Fine, some conservatives think, let's cool our heels. Attitudes on immigration will change. Then we can take action. But this means waiting until Washington is ruled by Senate majority leader Jim DeMint, House speaker Tom Tancredo, and President Pat Buchanan. It means waiting forever.
Doing nothing in the face of an unacceptable status quo is wrong. And in any case, we'd more likely be seeing Senate minority leader Jim DeMint and House Minority Leader Tom Tancredo. They'd make a great stand on principle that would be great for fundraising letters, and good for chest-thumping speeches in front of "the base", but they would lose, and lose badly. We would be stuck with a clearly horrendous piece of legislation.
Jon Kyl did the honorable thing - and the right thing by the country. When he recognized that the majority did not support his views on the matter, he decided to become part of the solution and get as much of his principles reflected as was possible.
We've got an OK bill pending. It's nowhere near perfect. A better bill could have been passed and signed in 2006, but House Republicans took their ball and went home. It may not have been the sole cause of the 2006 midterm disaster, but it didn't help, and it was certainly not the salvation that was promised. Now, those who pushed this want to welsh on paying the bill for failure.
Tip of the hat to AJ-Strata.
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