Victory or Defeat

The headline was Senate hands Bush major defeat on Immigration.

I hear news reports on the radio with essentially the same headline.

I don't need to get into a discussion of the shenanigans in the Senate over this bad piece of legislation, but instead just find it rather interesting that its defeat was immediately laid at Bush's feet.

Sure, Bush supports and has done plenty of arm-twisting of the Republican senators to pass it, but it's hardly his bill. It's Kennedy's and McCain's. It's the only thing in recent memory that the Dems were able to agree with Bush about. The problem is that nobody else in the country agrees with either of them.

The characterization in the headlines of this as a major defeat for Bush is so misleading it's laughable. Sensational maybe, but dishonest.

It was killed because a number of senators in both parties received such overwhelmingly negative feedback from their constituents on this poorly conceived and politically motivated legislation that they voted against ending debate.

Those clueless senators, including both of Indiana's out-of-touch guys, Lugar and Bayh, deluded themselves into thinking that they could pass this turkey and their grassroots back home would quickly forget. I don't think so - everybody in Indiana has concluded that Lugar is old, lazy, and out of touch with his home state and needs to be retired. The problem is that he's got another 5 years before anybody has an opportunity to unseat him. That's 5 years he can either use to resurrect his image or bury himself.

Bayh's probably safer, because the fiercely partisan Dems will support him forever because he's attractive and almost always votes with his party leadership. So somebody would have a huge hill to climb to raise enough money to effectively take him on.

That's why I don't give much thought to the presidential race. The fact is that the candidates will be selected by those with enough money to buy them in the early primaries. By the time Indiana has our primary next summer, both parties will have already chosen their presidential candidate. The Dem candidate will be chosen by Soros, Trial Lawyers, and Labor Unions. The GOP candidate will be chosen by Big Business, Insurance, and Drug companies.

Because they provide the money to their favorite candidate. Soros seems to have already picked Hillary, so unless she screws up big time in the next 9 months, she's their candidate. The GOP money seems to like Giuliani, unless Romney can woo the big money or Fred Thompson gets them excited.

The winner will be elected by an ignorant population based on how they look and how they are portrayed by the media. Not on their position on any issues.

Chances of getting somebody who actually works for the rest of us? Approaching zero.

Update: To be fair, I jumped the gun on Bayh. He's voted with his party leadership so regularly I just assumed he would do so on this one. But he didn't - he actually helped sink the cloture on the Immigration bill. Gotta give him credit for being smarter than Indiana's senior senator.