Immigration: Mutually Assured Political Destruction

I have marvelled at Senate Majority Leader Reid's statement implying that the Immigration Bill would be law now, save for some recalcitrant Republicans. Reid said:

"It was President Bush and Republicans in Congress who lacked the backbone to stand up to the extreme right wing of their party, filibustered reform twice in two days, and put partisan politics ahead of border security and immigration reform," Reid said.

What that tells me is this: Democrats are even less interested in representing their constituency than Republicans.

Aversion to the immigration bill comes from people of all backgrounds and politcal stripes. Somehow, the Republicans are being tarred for not getting with the program. Won't this beat up the Republicans strategy backfire, though, when half of Americans agree that the bill is a ridiculous mish-mash and another quarter are cconfused? 72% of likely voters felt that border enforcement is very important and 16% more thought it is somewhat important. That's 88% of the voting public saying that enforcement is important. Hello? Political elites?

If the President and Congress could demonstrate seriousness, in the form of action, about border enforcement the amnesty issue would melt away. In fact, I would sing the praises of a sweeping amnesty and use the word Amnesty with pride, if border security became a fact instead of the current fiction.

Evidently, the point of this immigration fiasco was to put it to the opposition. In the same Fox article referenced above, commercials are already castigating Ried and the Democrat-controlled congress in Spanish for the failed bill. I hope everyone knows what they're doing. This immigration bomb hurling could bring on mutually assured political destruction. It may have already done so.