Wednesday, June 13, 2007

The Thrill of Victory, The Agony of.....

For those of us unfortunate enough to drop by Fox News last week (June 7th to be specific) we were able to witness a positively giddy Sean Hannity celebrating the defeat of the Bush Kennedy Immigration Bill in the U.S. Senate.

Hannity took a lot of the credit personally for the failure of the bill, which died in the Senate when proponents were unable to cut off debate. The vote to end debate couldn't even muster a majority of Senators, let alone the 60 votes needed to bring the bill to a final vote. Senator Harry Reid reluctantly pulled the bill from the floor.

Sean Hannity was willing to share in the magnificent victory with the other supposed leaders of the ultra conservative "new media" of radio talk show hosts and bloggers. He praised Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham in particular for their leadership in arousing listeners to call their Senators over and often.

I've previously written in this journal about the ceaseless efforts of Michelle Malkin and the amazing zealotry of talk show and conservative icon G. Gordon Liddy in their efforts to mobilize the masses to apply pressure to the Senate.

The conservative wing of the American public was mobilize and energized to defeat the bill they believed gave "amnesty" to those who entered the country illegally. The called the Bush Kennedy Immigration Bill "Shamnesty!"

While I can appreciate the desire of conservatives (and all Americans) to have our laws obeyed and the sovereignty of our borders honored, the reality is that today our borders are a mess and are as porous as a sieve. And today there is no documentation of any illegal aliens. Employers ignore laws that cannot be enforced. We have a system that is out of control.

And all Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin and the other leaders of the "Shamnesty" movement have accomplished is to guarantee that there will be no improvements what-so-ever.

In fact, their faulty leadership on this issue assures that everything will quickly get much worse with no hope of any improvement.

This week President Bush, John Kyl, Ted Kennedy, John McCain and other, more rational, leaders are attempting to rebuild the fragile coalition and revive the bill. I only wish the conservative opposition would realize that this bill is a giant step in the right direction.

The only alternative is to wait until Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is President and then be force fed a liberal bill that will not have any of the conservative elements today's bill offers.

Sean Hannity may be the Pied Piper. But he is leading his conservative mice off the edge of a cliff.

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2 comments:

Commander Zaius said...

Would I be wrong to suggest that Hannity and his fellow boneheads would be guilty of cutting off their noses to spite their faces?
But I have to admit that I don't know exactly where I stand on the issue. I realize that many social and health services are being overwhelmed in the border states, and even here in SC. And the idea that many states give illegals in-state tuition as my wife and I struggle to plan for our kids college expenses honestly bugs the hell out of me. But the usual hard conservative idea of busing the millions of illegals out of the country is just a dark fantasy that would have to take on Nazi overtones to be implemented.
But Illegals provide valuable services to our economy and despite the fact that in many cases they are just pawns to big business. I just don't see poor Americans taking their place if they were magically transported south of the border.
At my old site I wrote an essay once pondering the idea of building a border wall while allowing guest worker status to those wanting to work in this country. I pretty much wrote that neither side in this issue would ever be happy and that both sides would have to give even though many aspects of a solution would be expensive and difficult to enact.

Bob Keller said...

beach bum, you are very wise, indeed.

This compromise is a genuine compromise: neither side is happy. Both had to give ground.

Guest workers are allowed. Productive immigrants (although they entered the country illegally) are giving a path to citizenship and a chance to contribute to society.

But the border is strengthened and a wall (ofen just electronic) is built is key areas.

Let's hope sanity takes hold in Congress. Don't hold your breath.