Senate Defeats The Racist Right To Advance Immigration Reform Bill

The Senate has voted to advance the ‘Border Surge’ amendment today, and cleared the way for full passage of the immigration bill later this week.

The amendment passed with 13 Republican senators voting yes. The GOP yes votes included Sens. Ayotte, Chiesa, Corker, Flake, Graham, McCain, Collins, Heller, Hoeven, Kirk, Rubio, Wicker and Hatch.

Before the vote, Sen. Ted Cruz complained that the bill was too long and he couldn’t read it all, “Given only a weekend to review the language, we will now vote on whether to end a debate that never really began. To be clear – this is not a difficult vote. On process alone, we should all vote “no.” This was by design – the President, Harry Reid and the Gang of 8 preferred all along to ram through a “deal,” and not have a real debate – just like Obamacare. Worse, just like Obamacare, the “deal” involved lots of horse-trading and buying off of votes at the last minute – a display of everything that is wrong with Washington, and one of the things I specifically campaigned against.”

To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.

That’s about all the opponents of the bill could muster. Weak comparisons of the amendment to Obamacare, and a grave, paranoid warning that Republicans were being snookered into granting amnesty. In reality, the forces who are lined up against this bill on the Republican side are populated by the usual red state race baiters (Sen. Jeff Sessions), and 2016 grandstanders (Sens. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz), and people worried about their own 2014 reelection ( Sen. Mitch McConnell). Short of a filibuster, there is little that they can do to stop the bill.

The reality is that the opponents of this bill are making such a public spectacle out of their hatred of Hispanic immigrants that it may not matter what the final outcome is for the bill in the Senate, the damage may have already been done. Sane Republicans desperately want to be able to say that they passed an immigration bill, but the radicals in their party are tainting any benefit that they might have once gotten out of passage.

The Gang of Eight who crafted the bill even tried giving the security amendment a Republican sounding name. Border Surge sounds all hard ass and scary. Kind of like one of those things that Bush administration would have thought of. I suspect that since the Republicans refuse to actually read anything, they thought that if they could make it sound cool, maybe Republicans would bite.

Ah, but anti-literacy Republicans like Ted Cruz aren’t fooled that easily. They know homework when they see it, and they were going to have no part of it. The answer was always going to be no from them, because discriminating against Hispanics is good individual politics in the end.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association