Immigration Bill Post Mortem - Those in Favor

There's a whole spate of articles on the immigration bill up at Townhall, so let's see what they have to say, starting from articles that seem to be unhappy that that bill failed.

Robert Novak writes about Mitch McConnel's role in the breakdown, in his article.

I asked one of the few conservative Republican senators who stuck with President Bush on immigration to assess how Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell handled the issue. Asking not to be quoted by name, he replied: "If this were a war, Sen. McConnell should be relieved of command for dereliction of duty." Not only did the minority leader end up voting against an immigration bill that he said was better than the 2006 version that he supported, but he also abandoned his post, keeping off the floor during final stages of Senate debate.

Novak suggests that McConnell's inertia is just a symptom of the Party's malaise as a whole, and that makes sense. The party has less power, and a base that is riled up and expects more; it has to be frustrating for them just now.

Not that I mind Republicans being frustrated.

Michael Barone takes a more philosophical tack, asserting his support for a comprehensive bill, while acknowledging that the base certainly didn't seem keen on this comprehensive bill.

We have to start by recognizing why the voting public was strongly against the bill. "We have met the enemy, and he is us," the comic strip character Pogo said, and the enemy here is the us that have not enforced the law -- the executive and legislative branches, which have let the promise of the 1986 immigration law to become a dead letter and the voters who have not punished elected officials for doing so. The 1986 law purported to penalize employers who hired illegal immigrants. But because of the ease of obtaining forged identification documents, that has long been a dead letter. The 1986 law envisioned strict border security. But for too long the border remained a sieve.

He notes that it is unlikely that congress will address immigration for two or three years.

Next up, those who didn't like the bill celebrate.