Matt Gunterman June 29th, 2007
So, we’re all digesting the fallout from yesterday’s failure of the compromise immigration reform bill in the Senate.
The early spin on Senator Mitch McConnell’s performance was that he “tiptoed through party minefield” on the issue and that he was using the debate in “distancing himself from Bush.”
However, now that the dust is settling, we’re starting to get a clearer picture of what’s really going on here: Mitch McConnell, facing a tough reelection bid and a poisoned political environment for conservatives, is paralyzed as a leader for his party.
In 2004 Republicans broke with tradition when they successfully targeted Senator Tom Daschle, then the Democratic leader of the body, in his reelection. This tradition had a real-world purpose, you see, because the business of the nation still has to be done, and the leaders of such a hyper-deliberative body as the Senate need the freedom to maneuver politically.
But Republicans could care less about such traditions that protect institutional integrity. They were out for political blood, and they defeated Daschle.
And now Mitch McConnell is reaping his rewards on this one. There’s no way he can go down in history as anything but a feckless man and anemic leader. Leaders of the Senate don’t build legacies on their masterful partisanship; it’s just not the nature of the body.
Read this excerpt below, and you’ll see the distinction between the leadership provided by Senator Trent Lott on this issue, who won reelection in 2006 and can maneuver quite freely thanks to it, and McConnell, who’s just shaking in his shoes about 2008.
Senate immigration bill fails; issue “is going to have to wait”
By Seattle Times news services
[...]
Republicans on both sides acknowledged the immigration fight had riven the GOP. Republican Senate aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, R-Miss., was furious with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., over the leader’s refusal to confront the bill’s most implacable opponents, who had virtually commandeered the Senate floor, blocking introduction of amendments, refusing to offer amendments of their own, then complaining that an unfair process was preventing them from improving the bill.
Lott told McConnell that Sens. Vitter, Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., were becoming the uncompromising faces of the Republican Party, a prospect that could set them back for years as the Latino vote grows in power.
McConnell went along with Reid’s novel attempt to end-run the triumvirate, collapsing 26 amendments into one giant “clay pigeon,” then splitting it into 26 distinct pieces to vote on. But when Vitter, DeMint and Sessions blasted Reid as unfair, McConnell stayed silent. Indeed, he virtually disappeared from the Senate floor, until he came to vote against the bill.
The vote tally was expected to come in on a knife’s edge, but when Alaska’s two fence-straddling Republicans, Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski, filed their votes together against ending debate, Republican support collapsed.
Ultimately, the GOP leadership split in half, with Lott and Republican Conference Chairman Kyl voting for the bill and McConnell and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas voting against.
“I do think this has created real divisions within the party, within our Senate caucus, within the Republican Party more generally,” DeMint said.
