Posted by
Charles Lewis on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 12:35:58 PM
by Charles Lewis
As more and more leaks out about President Bush's arm twisting session with GOP Senators opposed to Bush/Kennedy's "Border Betrayal Bill," (BBB, or 3B) a picture is emerging of an ugly affair involving both a high stakes shell game and political blackmail. First the shell game:
Roy Beck's super well informed NumbersUSA reports that the Senators were offered the opportunity to introduce a package of amendments to suit their tastes, in exchange for their pledge to vote for cloture next time. That's introduce, mind you, with no promise whatsoever in terms of the amendments' approval. The inevitable scenario, then, goes as follows:
- The amendments are voted down, as have been all the sensible ones of any consequence so far - from denying amnesty to those who have ignored previous deportation orders to denying it to terrorist gang members to banning sanctuary cities for future invaders (current ones won't need it, as the whole USA would be a sanctuary country for them) and on and on and on - in the liberal Democrat-controlled chamber.
- The Senators will then live up to their promise to vote to invoke cloture, helping the left garner the necessary 60 votes.
- Then these same Senators can pull the wool over their constituents' eyes by voting against the bill itself. This won't matter since - once their needed votes on cloture allow the bill itself to come to an up-or-down vote - they can go ahead and vote "nay," as, at that point, only 50 will be required for package.
It all works out great for the open borders traitors (and their "useful idiot" collaborators). The bill doesn't get watered down any, the American people get permanently screwed, and the Republican turncoats still get to say they voted against it.
And as for the blackmail:
According to G Gordon Liddy today, recalcitrant Senators were told to get the bill through, or be, in effect, excommunicated. Never, so the story goes, will the White House listen to them again, in terms of their pet projects or other legislative concerns. As members of (in "conservative" 3B supporter Fred Barnes's words in an interview on today's Liddy show) "a minority within a minority," they would become Beltway non-persons the rest of the term.
Here's my version of a "compromise" that the American people will support:
- Border security guaranteed - physical fence and all,
- Outlawing of all sanctuary cities, with prosecution of mayors and city councils that persist,
- Complete and utter break-up of terrorist, witness-mudering illegal alien gang MS-13 (and all other similar ones), and
- Pardon, with just compensation, of border protector political prisoners Ramos, Compean, Hernandez, Corbett, and Aleman, so that now-terrified border guardians can begin to actually guard the border
After a couple of years of enforcement of this policy, its efficacy can be evaluated. If it's worked completely, then we can begin cautiously discussing the doling out of a few 3B freebees to some of the better behaved border burglars (bbbb, or 4b).
Nothing short of the above stipulations makes any sense to me, or to any American with whom I've discussed the issue. But not so with the President and his henchmen. They prefer the shell-game-and-blackmail approach.
Can you say "hell-bent"?