Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Paying the piper

Robert Stacy McCain makes this observation in an article on Front Page Magazine:

If defeated Republicans like Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine and Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee want to know why “Reagan Democrats” turned against them in 2006, they ought to think back to May 25.

That’s the day DeWine, Chafee and 21 other Republican senators voted yes for S. 2611, the “comprehensive” immigration reform bill. The message was loud and clear: The Republican Party did not give a damn about the American worker.

It was hardly surprising, then, that when Election Day rolled around, the American worker declared he did not give a damn about the Republican Party.

On May 25, a few brave souls tried to talk sense to the fanatics who rammed S. 2611 through the Senate. “We will never solve the problem of illegal immigration by rewarding those who break our laws,” said Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina .

The fanatics would not listen, as Texas Sen. John Cornyn observed.

"There seems to me to be a sense of surreality here, where people in the Senate just are not listening to what the American people are telling us," said Mr. Cornyn, another Republican who voted against the bill.

The results of the 2006 election have been interpreted many ways by different analysts since Nov. 7, but it could be argued that May 25 was the day the Republican Party doomed itself to defeat.

He is correct and it is deeply unfortunate that the working class "Reagan Democrats" forgot that it was only Republican control of the House that prevented the Senate's amnesty bill from becoming law. Now that the House is in the hands of pro-amnesty Democrats who will step up to save the nation?

The last November's elections could well turn out to be the most expensive temper tantrum in the history of the world.