Sen. Reid's Clay Pigeon Meets An Untimely Death (illegals, regular, Kennedy)

[JD.]

Senator Reid's beloved clay pigeon has just been shot out of the sky. Reid counted on all of the amendments he cherry-picked for his clay pigeon tactic to fail, Sen Baucus' amendment however passed , shocking Reid and destroying the clay pigeon tactic. The following excerpt from Michelle Malkin :

...this is a big deal because Reid’s Clay Pigeon strategy relied on killing amendments so that he could continue his vice grip on the Senate floor. The result of this vote was the Baucus amendment remained alive and the clay pigeon strategy was temporarily derailed and thus Senators’ rights were restored. The remaining amendments in the clay pigeon will not be voted on now before the cloture vote. In all likelihood Reid will give up on the clay pigeon strategy and move that the next vote be on cloture tomorrow morning because he does not want this bill to be debated under regular Senate order. So now the Senate is moving fast towards a Thursday morning cloture vote (probably at 10:30) that is still a de facto vote for final passage of the amnesty bill...

Looks like we will know wether amnesty will pass tomorrow at 10:30 EST. Remember they need 60 votes to pass cloture, and only 50 to pass the bill. This will be the last time to stop the bill in the Senate, if enough senators say YEA to cloture (60 plus) it is a done deal and off to the House. However, we already have confirmed that we only need one more Senator to promise NO on cloture tomorrow to kill it, and with the long list of killed amendments, that shouldn't be hard to find...looks very likely this bill will die tomorrow, but stay vigilant.

[chele123]

Another round of faxing, emailing and calling! If it dies this time, will we be done with it? Or will they just keep forcing the vote until everyone is worn down to passing it?

[JD.]

If cloture fails tomorrow, it will be the LAST vote on Shamnesty, the bill will not only be dead but burned and its ashes sent into orbit. The great news is that even though cloture on Tuesday was passed 64 to 35, a lot of those Senators voted for cloture just to see if their amendments would get passed. Case in point: Jim Webb (D-VA) voted yes for cloture just to see if his amendment would pass, if it had he would have been much more open to supporting the bill, well today his amendment was torpedoed and was killed by a very wide margin. That was a bill killer for him and he will now be voting NO on cloture, other Senators who are now saying they will vote NO for cloture that voted YES for it on Tuesday: Domencici, Nelson, Bond, Burr, and many others (literally the NO's are just rollin in). This is because they feel that because their amendments did not pass, they can no longer support this craptastic bill. If you do the math and assume that all the hardliners who said NO on cloture on Tuesday don't switch (and they are not likely to), we already have enough Senators to kill the bill tomorrow. This is the best news we've had all week. We have every reason to be optimistic, I am actually looking forward to tomorrow.

To illustrate just how absurd the clay pigeon tactic used by Reid was today, Sen. Vitter and DeMint actually begged him to let them read the amendments that they had to vote on, that didn't happen.

[chele123]

It just rips me that they are playing a political chess game between themselves as if there aren't LIVES depending on the outcome. Jerks. Whatever works though; If enough of them have their panties in a wad that their amendment didn't get passed and vote NO I'll be a happy camper!

[JD.]

I agree. I also find it funny that they don't decide to vote against cloture because 80% of America wants it, but that their precious amendment (that would have been stripped away in committee according to Teddy Kennedy anyway) didn't get passed. Almost makes you want to shed a tear.

[M TYPE X]

The bill itself is dead, but the provisions can still be piecemeal'd one by one now, including various "benefits" for illegals.