Obama-mas?

Guess what Mr. "Charismatic Smooth-Talking Rising Star" stuck in his mouth now:

[Barack] Obama found himself in the usually mundane role of Senate chair [yesterday] afternoon while the Republicans used procedure to tie the Democrats in knots once again. And when put in the position to make a ruling, he gave the Democrats a short-term win, but a long-term loss on the immigration debate. He very well have given critics of his presidential campaign more fodder.

Feckless majority leader Harry Reid had a homeland security appropriations bill on the floor for debate, and thought the day was going to go rather smoothly, until the Republicans showed him up once again by offering an amendment to tie border security elements of the immigration bill to it....

Politically speaking, this was a brilliant move. You knew this to be the case because Ted Kennedy, the author of much of the language in the failed immigration bill this year, came down to the floor and read the riot act about the Republicans trying this stunt.

Harry Reid certainly didn’t want to have this measure voted on, because he didn’t want to look foolish and have the Republican parts of the immigration bill passed around him on an end run, so he asked the chair for a ruling that the Graham amendment be stricken because it wasn’t germane to the original bill.

That’s right, the Democratic leader of the Senate wanted a ruling that border security funding has nothing to do with homeland security funding.

All eyes turned to the chair, currently occupied by Barack Obama. Here is what he had to say.

HR: We have to have a ruling here first.

BO: The chair is not aware of an arguably legislative provision in the House bill, HR 2638 [the homeland security funding bill], to which Amendment number 2412 offered by the Senator from South Carolina [the border security funding amendment] could conceivably be germane.

Judd Gregg: So the amendment is germane?

BO: No, that the chair does not believe that the defense of germaneness is appropriately placed at this time.

So there you have it. Senator Barack Obama, the man who is trying to win your vote to be the president of the United States, the commander-in-chief, the man whose primary mission is to protect and defend the country, can’t see how border security has anything to do with homeland security.

It's not quite the gaffe that he committed the other night regarding smooching the smegma of the real-life Legion of Doom since Harry Reid put him up to it and he pretty much had to follow orders. But that just underscores how the only difference between Obama and his more senior Donk colleagues is a callow lack of discretion in showing the country the true hideous face of the Chavezite Democrat Party.

I can't help thinking, though, that all this "political brilliance" is taking place in an utter vacuum. Virtually nobody pays attention to the day-to-day goings-on in the Senate unless there's a SCOTUS nominee enduring confirmation hearings. Even if that weren't true, I doubt Republicans will have the foresight or acumen to take that clip and use it against the Dems to the devastating effect the Generalissimo imagines. Even if they do, I doubt it will make enough of a difference to turn the huge tide the GOP has "surging" against it.

And, in any case, Hillary! skipped the 52-44 vote defeating this amendment, so she's got plausible deniability.

Unless she taps Obama for her running mate, in which case his skin pigmentation will cover everything that her X chromosome doesn't.

Well, except for the fallout from the radiological attack that kills several tens of thousands of American civilians launched by the jihadis that marched right across our undefended border completely unfettered and unnoticed.

No, make that the third or fourth attack, since the first few will be successfully blamed on "Bush's" war in Iraq (as Vice President Obama will contritely assure his rogue's gallery of "friends") - and his failure to fortify the border.

How's that for stomach-turning irony?

UPDATE: Dirty Harry must have realized the trap he was falling into, because the Graham amendment was brought back today and passed almost unanimously.

However, with border security funding now in the Homeland Security appropriations bill, the President will be hard-pressed to veto it on over-spending grounds. On the other hand, if he's as against border control as he has appeared last year and earlier this summer, perhaps he'll veto it using fiscal responsibility as his fig leaf, prompting a likely veto-override that would piss away the credit for fortifying the borders to the party of border erasure while they get all their pork-barrel spending and minority Republicans end up with zippo.

Naaaah, not even Dubya has that tin a political ear.

But it wouldn't astound me.