It seems to me that the other loser in this amnesty fiasco is the MSM, which has been fawning over and worshiping the "bi-partisan" "grand bargainers" that were trying to slip this stinker through with no hearings, review or debate. It was alternate media that led the charge against it, and the victory was much greater than they could have hoped. But I think that the two politicians hurt most by it are McCain and Lindsey Graham. The former can stick a fork in his presidential campaign. The latter may still face a strong primary challenge, and I wouldn't bet that he'll win it. As one of his constituents said, they expect him to negotiate with the Democrats and Ted Kennedy, but not to become one.

Note, my comment is independent of my views on immigration. This is a case where I objected much more to process than (necessarily) product. Of course, it's hard to object to a product when you don't even have time to read it, debate it, or think about it.

[Update]

I agree with Captain Ed:

The immigration bill is dead, yet again, after the Senate rejected cloture by fourteen votes. In the end, the compromise could not even gain a majority in support of what conceptually may have been a passable compromise, but in reality was a poorly constructed, poorly processed mass of contradictions and gaps. Many of us who may have supported a comprehensive approach to immigration found ourselves amazed and repulsed by both the product and the process of this attempt to solve the immigration problem.

Read the rest.

[Evening Update]

Bill Quick has put up a triumphalist post. He may be right, but he may also be premature. Don't be cocky. And as is pointed out in comments, the left has been very strong in the blogosphere as well, if not stronger. The difference in this case was that is was a weak-tea compromise, that would appeal to no one except "moderates" who had no idea what was going on.

[Evening Update]

Kate O'Beirne describes how far out on a limb the president was with his own party:

The lopsided vote against the Senate bill by House Republicans (114? to 23) overstated House GOP support. According to a leadership aide, "The President actually had half that number (12?!) in favor of his bill." And, the president's team wound up with only 12 Republican senators. Ouch.

Ouch, indeed.

But the clueless persist in believing that George Bush is a conservative. And a Republican.

Was the immigration bill really the bill Bush wanted, or was it the bill the dems wanted? Can anyone imagine Bush pushing the immigration bill, not once but twice, counting on a revolt from the base, and/or Reid/Pelosi fumbling the ball, to kill it, in other words gambling that it would never reach his desk? Reid was sooo determined to ram it through. What would he trade his endorsement for, I wonder? A war spending bill, perhaps?

Is that an urban legend, or what? If not, it should be. :)

It may not have been the perfect bill, from Bush's standpoint (no bill ever is), but he was pushing very hard for it, and there's no doubt at all that, in anything resembling its current form, he would have signed it had it reached his desk.

Watch this video of the President's position on this.

"Now is the time to get this done."

Bush has always been an open-borders type, even back when he was governor of Texas. That a Bush presidency would push amnesty is no surprise. Bush has never been as 'conservative' as his most hostile critics claim.

Bush has never been as 'conservative' as his most hostile critics claim.

Or his supporters

Bush has never been as 'conservative' as his most hostile critics claim.

Or his supporters

If the Republicans were switched with the Democrats in this case, people would be crediting Rove with a brilliant coup in administering huge amounts of damage to the opposition. The Democrats put this bill together and let the Republicans be torn apart on it. Anyone who's a conservative or libertarian shouldn't be happy right now, because those folks have just been ripped.

The 08 Presidential landscape was totally changed, the hispanic vote will likely resemble the black vote in their loyalty to the Democrats for years to come and the Republican base has had their faces rubbed in the mud by some of their most influential politicians. The salt in the wound is that amnesty will come anyway, likely under Hillary and a blue congress.

Hillary won't get elected being pro-amnesty. Her pro-amnesty vote will be an albatross around her neck in 08. She signed her defeat by voting for this mess.

Thompson will take back the Reagan Democrats that Bush neer was able to claim with this issue. It will offset way more that the few Hispanic voters who feel disinfranchised over this.

Hillary won't get elected . . .

On this, I tend to agree with you, Mike.

Rand writes:

But the clueless persist in believing that George Bush is a conservative. And a Republican.

To what extent will future prospects for the GOP require the "creative destructive" (Joseph Schumpeter) of the Bush-ian version of the GOP?

Bill,

She is a terrible candidate. I can not believe the Dems are looking like they are actually going to nominate her.

At least the Republicans tend to weed theirs out, don't hear about the Ron Paul Juggernaut much.

It says more about the Clinton machine than her ability to perform on the big stage I believe.

It her quest for the nomiation reminds me of a dog chasing a car. She is going to catch that car and consequences be dammned!

Mike, plenty of Democrats agree with your assessment of Hillary. But she has a machine and money and the presumption of inevitability.

Andrew Sullivan has been comparing her style of secrecy with Richard Nixon.

But of note: Howard Dean assembled 80,000 individual donors via the internet and people were astonished. Obama has 250,000 individual donors and will raise more money this period than Hillary.

This primary fight has barely begun.

Obama-Richardson would be my preferred ticket.

But the clueless persist in believing that George Bush is a conservative. And a Republican.

Bush is a Republican because he belongs to the Republican Party.

Policywise, Bush is a conservative in roughly the same way that a pickup truck is like an eighteen-wheeler: they don't actually have much in common, but they're more similar to each other than either is to a 747.

The real immigration problem in this country is red states being overrun by blue staters. Nevada and Arizona are under siege from liberal AARP carpetbaggers, and we need to seal the Florida border so that New York liberals do not get past South Carolina.

Anyway, I would consider it an honor and a privilege if you would add my blog "The Tygrrrr Express" www.blacktygrrrr.wordpress.com to your list of linked sites if you feel the quality is high. If this is request is redundant, my bad in advance.

I came across your blog through the Rottweiler's website, since I enjoy his writing.

Happy summer.

eric

Agree with Bill and Mike. Hillary would be an awful nominee. Also, Obama-Richardson is my favorite Democrat pairing. Though I'm not sure the country can handle the idea of a black President yet. Mike, I think you have too much hope in Fred Thompson's capacity to attract Reagan . Though maybe if Hillary is the candidate, he will keep a lot of Dems home.

I think this issue cut across political lines for the citizens. Only the most left leaning Democrat voters were for this plan. The last poll I saw said 70% of voting Americans were against ANY immigration plan that included fast tracking or amnesty for the present 12 million illegals.

Reports I saw yesterday on both FOX and CNN said congress was being inundated by e-mail and phone calls telling the elected worms that we didn't want this plan. Regardless of how the American populace votes in 2008, this was America throwing it's weight at congress to stop unpopular legislation. I hope it continues.

All the Democratic senators running for president voted for the shamnesty bill. I hope they choke on it.

First off congratulations to all including all the legal immigrants. I don't think this automatically loses their votes, they have as much to gain from things being done right as anybody else, often more. That goes for future legal immigrants as well no matter where they originate from.

Wolfwalker already made the point so I guess I'll just add the glaringly obvious; one does not have to be a conservative (socially or fiscally) to be a Republican. A GOP bound by conservative dogma would wither and die.

From across the pond (and without the BDS or getting blinded by Iraq) it looks like the last three US Presidents have effectively been centrists bent in different directions or at the very least started out that way. I believe the next one will follow suit and that removes Hillary Clinton from the lineup.

p.s. I can see and even sympathize with the allure of Obama as an african-american clean slate President promising a bright future even though I don't buy it at all, but I just don't get the support for Richardson which seems, to put it mildly, completely incompetent.

p.p.s. I can't be the only guy with previous marriages that find Fred's talent with women unnerving or downright scary ^_^

Forgot to sign again - sorry.

"we need to seal the Florida border so that New York liberals do not get past South Carolina."

It's much too late for that. South Florida is in effect a borough of New York City. On the other hand, most of the New Yorkers that moved down here decades ago are the more conservative ones (even the Democrats -- they're all old-style union/populist Democrats, not like the freakazoid stop-the-world-for-my-piles health-care-obsessed Sixties rejects* that have infiltrated the party today. Not that unionism and populism aren't commie pinko bullshit ideals, but at least they predate the Summer of Love.

*I have more insults where those come from but my fingers are tired.

I should have said "down there." I moved up to Central Florida from Miami eight years ago. Central Florida doesn't have as many New Yorkers; instead it seems to have a lot of displaced Midwesterners.

Rand, what the hell are these mythical binary "conservative" and "liberal" stereotypes anyway? I've never in reading the last few years of semi-incomprehenible vitriolic ramblings ever seen you define them.

While I agree with Rand that the Senate's tactics on this bill were sleazy, isn't that about par for the course? The more interesting question is how a bill so contrary to the interests of 98% of the American electorate could even reach the floor of the Senate. It makes you wonder what's next - a bill to replace all public libraries with taxpayer-funded cockfighting rings?

People have to realize how awful this bill was, unless your goal was the wholesale replacement of American society. Under the bill, anyone who could gin up a phone bill proving presence in the country before January 1, 2007, would receive a probationary but permanently renewable visa after giving the government 24 hours to find a reason not to grant the visa. The government can't even empty a trash can in 24 hours, let alone conduct a background check.

The probationary visa would be available to aggravated felons, tax cheats, deportation absconders and illiterates.

The ethnic lobbies and various anarchist types were drooling over the possibilities. This bill gave illegal immigrants everything shy of taxpayer-funded hot fudge sundaes, and I wouldn't be surprised if those were in there too somewhere.

I surely didn't like the attempt to ram the bill through without sufficient debate.

I am ambivalent about illegal immigration. I greatly sympathize with the desire to come where you can earn more money for your family, but the rule of law is vital, and there is an unlevel playing field in the sense that an American worker for whom an employer must do income tax withholding, pay social security, and pay Medicare must compete with an under-the-table cash paid worker.

I think K may have a point. The Wall Street Journal, which opponents would no doubt say favors big business and its desire for cheap labor, point ed out at one time that the proposition to deny services to illegals passed quite well in California. After that point, California was a lost cause for republicans. It suggests that whichever party gets blamed for stymieing immigration reform will do vary badly for quite a while. If that's a case, it's a shame--it seems that people who disagree could at least see that people who don't want amnesty never had anything against those here legally.

However, maybe it's mostly demographics--California was going the way it was going already and the prop (prop 48?) had little to do with it. All the republicans were already fleeing to Nevada and Idaho.