IImmigration Bill Suffering

The big news on Memeorandum and around the blogosphere is the immigration bill. The Illegals Washington Times lead story today is the tenuous situation in which the bill and its supporters find themselves.

The Senate immigration bill lost supporters yesterday and hangs on by a thread heading into this morning's showdown vote, after lawmakers voted down amendments making illegal aliens show roots to get legal status and cutting off their path to citizenship.

This morning's vote is on a parliamentary question about limiting debate, but it boils down to a vote to block the bill.

Just two days ago, 64 senators voted to revive the bill, with many saying they wanted to give the Senate a chance to improve the bill through amendments. But after a messy day in the chamber yesterday, with dozens of objections, arguments on the floor and five amendments defeated, at least a half-dozen senators said publicly or privately that their patience has run out.

"The way this has been handled, I'm not going to take a leap of faith," said Sen. Richard M. Burr, North Carolina Republican, who voted to advance the bill on Tuesday but said the way Democratic leaders ran the floor yesterday left no room to "take a bad bill and make it better."

While bringing the bill back was a bad move, I can understand how some Senators wanted to revisit the issue, but the poor management of the process (not that there was much of a process) and the poor content of the bill and its amendment process means that cloture on the bill is not likely to pass, effectively killing the bill again.

What is surprising is the failure of the Democrats to control their own party. With a slim majority, the Democrats should be able to deliver enough votes to get the bill close to cloture with Sens. McCain and the GOP needing only to deliver 10 or 11 votes. But according to teh Times:

Democratic leaders have said they can deliver about 40 votes for the bill and called on President Bush and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to deliver at least 20 votes. Democrats said if the bill fails, Mr. Bush will get the blame.

While President Bush deserves some of the blame for this bad bill, the failure to get it through the Senate will rest on Harry Reid's shoulders. With a caucus of 51 Senators, he can deliver only 40 votes? What kind of leadership is that? What on earth is Sen. Dick Durbin (the Assistant Majority Leader--read Majority Whip) doing? His job is to deliver votes.

It says a great deal when the bill and the process are so bad that even the majority can't get 80 percent of its caucus to support it.

Lots of people will be watching closely--check Michelle Malikin's site for regular updates.