McCain's Immigration Spatter

It's hard to stand near the immigration bill -- the bill Arlen Specter calls "the grand bargain," but most conservatives see as a deal with the devil -- without getting spattered by political offal. For example, I could have headlined this post:

McCain Favors Citizenship for Crooks;
Teams with Kennedy to Kill Measure

And it would be a defensible read on this a.m.'s Senate vote. Here's the pertinent play by play:

The Senate voted 51-46 to reject a proposal by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to bar criminals — including those ordered by judges to be deported — from gaining legal status. Democrats siphoned support from Cornyn's proposal by winning adoption, 66-32, of a rival version that would bar a more limited set of criminals, including certain gang members and sex offenders, from gaining legalization.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., alone among his party's presidential aspirants in backing the immigration measure, opposed Cornyn's bid and backed the Democratic alternative offered by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass. (AP)

Cornyn's amendment is the sort of tweak the bill needs to give it any credibility at all among the large group of Americans that are concerned about immigrant crime and safe borders but for reasons unknown to we plebeians in the shadow of Mt. Olympus, it didn't make sense to McCain and his Dem friends.

If it can't pass, how can we have hope for amendments that would strengthen border protections, protect us from diseased immigrants, keep the smart ones coming, and on and on, through the litany of amendments that are necessary to make a silk purse out of this pig's ear?

The bill did suffer quite a setback today, though, when an amendment by N.D. Dem Byron Dorgan passed, limiting guest worker programs to five years. That undercuts the spun glass support structure for the bill and represents, in Specter's opinion, "a tremendous problem, but it's correctable."

I think he's right -- it is correctable. In fact, I'd be surprised if anything stopped this bill from getting through pretty much intact because there are too many Dems in too much support of it, and just enough GOP Sens who are counting their big biz contributions and figuring they better push this monster through.

Welcome aboard, all you 12 million undocumented Americans.