Here It Comes Again

The border-erasure crowd just will not quit:

Senate leaders vowed Thursday night to revive stalled immigration legislation as soon as next week, capping a furious rescue attempt led by President Bush.

The decision, announced by Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and his Republican counterpart, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, envisions a final vote on the complex bill before lawmakers begin their Fourth of July vacation....

Reid and McConnell announced their plans in a brief, two sentence statement that capped days of private negotiations by key senators as well as Bush's personal involvement.

"We met this evening with several of the senators involved in the immigration bill negotiations," they said. Based on that discussion, the immigration bill will return to the Senate floor after completion" of an unrelated energy measure now undergoing debate.

How did this happen, you may ask? Well, for starters, some precedent-setting lobbying from the 29% President:

Two days ago, Bush made a rare visit to the Capitol for a meeting with Republican senators, where he urged them to give the bill a second chance. Earlier on Thursday, responding to a request from pivotal GOP senators, he threw his support behind a plan for $4.4 billion in immediate funding for "securing our borders and enforcing our laws at the work site."

"Rare"? Try unheard of. Maybe Bush thought didn't have to personally lobby Congress when his own party ran it, since they could be generally relied upon to pass his legislative priorities. Although judicial appointments were supposed to be one of those priorities, and he docilely rolled over when seven senators from his own party emasculated him on ending the Democrat confirmation filibuster. And he's never gone to the Hill like this to personally champion the war effort or his constitutional war-fighting powers or the need for coercive interrogation of terrorist "detainees."

But even those were instances where Dubya would have been trying to shore up friendly support for conservative stances. Now here he is going to the mat trying to deceitfully bulldoze GOP senators into caving to a liberal stance on an issue with gargantuan national security and economic implications that will get his own party massacred at the polls next November and set that new political misalignment in demographic cement. And there stands Minority Leader McConnell, just as I feared a week ago, like the proverbial lapdog getting his ears scratched by a triumphant Dirty Harry Reid.

If Reid is incompetent, my God, what does that say about our guys?

Well, not all of them, for whatever it ends up being worth (via Michelle Malkin):

“I appreciate the effort to fund border security, but there’s simply no reason why we should be forced to tie amnesty to it. If the Administration was serious about fulfilling the border security promises, then this funding should have been supported all along, not offered at the last minute to attract votes to a bad bill.”

“We have a serious problem with our immigration system, but this mess of a bill is not the solution. It puts amnesty before security, contains loopholes for criminals, and will increase the burden on taxpayers.”

“All of the border security triggers in this bill can already be implemented under current law. It is unfortunate that the bill supporters continue to hold border security hostage in return for passage of amnesty. Instead, they need to prove to the American people that they will secure the border first.”

Actually, incompetence would be the kinder word for the President. Witting championing of this legislated national suicide would be a betrayal of everything George W. Bush has claimed to stand for ever since September 11, 2001. It doesn't matter if he's always been an open borders guy; 9/11 has to change that position. That it apparently has not reveals the man to be....

Well, far more Clintonian than I ever would have imagined.

UPDATE: Laura Ingraham has a list of fifteen Republican senators that are the target of this White House full court press. These are the ones up for re-election next year:

* Alexander (R-TN)
* Cochran (R-MS)
* Coleman (R-MN)
* Collins (R-ME)
* Cornyn (R-TX)
* Craig (R-ID)
* Domenici (R-NM)
* McConnell (R-KY)
* Smith (R-OR)
* Warner (R-VA)

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Senate Minority Leader is one of them. Can he truly not recognize that he's signing his own political death warrant, and aiding in the demise of his party as a viable national political entity as well?

But that's not rock bottom yet; not by a long shot.

THIS is (via Allahpundit):

[I]f the bill gets through the Senate and the House, the Democrats and the open borders Republicans will work together when the bills have to be reconciled in committee to strip out any amendments that the “grand bargainers” don’t like. Therefore, at this point, it doesn’t matter what amendments pass, because any tough enforcement provisions that slip through will be rendered toothless when the bills are reconciled…

Not yet. Wait for it, wait for it....

My source also let me know that the White House and the Senate leadership, and Trent Lott in particular, are pushing very hard for this bill.

I asked my source to speculate on why Lott was pushing so hard, and he said that Lott may be naive enough to think that this bill might help John McCain’s presidential campaign. He told me that despite McCain’s dip in the polls since the bill hit the news, it was hard to miss the fact that the biggest supporters of this bill in the Senate, Jon Kyl, Trent Lott, and Lindsey Graham, are all solidly behind McCain in ‘08. [emphasis added]

Ron White says "you can't fix stupid." When these witless assassins are done, the Stupid Party will be beyond repair as well.