The highly touted — and highly controversial — immigration reform bill failed in a key vote and now the question is: is the bill dead or on life support?
As of this writing, it isn’t formally, totally dead.
Yet.
Press reports certainly don’t sound optimistic. The Washington Post:
A tenuous compromise to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws collapsed tonight when senators from both parties refused to cut off debate and move to a final vote, handing the unlikely alliance of Democratic leaders and President Bush a setback on a major domestic priority.
The defeat came after months of painstaking negotiations and weeks of debate as a 45-50 procedural vote fell well short of the 60 needed to break the filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) then pulled the bill from the floor, while holding out hope that the Senate could resurrect the measure within weeks.
The problem: it’s more likely that those opposing the bill will gain momentum on this bill than those who favor it. Just watch the Presidential debates of the two parties and it’s notable that (a)the bill (mostly opposition to it) is a hugely passionate subject among Republicans and (b)the bill is one more subject to be discussed among Democrats.
The AP notes that if this fails it will be (one more) major defeat for President George Bush:
A broad immigration bill to legalize millions of people in the U.S. unlawfully suffered a stunning setback in the Senate Thursday, costing President Bush perhaps his best opportunity to win a top domestic priority.
The bipartisan compromise championed by the president failed a crucial test when it could not attract even a simple majority for an effort to speed its passage.
Intense public concern over immigration across the country conspired with high political stakes to produce a roiling debate on the issue. Ultimately, those forces overwhelmed a painstakingly forged liberal-to-conservative alliance that sought to insulate their compromise from partisanship.
Supporters could muster only 45 votes to limit debate and speed the bill to final passage, 15 short of what was needed on the procedural maneuver. Fifty senators voted against cutting off debate.
Most Republicans voted to block Democrats’ efforts to advance the measure.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who had made no secret of his distaste for parts of the bill, quickly pulled it from the floor and moved on to other business, leaving its future uncertain.
He insisted that the bill was not dead, but a crowded Senate calendar complicates its prospects.
Meanwhile, ABC suggests that if the bill dies it’ll be a defeat for bipartisanship — with the implication that it would be a victory for the politics of partisanship:
It was a defeat for the bipartisan group that had been working on the compromise for three months; the presidential campaign of one from their ranks, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and the unpopular President George W. Bush, not necessarily in that order.
The BBC has run a virtual obituary for the bill and for President Bush’s political clout. Part of it:
The bill would have tightened border controls, but given 12 million illegal immigrants already in the US a way to legal status and citizenship.
Illegal immigration, among voters’ top concerns, is set to be a key issue in the 2008 presidential election.
President George W Bush has made immigration reform one of his priorities and has previously said he wants to see new legislation in place by the end of the year.
The vote is a blow to Mr Bush’s chances of achieving comprehensive immigration reform before he leaves office.
But the BBC makes the point that the bill fostered bipartisanship in an important way:
In the end, many on both sides hated it:
The bipartisan bill had elements which were hard for both Democrats and Republicans to accept.
After two weeks of debate, the bill finally stalled late on Thursday, when only 45 senators voted in favour of bringing debate to an end and moving the bill to its final passage.
In reality, it’s highly unlikely that the bill will do better as time passes. The reason: the scramble for primary votes has begun in earnest in both parties and on the Republican side it now seems to almost be political suicide to be associated with the bill.
Michelle Malkin notes that Reid stressed that the bill as not a Democratic bill, but the President’s bill and writes:
As annoying as Reid’s refrain was, he is right: This was the president’s bill. This was the monstrous sham that President Bush tried to ram through the Senate with his pal Teddy Kennedy–subverting the committee process, attempting to cram it in before the Memorial Day holiday, rushing to limit debate, and then complaining about delays. This was the bill President Bush sent conservative-bashing bureaucrats like DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff to peddle on CNN. This was the bill President Bush championed while deriding critics as fearful bigots and running away from building the fence he promised to build.
If the White House thinks conservatives are going to forget whose bill this was and the tactics the White House used in its failed attempt to ram it through Congress, they better think again.
Malkin hails Republicans who stood up to the White House and adds:”I can’t let the night end without also noting the Democrats who defied Reid. Without their votes, shamnesty would be alive and thriving. Whatever their reasons, they chose the right side.”
Bottom line: serious immigration reform is likely to be dead for this session of Congress — and if something passes it will resemble be a kind of political zombie bill. If it only includes enforcement, the GOP will be anathema to Latino groups and organizations in 2008. An enforcement only bill will also likely face stiff opposition from those who wanted some form of amnesty.
But the biggest consequence of this is likely to be the continued crippling of George Bush in terms of clout with Congress and the continued distancing of Republicans from him. Will immigration be something the Democrats can use against the GOP in 2008? Or is it too much of a poison pill for even the Democrats to handle? Will the GOP gain by shoring up its base or suffer serious short and long-range political consequences because of vote defections elsewhere? Is the Hispanic vote something truly necessary for a party or overrated?
The answers will come later…
UPDATE: Be sure to read this MUST READ POST of original reporting by Right Wing News’ John Hawkins on how the bill “died.” It will be of interest to all sides in this debate (and also is illustrative of how weblogs can offer original information that goes beyond op-ed and round-up style posts).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.