is the lowest it's ever been right now, and it's happened on Crazy Nancy's and Dirty Harry's watch. Just imagine the fallout if RINOs like Dick Lugar (I still can't say that name without snickering) facilitate the Donk immediate-surrender-to-al Qaeda-and-Iran policy, Congress pulls the plug on the war, and it yields the expected military disaster. Maybe follow that up with an Iranian invasion of Iraq and/or missile strikes against Israel and/or another major terrorist strike here at home. After the past six years, there's no way on Earth that the Democrats wouldn't get tarred with responsibility for bringing all that blood and gore down on us. "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." That party would be finished, no matter what disarray the GOP was in and how savvy, powerful, and ruthless the Clinton machine is.

And to think it all would have been born in the crucible that came so close to combusting the GOP itself.

Don't worry, lib readers, there's no defeat that my party can't pull out of victory's jaws. The GOP could botch a wet dream. Certainly they pissed away their greatest chance to make hay in the last Congress in record time.

But you people had better be aware of where the ol' metaphorical pendulum is. This immigration war may well have started it swinging back in the direction from whence it so recently came.