You can almost hear the tick..tick…tick. And it ain’t “60 Minutes.”
The clock is ticking on what some say will be the last chance at bipartisan immigration reform until after the election. And today is the day of a crucial vote:
The U.S. Senate heads for a make-or-break vote on Thursday on President George W. Bush’s plan to overhaul immigration laws after Senate leaders battled to fend off efforts by opponents to derail the bill.
The ultimate fate of the bill remained in doubt as the Senate prepared to decide on Thursday whether to bring debate to a close and move toward a final vote on the controversial legislation that would legalize millions of unlawful immigrants.
Supporters need 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to push the bill toward a final vote and they expect Thursday’s tally to be close.
The bill’s backers on Wednesday were able to kill a number of amendments they said would have undermined the fragile compromise crafted during months of negotiations by a group of Democrats and Republicans and the White House.
But they were unable to block a key amendment that would change worker identification requirements, casting doubt on the final outcome of the bill.
And, indeed, predictions on this are risky. The bill has been dead, then alive, then dead, then alive. News reports are see-sawing about its prospects.
In one sense, though, the outcome of the vote will be a measure of just how effective conservative talk radio actually is as a political activist tool. Yesterday yours truly drove about 7 hours roundtrip from San Diego to L.A. County. And during that time I listed to a variety of conservative and liberal talk show programs. Some liberal programs were not exactly enamored of the bill. And the conservative ones?
It’s clear that criticial comments about talk radio from both Senator Trent Lott and purported comments (flatly denied) quoted by a Republican Senator that supposedly came from Democratic California Senator Barbara Boxer and Senator Hillary Clinton have enraged many conservative talk show hosts and their loyal listeners. Talk radio hosts yesterday in several markets (local and syndicated shows) used some of their time to literally rally listeners to use phone, faxes and emails specifically named, targeted Senators to vote to scuttle the bill’s chances for survival.
By late afternoon, some hosts were predicting the bill could well go down to defeat (again).
Bush’s widely replayed defiant statement “I’ll see you at the bill signing” was bitterly or sarcastically repeated by several conservative talkers. And there talk about (NO JOKE) Sean Hannity actually giving a White House official a hard time in an an interview.
If the bill passes, this effort to defeat the fight will immediately shift to the House of Representatives. And if it in essence dies today, get ready for (quite accurate analyses) that will say that more than ever President George Bush is a political lame duck.
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.