As I did in my column on the main site, Peter Brown emphasizes that the Senate immigration bill was defeated by a bipartisan coalition. I do think he overstates the degree of ideological diversity among the Democrats elected in 2006, however. They have mostly toed the party line but occasionally they have to put their political interests ahead of the leadership’s. Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.
A case could be made that the bill was an interesting test of Jim Webb’s independence. When he first voted for cloture, it looked like he was going to fail. But his amendment would have limited the scope of the amnesty and he did vote no on cloture the second time once his amendment had been defeated.
