Saturday, April 08, 2006

This guy is smart

Big Lizards has the immigration debate [or lack thereof] covered. He is smart and thoughtful and realistic.

I cannot, will not join in this Snoopy dance of glee at the complete inability of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate to come to agreement on a very fair and reasonable immigration compromise. Every single substantive objection on either side can be fixed. The fixes are not difficult to find. There is only one objection that is insurmountable: liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans appear have allied to force the bill to collapse.

One of those two groups is rationally pursuing its own self interest; it will actually benefit at the ballot box if the effort collapses completely. Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) is not in that group. The reality is that if this bill ends up collapsing, it will cause Republicans to lose seats in the House and Senate in November... which hurts conservatives in Congress a heck of a lot more than it hurts Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) or Harry Reid (D-Las Vegas).

It's unfathomable to me that men and women who belong to the world's most exclusive club, what it pleases them to call "the greatest deliberative body in the world," are congenitally incapable of deliberating. Instead they posture, the proclaim, they throw hysterical tantrums. They act more like the Shia in the Iraqi National Assembly than like grown-up adults who actually care about America. Goodbye, D.C., and hello Baghdad.


I could not agree more. Dafydd talks about the real life consequences of playing politics with this issue as well as taking on the whole issue of amnesty, which he says is bandied about by conservatives the same way "civil war" is used by liberals. It is nice to read someone thoughtful who tries to find solutions to the questions after all the ranting and raving.

read it all.

7 comments:

Rick Ballard said...

Terrye,

Here is the roll call on cloture wrt the immigration bill. Cloture requires 60 AYES, so it requires five Dems and all the Reps - or some other combination.

This is a math and politics puzzle so you have to take a close look at all the possible permutations and then think it over a bit. The great brothel on the Potomac is performing about as expected.

These guys make change for a $9 dollar bill by handing you 3 $3 dollar bills. Knitting and reading bios would give you far less angst - at least at the end you've got a muffler or the thought "once upon a time..."

Sausage making requires an iron stomach and the ability to not look closely at what's going through the grinder.

ex-democrat said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ex-democrat said...

terrye - he is,as his newest post demonstrates.
(and i'd say the answer to his question is decidedly 'yes')

Barry Dauphin said...

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. ~Winston Churchill

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. ~P.J. O'Rourke

Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time. ~Winston Churchill

If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the Constitution. (It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's statecraft.) Instead, read selected portions of the Washington telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with titles beginning with the word National. ~George Will

Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens - and then everybody disagrees. ~Boris Marshalov

A survey says that American workers work the first three hours every day just to pay their taxes. So that's why we can't get anything done in the morning: We're government workers. ~Jay Leno

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage. ~H.L. Mencken

Rick Ballard said...

"If elected, I promise to serve the people to the best of my ability"

"That is understood, sir, the question is 'To whom do you intend to serve them?'"

Unknown said...

david:

I think you are assuming that all the Republicans are on the same side. I am not so sure about that.

I am not just concerned about the issue of immigration, but also the resurgent Latin left which is having a comeback thanks to Chavez and high priced Venezualan oil. The more rhetoric we hear out of the right, the more propaganda it is for the leftists running for control of what passes for government in Mexico.

By allwing this bill to collapse the right and left have come together to milk this volatile situation because each extreme sees a political advantage here. Dafydd's point is that the left has more advantage. I think he is right about that.

Unknown said...

David:

I am not sure about that. I think a lot of Republicans want it all their way or no way at all. And of course, it will be fine and dandy with the Democrats if the Republican dominated Congress fails to pass any legislation.