Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Some Thoughts On The Amnesty Bill Defeat

I wanted to get my comments up here before the amnesty bill got too far out of the news and other things (like terror bombings) took the headlines.

I am still amazed about what we were able to pull off. This was a case of the people vs. the system and our system was reminded where it gets it's power.

Think about the difference between the protestors from the Right and Left. The lefties march in the streets, burn their bras, burn the flag, show of vulgar slogans and basically make a lot of noise. They are also largely ignored by anyone outside the drive-by media. They drone on and on and on under the auspices of "speaking truth to power", but in the end you have to wonder how they expect us to take them seriously.

The Righties on the other hand not only got results but did so without making fools of ourselves. We knew exactly what was wrong with the bill in question. We were very passionate about our position, but we didn't let our passion lead us down the road to ridiculous behavior.

As it stands now, the conservatives in this country are the most powerful constituents in the country. Forget Hollywood liberals, they have deep pockets but they have never pulled off anything close to what we just did. Our voice was heard loud and clear, and we didn't need George Clooney to be our spokesperson.

It still boggles me how there was so much support for this bill. I mean I'm not surprised that the President did what he did. That's part of why I voted for him, he will fight tooth and nail for what he believes. Despite his being the de facto face of conservatism, he still has a lot of big government in him. I remember back in 2000 when he was going after the nomination that I didn't like how he had sort of replaced big government liberalism with "compassionate conservatism". It was kind of like "I don't mind having the government getting bigger, as long as you know that we conservatives can make it bigger...better".

And today, war on terror and tax cuts aside, that is a prevailing influence in his policies. One that needs to be slapped down every now and then.

But the support from a large number of Republican senators who literally hadn't even read the entire bill was just astounding. Forgivable? Maybe. But it bespeaks a faith in the system and a power before principle attitude that is disturbing.

Oh yeah, another good thing that has come from the defeat of this bill: the vote was probably a death knell for the John McCain presidential run. He's slipping in the polls big time, he can't raise money, and he doesn't have the drive-bys to lean on anymore. Good riddance to that RINO.