The 'Grand Bargain' Comes Undone
BARNES, FRED
The 'Grand Bargain' Comes Undone Where were the Democrats? by Fred Barnes Where was Barack Obama? The moment was perfect last week for the Illinois senator and champion of bipartisanship to step...
...Yet Reid voted for it, along with Obama...
...Not this time...
...But nothing can happen unless Reid calls up the bill again...
...As one of the "grand bargainers," if only briefly, Obama was tacitly obligated to support the compromise...
...The others are hard-core partisans...
...Graham said Obama's amendment would take the "bi" out of bipartisanship and kill the compromise...
...Obama voted with Reid on cloture, which failed, prompting the shutdown...
...The moment was perfect last week for the Illinois senator and champion of bipartisanship to step forward and help save the compromise immigration bill from a premature death...
...But Obama was not heard from...
...Reid will have a chance to revive the bill this week when McConnell, Kyl, and other Republicans present him with a reduced list of a dozen or so amendments...
...And Graham rose in furious disagreement on the Senate floor, all but calling Obama a phony with his sweet talk of bipartisanship...
...The amendment lost, 55 to 42...
...Obama wasn't alone...
...Republican backers of the bill said they were partly responsible for having allowed the amendment a second vote...
...Nevertheless, Obama proposed last week to put the new merit-based system for selecting immigrants on trial for five years, rather than make it permanent...
...It may be unfair to single out Obama for backing a so-called poison pill that would have weakened the proposed temporary worker program (by terminating it after five years...
...It passed, 49 to 48...
...Reid refused...
...Bush had little influence...
...A day later, with the deliberations on the bill in turmoil, Senate majority leader Harry Reid yanked it off the Senate floor...
...He has promised to stage a filibuster to block it...
...said Graham...
...Two Democratic presidential candidates—Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden—voted with him, as did Reid, Chuck Schumer, and Dick Durbin, Reid's colleagues in the Senate Democratic leadership...
...Why can't we work together...
...Where are the president's people helping us with these votes...
...But he managed to get two minor changes into the bill...
...Approval may depend on dropping both the Dorgan amendment and a successful amendment by Republican senator John Cornyn that angered Democrats...
...The fate of immigration reform is entirely in Reid's hands...
...The nays were one vote short...
...DeMint was its agent, and a clever and opportunistic one at that...
...You are trying to make America better...
...This struck at a critical part of the compromise for Republicans...
...When you are out on the campaign trail, you are trying to bring us all together...
...But Reid was the dark figure in the immigration drama...
...It would sunset the guest-worker program and was strongly backed by organized labor...
...But all they could do once the vote came was label it a poison pill, meaning that its passage would shatter the bill's delicate compromise and jeopardize its passage...
...Now he's a hero of the conservative movement...
...tion reform to Republicans: the senators who declined to limit debate, President Bush, the angry conservative base, and Republican senator Jim DeMint, who emerged as a leading opponent of the bill...
...Surely he knew better...
...Bipartisanship is music to the American people's ears...
...While stubbornly opposed to McConnell's demand to bring up more Republican amendments, Reid let a deal-breaking amendment by Senator Byron Dorgan be voted on twice...
...This is the president's bill," he declared...
...By switching, Obama would have substantiated his claim to be a politician eager to reach across the partisan aisle and end the bitter polarization in Washington...
...What made Obama's vote different was his hypocrisy...
...This is why we can't work together—because some people, when it comes to the tough decisions, back away...
...Only four senators had switched the other way, from aye to nay on the amendment...
...After halting consideration of the bill, he told two maudlin stories about illegal Hispanic immigrants he'd encountered in Nevada...
...A pro-reform senator said Democratic senator Ted Kennedy had been "dragging Reid along"—a reluctant Reid—on the immigration issue for weeks...
...Obama was a late addition to the group of senators who had met regularly for three months to draft the bill...
...At least Graham thought so...
...In truth, the Bush administration was invited to join the negotiating sessions at which an immigration compromise was reached—but days after the talks had begun...
...They'll ask for two or three extra days of debate, then a final vote...
...The press attributes the collapse of the "grand bargain" on immigraFred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard...
...Where are the president's men...
...It was the Dorgan amendment on which DeMint played a pivotal role...
...Until the immigration debate, DeMint had operated in Graham's shadow...
...Then he insisted he really wanted to pass the bill...
...The amendment was defeated, 48 to 49, before the Memorial Day congressional recess, and then was voted on again last week...
...All he needed to do was switch his vote to oppose an amendment whose passage was going to shatter the Senate coalition that negotiated the bill...
...Unlike his South Carolina colleague, Lindsey Graham, DeMint is dead set against the immigration reform bill...
...Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell did indeed ask that more Republican amendments be allowed, requiring several more days of debate...
...I have every desire to complete this legislation," Reid said...
...Bush, however, was scarcely a factor...
...Obama professes in speeches and his best-selling book, The Audacity of Hope, to rise above crass party interests...
...He had a funny way of showing it...
...By switching their votes on the Dorgan amendment, DeMint, Republican senators Jim Bunning, Elizabeth Dole, and Mike Enzi, and Democratic senator Bob Menendez tipped the balance...
...Reid astonished the senators who drafted the bill by blaming Bush for its demise...
...The bill was the bipartisan product of a dozen senators...
...The base...
Vol. 12 • June 2007 • No. 38
