Several days ago (November 14) “conservative” George Will wrote a column entitled “A Need for Compromise on Immigration.” Needless to say I was curious, being that compromise and immigration are two of my least favorite words, at least politically speaking.
“What – you are against immigration?” I can hear it now know. Yes I am, when that word is used the way politicians and pundits intend. We all know when a politician or analyst uses that word, they intentionally lump all immigration together, both legal and illegal, as if it were the same.
Compromise simply means that conservatives forgo their principles and values in order to pass crappy legislation.
Anyway – the gist of Will’s article is that he thinks it foolish and very difficult to attempt to pass a sweeping “comprehensive” immigration bill. There’s another word that makes my skin crawl – comprehensive. Will doesn’t argue that a comprehensive immigration bill is bad for America, but that it is just hard to pass as omnibus legislation.
He speaks of Mitch McConnell and McConnell’s hero, Sen. Henry Clay of Kentucky. Will compares the current difficulties in passage of the immigration bill to the “Compromise of 1850.″
Clay, dubbed the “Great Compromiser” failed to pass a comprehensive bill regarding slavery and the new Territories. So, as Will writes, in stepped Stephen Douglas, who successfully pushed the bill through by breaking it up to five manageable, individual pieces of legislation – some good for the North, like California entering the Union as a free state. Some benefiting the South, like the “Fugitive Slave Act.” At least it appeared to benefit the South.
In a few words, the act mandated that any federal official that didn’t arrest a fugitive slave would be made to pay a fine. It sounded great, but practically, difficult to enforce.
Will claims that unlike Senate majority leader Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, being a student of history, would know better than to attempt to force a comprehensive, omnibus immigration bill through.
Will posits that the historian McConnell would do what Douglas did and break up the bill.
Well George, in my opinion, that’s awfully presumptuous of you. You are assuming that McConnell would desire to do that and that Reid cares about the passage of the bill.
It’s my opinion that Harry Reid isn’t really worried about passage of an immigration bill this time around. He, like Obama, believes it’s a win for them either way. If it passes – great – millions of Democrat voters. If not, Democrats can beat the racism, immigrant hater drum in 2014. It’s not rocket science. It’s not hard to figure out the Democrat’s strategy.
As for McConnell; he may know history but he’s also just a slimy politician. He attempts to bully and threaten conservatives and the Tea Party and cows to the Democrats. And, as do most politicians in Washington, McConnell likes “comprehensive” bills. He’s not going to break them up.
Is Will really this blind, or is he, like other big government Republicans, just trying to convince us what a good and knowledgeable guy McConnell is?
These days, the only people willing to break up omnibus bills are conservatives. McConnell, Boehner and the other big government Republicans love huge sweeping legislation and wouldn’t dare break them up. It’s the only way to hide pork projects and giveaways to donors, thus securing adequate funding for their next election.
McConnell may know his history, but he sure hasn’t learned much from it.
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