Allow me to "Barkerize" the following Jonathan Strong piece which appears on today's NRO:
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) waited patiently, holding up
the wall, while Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) held forth before the cameras,
taking question after question.
Rubio had a new take to offer the press on the Gang of
Eight’s bill to reform national immigration policy: Before, he had expressed
concern only about securing Republican votes. Now, Democrats, too, he said,
were revolting against the bill’s border-security provisions.
“What’s stymieing efforts in the Senate is not my
comments. What’s stymieing efforts in the Senate is that we don’t have the
votes to pass it because too many members on both sides of the aisle do not
believe it goes far enough on border security,” he said.
Minutes earlier, in the closed-door Republican Study
Committee meeting, Senator Ted Cruz (Texas) had offered a different take. “This
bill will sail through the Senate,” he told nearly one hundred assembled House
conservatives in a sweltering, packed room in the basement of the Capitol,
urging them emphatically to stop it in its tracks in the lower chamber.
* WHO TO BELIEVE - CRUZ OR RUBIO? ME? I BELIEVE CRUZ.
Back at the cameras, Rubio finished, leaving the
microphones for Sessions to give his response. But just as Sessions took the
stage, a horde of reporters deserted him to follow the other Gang of Eight
member leaving the meeting, Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ).
The charismatic Rubio and his immigration gang are
effortlessly driving the media coverage of the immigration bill, to the great
frustration of the bill’s opponents, who are struggling to draw attention to
what they consider the legislation’s deep and systemic flaws.
In past days, Rubio has said the bill doesn’t have enough
votes and that he might even vote against it, prompting a frenzy of horse-race
coverage that is drowning out most discussion about the substance of the bill.
Opponents are convinced that Rubio’s remarks are a sideshow calculated to
distract.
* I FEAR THIS IS TRUE...
“It is no coincidence” that Rubio’s remarks about the
bill’s not having enough votes were “made right after the leading GOP critics
of the bill penned a Dear Colleague Letter yesterday exhaustively detailing the
scores of crippling flaws pervasive throughout the bill,” said an aide to one
of the senators — Sessions, Cruz, Mike Lee (Utah) and Chuck Grassley (Iowa) —
who wrote the letter.
* AGAIN... I TRUST CRUZ... I TRUST MIKE LEE...
Even his fellow Gang members seem to agree that Rubio is
crying wolf. “The bill’s gonna pass. The question is how many Republicans can
we get. From my point of view, the goal’s half the conference. I think that’s
very achievable,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said Tuesday.
* HOW IRONIC THAT RUBIO REMINDS ME OF A YOUNG LINDSEY
GRAHAM... WHO OF COURSE BECAME THE LINDSEY GRAHAM I'VE COME TO LOATH AND DETEST.
I FEAR RUBIO IS MADE OF THE SAME CLOTH AS GRAHAM.
As the RSC meeting showed, the legislation faces a deeply
hostile House GOP.
* ONE WOULD HOPE! ONE WOULD PRAY! THE LEGISLATION IS A
DISASTER...!!!
The meeting began with a panel of lawmakers offering
short presentations. On the House side, Representatives Bob Goodlatte (VA),
Trey Gowdy (SC), Lamar Smith (TX), Michael McCaul (TX), and Raúl Labrador (ID)
spoke. Senators Cruz, Rubio, Flake, Lee, and Rand Paul (KY) represented the
Senate.
Several sources who were in the room described loud
applause when criticisms of the Senate bill were expressed.
When Rubio said that five Democrats may vote against the
bill, someone shouted exuberantly, “I hope they do!”
* DITTO!
The floor then opened up to questions from rank-and-file
lawmakers. Of the 15 or so lawmakers who rose to ask questions of the assembled
panel, none expressed support of the Senate bill.
Representative Louie Gohmert (Texas) asked “how,” given
the recent IRS scandal, “could we possibly trust this administration to enforce
the law?” — noting that under the Senate bill, legal status for illegal
immigrants comes before the border is enforced.
Those in the meeting were struck by how little Rubio
stuck up for his bill.
(*SIGH*)
There was “very little support for the Senate bill — even
from Rubio,” a senior GOP aide said.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
At one point, Rubio was asked why he became involved with
the Gang of Eight in the first place. He said he joined to move the bill to the
right, since the group would have passed a bill through the Senate whether or
not he was a part of it.
* UH-HUH...
(*SNICKER*)
Some in the meeting noted that if the bill would have
easily passed with or without Rubio, his recent protestations that it can’t
pass the Senate without fixes on border security didn’t carry much weight.
If anyone on the House side defended the Senate bill, it
was Representative Raúl Labrador, whom several people described as being
annoyed at all of the criticisms that were being hurled at Rubio and Flake. At
one point, Labrador argued that an “enforcement-only” bill could never pass the
Senate floor, something that Rubio and Flake echoed.
Lee responded passionately: “I do not know one single
senator, nor do I know one single representative who would say we don’t need to
bolster border security.” His point was not that Senate majority leader Harry
Reid (D-NV) would bring up such a bill, but that the GOP was right politically
to demand border security.
Having endured the storm, Rubio went back outside to talk
up amendments that will bolster the border-security provisions but without
changing the fundamental structure of the bill. It’s a gambit that could easily
work: The bill’s true future in the Senate is probably neither as dire as Rubio
describes it nor as guaranteed as Cruz might think.
Opponents and advocates estimate that 10 to 20 Republican
senators are on the fence. Politics, as much as policy, is driving their final
calculus. What they need isn’t always some specific change but rather, as one
top Republican described it, a “secret sauce” of political cover.
Will they get it? Next week will show.
* DISGUSTING...
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