Mark Shields: "This will be a Republican failure"

By: Lowell
Published On: 4/8/2006 11:32:14 AM

On the Jim Lehrer NewsHour last night, Mark Shields pretty much hit the nail on the head when it comes to the legislative fiasco on immigration we're witnessing in Congress right now.  After David Brooks (lamely) tried to blame the Democrats, who control neither House of Congress nor the White House, for failing to enact immigration reform legislation, Shields had this to say:

Well, first of all, Democrats have no reason to have any confidence in the word of the Republicans when it comes to conference.

[...]

Under this Republican Congress, Democrats have been systematically excluded from these conferences....

Very true. Why on earth should Democrats in Congress trust Republicans on anything right now, after 5 years of getting completely screwed over by a bunch of legislative bullies? In this case, why on earth should Democrats trust that the nasty, xenophobic, un-American House immigration bill wouldn't end up being railroaded through in conference?  Answer: they shouldn't, if they have any brains at all. Which, fortunately, they do - at least now and again.
Shields continued:

...I think the Democrats were concerned that there were enough Republicans in the Senate who are going to attach punitive features to it, which then would guarantee, when it went to conference, that a punitive bill would come out...adopt features to it which would be poison pills to the Democrats.

The bottom line, according to Shields and his Republican sparring partner, David Brooks, is that we won't have immigration reform "for another few years."

Who will voters blame fot his fiasco?  According to Shields:

...Bill Clinton's health bill, OK, failed. Democrats failed to pass it, Democratic Congress, Democratic president. Republicans didn't pay the price for it. It wasn't a congressional failure. It was a Democratic failure. This will be a Republican failure.

The bottom line here is that the Republicans control the entire government, and on an issue of huge national significance, they simply couldn't get the job done.  So why should we keep them in power?  Uh, uh, uh, uh...please let me know if you come up with a reason!

Comments



Why did the Republicans Fail? (Teddy - 4/8/2006 2:13:05 PM)
How etertaining to watch the vicious infighting and obdurate inmovable positions taken by opposing Republican factions. Ah, the irony of it all. Immigration was supposed to be THE wedge issue for the fall election, but it fractured the Republicans instead of their opponents. What has happened to the heretofore monolithic GOP?

It strikes me that the ship of the globalism-loving new corporate feudal elite ran aground on the shoals and reefs of the American nativist, NASCAR-loving Joe 6-pack, who suddenly awoke to the fact his job, his life-style, his comfort zone was being invaded by all those cheap-labor foreigners.

The chasm between the rural good guys and the big bank slick city elite has been in the Republican Party since its inception, but it has been papered over by the social issues, by religious fervor, by the Bush personality cult, and by left-over bigotry from when the Dixicrats turned their coats and joined the Republicans 30 or 40 years ago. 

It will be interesting to see how Karl Rove et all deal with the split today.



Right---and let me add a bit more to your argument (Hugo Estrada - 4/10/2006 12:07:17 AM)
Besides of the big bank elite vs. rural good guys, there are the strategists who desperately want those Latino voters to become Republican.


Another side of the story (D Flinchum - 4/8/2006 3:33:40 PM)
  DOBBS: [...] One, why does the Sensenbrenner legislation, and this is something I disagree with as well, make it a felony for an illegal alien (to be) in this country rather than a misdemeanor?
  SENSENBRENNER: I offered an amendment to reduce the felony penalty to a misdemeanor. And it was defeated because of an almost unanimous Democratic vote against it in the House. These are the same Democrats that are now criticizing the bill for making it a felony, but when they had the chance to reduce it to a misdemeanor, they voted the other way.

I have been following the immigration reform legislation fairly closely to the degree that anyone can. I assumed that this was (1) a "poison pill" to make the whole bill less likely to pass or (2) a smokescreen so that open borders Democrats could say that they voted for tough measures while voting against the bill overall. Maybe it was just politics?