What Have We Learned? Part II

...or

Not Happy, but not Betrayed

That was the title of today's entry at the Academy.

So the immigration bill has been pulled. For now. But its effects will continue for a long time, perhaps long enough to give the Democrats control of both the Congress and the White House. But we know things now that we should have known all along.

We have known for a long time that liberal groups have seen immigration reform as a way to gain voting rights for illegal aliens. Yes, yes, I know, they care. Self-interest informs altruism.

But brilliant as it is, that misses the forest for the trees. Also, it fails to note why it is that "comprehensive" immigration will come up again, probably in September. Michael Cherthoff told Bill O'Reilly on the Radio Factor that they would have at least 150 miles of fence built by then. Once the progress is in three figures, look for the comprehensive plan to resurface.

During the immigration blogstorm, we learned that the Kennedy-McCain-Bush triumvirate desperately want immigration patched up before the 2008 elections, for three different sets of reasons.

Senator Kennedy works hard to show that he's a good rich elitist, not a bad rich elitist. He wants to finish the destruction of the nation which he began with his 1964 Act, continuing through the 1986 Immigration Floodgate Opening Act, and to the present day in which he sees the opportunity to build a permanent Democrat majority with a coalition of rich hippies, the urban poor, and Hispanics.

Senator McCain sees compromise with Kennedy as a way to curry favor with the media. He wants to get things done, regardless of whether they are the right things or not. He'd like to be able to claim some kind of credit for fixing immigration. Above all, he wants the furor over immigration to be gone before the primaries start. McCain is a cratocrat who equates government action with success, and projects that to the rest of us.

And joining them in their folly, President Bush wants to fix immigration before he leaves office, even if it kills the coalition that elected him. Like McCain, he desperately wants to show that Republicans aren't the racists liberals believe they are. Rather than simply ignoring race, however, he actively pursues a policy based on it.

We know that the Republicans too want to court the illegal vote, and are willing to play the race card and question the sincerity of their opponents in order to get it. Afraid of the charge of racism themselves, they use it to attack those who should be their allies.

Maybe the politicians have learned that we want a secure border.

We learned that the Republican coalition of the idealists and the capitalists is very fragile, but the Democrats' kindergarten coalition will happily turn on itself if it looks like one special interest group is getting some shiny trinket the others aren't.

The big winner? Rudy. With his social liberal credentials, he won't need a coalition.

But at least this is one time that the phony charges of bigotry and racism didn't carry the day. Maybe we've finally gotten past automatically caving in when those charges are aimed at us.

(cross-posted from Redstate)

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