Having just steamrolled the American public on health care, our
representatives who would be rulers may be about to turn their
attention to “comprehensive immigration reform.” That was the
message sent by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham
(R-SC) Sunday as they mugged for the cameras on Meet the
Press.
“We’re real close,” Schumer purred, suggesting he had come up
with a magic bullet to pass an amnesty everyone will love: “[W]e
have business and labor ready to sign on, we have all the
religious community — not just the liberals but the evangelicals
— we even have Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly saying positive
things about our proposal.” The lion shall lie down with the
lamb, MSNBC will lie down with Fox News.
All Schumer needs, he said, was one more Republican like Lindsey
Graham. John McCain is apparently otherwise occupied, perhaps by
his primary opponent former Congressman J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ).
Graham pledged to do his part, vowing, “I will continue to work
with Chuck on immigration.” But he downplayed their prospects for
success.
“If a moderate Democrat got a phone call from the president, he
wants you to come down to the White House and help him with
immigration now, most of them would jump out the window,” Graham
argued. “That’s just the truth.” Their “political capital,” as
George W. Bush might put it, has already been spent on health
care.
That would certainly seem to be the case. Amnesty failed when the
Republican-controlled House defied a president of their own party
and a bipartisan group of senators in 2006. A similar proposal
stalled after the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007. The
idea went nowhere at all in 2009, with Democrats in charge of all
the elected branches of the federal government.
Why would a controversial bill that has failed repeatedly
suddenly look attractive to congressional Democrats who’ve
already been made to walk the plank on health care? If
immigration will send red-state Democrats hurtling through the
windows this election year, Obamacare should already have had
them out on the ledge. That is especially true for Democrats who
promised their constituents everything from the public option to
the antiabortion Stupak Amendment, only to return home
empty-handed.
But the conventional wisdom was that Scott Brown’s election would
stick a fork in the Democrats’ health care plans. The logic was
that if they couldn’t hold onto Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat by
running on reform in Massachusetts, what hope was there for
dozens of congressional Democrats who won in swing districts in
2006 and 2008? As Brown took office, all signs in Washington
pointed to Democratic retreat and retrenchment.
Instead of reversing course, the Democratic leadership cried full
speed ahead. They could afford to lose congressional seats, they
reasoned, but not an opportunity to reshape one-sixth of the
American economy. Moreover, they believed that if they failed the
electorate would punish them anyway for not getting anything
done. So Barack Obama’s party used its big majorities to muscle a
health care bill into law.
On immigration as opposed to health care, they can count on at
least token Republican support. Ditto cap and trade, where eight
House Republicans defected to help pass the Waxman-Markey bill at
a minimal cost to industrial-state Democrats. Two of those
Republicans may be promoted to the Senate, where — you guessed
it — Lindsey Graham is already working to provide bipartisan
cover to a revivified cap-and-trade campaign.
How many risky votes can congressional Democrats afford to take?
Only three House Democrats voted against all three of the biggest
liberal policy initiatives of the Obama administration: the
stimulus package, cap and trade, and health care. Two of them
hail from the districts hardest to keep out of Republican hands;
the third is Rep. Gene Taylor (D-MS), who may be the last real
conservative Democrat in Congress.
If you think the party leadership will be afraid to take the
risk, think again. Hoosier Democratic bosses handpicked Rep. Brad
Ellsworth (D-IN) to run to succeed Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN)
precisely because he would have the freedom to be too
conservative for his party’s primary electorate and maybe just
moderate enough for Indiana. The national Democratic bigwigs
prodded Ellsworth to vote for one version of the health care bill
that contained the public option and then vote for another one
lacking an ironclad ban on abortion subsidies, both political
losers.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) himself has made an
already precarious re-election fight even tougher through his
role on health care. His is going to have to plead for another
term having jeopardized state budgets, imposed an individual
mandate, raised taxes, increased premiums, and gutted House
language guarding against taxpayer funding of abortion.
The only thing that can stop amnesty, cap and trade, a whole host
of unpopular policies in their tracks is a successful campaign to
convince congressional Democrats they are doing more to endanger
their standing with current voters than to create future
Democratic voters through the growth of government.
Who strikes more fear into the heart of a Democratic congressman
from a swing district? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, White House
chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, or that congressman’s own
constituents? So far, Rahm and Nancy are winning.
