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Thursday, June 28, 2007
More Post Mortem [Rich Lowry]
A key moment was last night when the Baucus amendment on REAL ID wasn't tabled. The Bargainers had been running through the clay pigeon, tabling amendments to get them out of the way so they could get to the Graham-Kyl-Martinez "apprehend and deport" amendment. Then, the plan was, that amendment wouldn't be tabled, signaling that it would pass and giving some cat-nip to on-the-fence Republicans to vote for cloture. But Baucus wasn't tabled, stopping the process before it got to Lindsey "Deportation" Graham's creation. That helped blow away a big piece of the political strategy of the Bargainers.
A few shrewd conservatives had seen the potential here and voted against tabling Baucuseven though they didn't support the amendmentbecause they knew it would throw a monkey wrench in the process. When Baucus wasn't tabled because of those surprise conservative votes, a desperate Reid moved to vote on it right away to try to get it out of the way. But he couldn't because he couldn't get unanimous consent from opponents of the bill. Procedurally, he had been check-mated; politically, the cover of the Graham-Kyl-Martinez amendment wouldn't be available; and it was downhill from there.
06/28 05:29 PM
