Beating Back Amnesty Bill Will Be Great for Conservative Movement

June 7, 2007




BEGIN TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: Here's what happened last night on the immigration bill, as written up by the AP and then I will give you the correct analysis of this. "A fragile compromise that would legalize millions of unlawful immigrants risks coming unraveled after the Senate voted early Thursday to place a five-year limit on a program meant to provide American employers with 200,000 temporary foreign workers annually. The 49-48 vote came two weeks after the Senate, also by a one-vote margin, rejected the same amendment by Senator Dorgan.

The North Dakota Democrat says immigrants take many jobs Americans could fill." Now, why did they bring this back? Why in the world did they bring the Dorgan amendment back? This is Dingy Harry's decision to do this. Now, I told you yesterday and I've been telling you all week, it looks like Dingy Harry wants to kill the bill. We started speculating why would Dingy Harry want to kill the bill? I'm going to tell you what I think is going on here, but I don't want it to change your attitude.

As far as we're concerned, the bill is not dead yet. I'm just analyzing this for you up to now. If he allowed a second vote on the Dorgan amendment, that is a sign that he doesn't want the bill to pass. One of the reasons could be it's blame the Republicans time, since the Republicans are the ones that have torn themselves up over this for a month. Politically can they pull it off? I don't know, because this was a Democrat amendment.

Byron Dorgan is a Democrat, from North Dakota. So if the Democrats are going to say, "Well, we think the bill is not going to pass anyway." As people learn the details of this, more and more people aren't liking it, and even though it's a Ted Kennedy White House bill, Dingy Harry would love nothing more than to shelve the blame on all this to the Republicans.

If he can get away with it, it would be smart politics, and of course bad, bad result for the White House in a political sense, but good for all of us.

Now, I have a friend who talked with a reporter from a Hispanic publication, and this reporter spoke with Rahm Emanuel off the record after the election, asking him why immigration wasn't one of his priorities. Rahm Emanuel said, "After the elections back in November, we don't want to do immigration, let the White House do that. It's just as difficult an issue for our coalition as it is for the Republicans. We're avoiding it. We're refusing even to discuss it. Let the Republicans duke it out."

Now, even though Kennedy brought the bill forward, it has caused myriad political problems for the Republicans. Actually, many good things have happened. It has, for the first time, doomed McCain. We can thank the White House for that.

I don't think they intended to doom McCain, but President Bush and his steadfast support of the bill has doomed McCain. It's starting to show up in polls. It also split the Republican Party, which some people think is a bad thing. I don't. I think that it's going to create a vacuum that a genuine conservative could move in and fill. So that's why I say you can always find something good in everything that happens that mostly you think is bad.

Also yesterday, in the House they had a judiciary hearing, and the black caucus members visibly broke with their Latino colleagues yesterday. Sheila Jackson Lee, Maxine Waters berated representatives from the restaurant industry and agriculture and even from Google because apparently the black caucus members got an earful from constituents back home over the recess. Their constituents are saying they are taking jobs that we want, these illegals. Typical quotes that came out of this hearing yesterday. "What have any of you done to hire Americans first, to avoid worker displacement?" This is what the black caucus was asking representatives in the restaurant industry and agriculture and so forth. "My son goes to Morehouse College, have you gone there recruiting or are you just looking for illegals? Have you tried to employ urban black workers for agriculture jobs? What percentage of your employees are black Americans?" These are some of the questions. There was a pretty tight-knit coalition between the black caucus and the Latino caucus but the split yesterday in the House over this.


So the efforts of Dingy Harry, if this is what he's actually doing to blame this on the Republicans because they have been the ones that have torn themselves up over it, he's going to have a lot of help from the Drive-Bys because the Drive-Bys will spread Dingy Harry's spin on this. But we're going to be out there to counter that spin because this is a Democrat bill, and that's what has everybody so upset.

Why is the president joining with Democrats again on a bill that is going to destroy the Republican Party? Now, they had a test vote today for cloture to stop the amendments, because the longer this goes on and the more amendments, the more fragile the "coalition," as they refer to it, becomes. The more details people learn, the harder it's going to be.

So Dingy Harry brings back the Dorgan amendment for a second time, after it failed. You bring something back and this time it passes? That's a sure sign that he wants this bill killed. So they had their cloture vote, and they failed to stop debate on it. They didn't get 60 votes; they got 33. They're saying it's on life support now. They're going to come back for another vote later in the day at some point, maybe tonight.

Now, all of this that I have told you sounds pretty right to me, as I said it, as most things I say do sound to me right. One caveat that I want to mention to all of you, and that's this: We have to pretend that it's not dead, because it isn't dead yet. We have to pretend in order to keep the emotion up, because we have to make sure this thing gets killed, and it isn't dead yet. The president, the White House, have split the party. The good news is he's doomed McCain out there, and the splitting of the party opens up a vacuum for a conservative. And, by the way, breaking with Bush is commonplace now, so the idea that Republicans are breaking away from Bush, the Drive-Bys, the Democrats say, "Oh, this is setting us up really well, Republicans falling apart." Just the exact opposite. It could help in 2008. So, I know a lot of you people are mad at President Bush on this, but we need to thank him because he's taken McCain out of this, apparently, at least for now.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let's move on to immigration news here, ladies and gentlemen. "Presidential politics and partisan resentments reached a boil in the Senate Wednesday night, as a heated exchange between Sens. Barack Obama and Lindsey Graham[nesty] erupted on the chamber floor and continued in a nearby corridor."

Vice President Lindsey Grahamnesty was "disappointed" that Barack Obama was trying to amend the immigration bill. He thought it would undermine McCain's work. After all, the Republicans are walking the plank and blowing off their base on this.

Lindsey Grahamnesty was a little bit upset that Barack Obama had offered this amendment. It doesn't matter what the Amendment was. The amendment failed. By the way, Mrs. Clinton offered an amendment, too. I don't know what the amendment was, but it failed. I'm sitting here asking myself, "Here's the inevitable Democrat presidential nominee, the smartest woman in the world who is going to have all this power. She's is going to have this ability to make and shape the Democrat Party in her own image, however she wants it to look and act, and she couldn't get her amendment passed on the immigration bill?"

Hmm. I got to thinking, "Would that ever happen to Bill Clinton on something he really cared about? Would he allow this kind of embarrassment?"

Now, you haven't heard about this because the be Drive-Bys are not talking much about Hillary's failed amendment, and the only reason they're talking about Barack's failed amendment is because Lindsey Grahamnesty literally shouted him down on the floor of the Senate and followed him out of the chamber and starting berating the guy outside the Senate floor, and Obama didn't quite know what to make of this.

They have since put it all back together and smoked a peace pipe over this. "Obama [was] stunned and demanded time to respond. The notion that his amendment would gut the bill 'is simply disingenuous' he said. 'It's engaging in the sort of histrionics that is entirely inappropriate for this debate.' ... In separate interviews later, [Vice President Grahamnesty] said, 'I wanted to go outside' to impress upon Obama the danger he was causing for a bill he supposedly supported. 'I said, "I'm very disappointed in you,"' he said, adding: 'I like the fellow.'"

Well, they always say that. They said it was just a little misunderstanding. It's all been put back together, "too much coffee and people being on the floor too long," Obama said, led to the eruption here between Barack Obama and Senator Grahamnesty.

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