It may actually turn out that before this whole immigration thing is over that Marco Rubio, through no fault of his own and with the help of some of his fellow senators, may just end up dodging a rather sizable electoral bullet. At least as far as his 2016 presidential aspirations are concerned. You see, at the present time, Rubio, a fella whom I voted for, doesn’t believe the Gang of Eight immigration bill, which he authored, has enough votes to break a possible filibuster on the Senate floor. When asked on "Fox and Friends" Tuesday whether the bill has 60 "yes" votes, Rubio replied: "No, and I think even the Democrats would concede that."
"There’s a few reasons for it, but one of the things we’ve learned over the last few weeks through the open process that happened through the committee process and all the public input that we’ve gotten is how little confidence people have that the federal government will enforce the law," Rubio continued. You know, as much as I hate to admit this, Rubio seems to be more than just a little naïve. But regardless, the full Senate will now begin considering the legislation, which passed the Judiciary Committee last month on a 13-5 vote with the help of three Republicans, Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake and Orrin Hatch, starting next week.
Rubio, considered critical to the success or failure of immigration reform, is mulling a measure that would put Congress, rather than the Department of Homeland Security, in charge of drafting the border control strategy that is tied to the pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the United States. Personally I don't know what would be gained by such a measure, as it would really be nothing more than a matter of semantics. How, exactly, is Congress to be considered, by the American people, as being more trustworthy than the Department of Homeland Security? No offense here, to the good senator here, but that's just plain nuts! And he should know better.
But according to Rubio, "We don’t want to be back here in two years, in five years, 10 years dealing with another 5 or 10 million illegal immigrants." And he added, "And so that’s the key. And people don’t trust the Department of Homeland Security to do this job or to come up with a plan that will do the job." Look, something that I think he should be quite aware of is the fact that what people don't trust, at least people with a brain, is the government as a whole. We've been lied to and screwed over too many times to believe what anyone in government tells us. We're constantly being told nothing more than what it is they think we want to hear.
Rubio's fellow Gang member and a Democrat from New Jersey, Robert "I Like Underage Hookers" Menendez, has also said that the bill’s backers did not yet have 60 votes in its favor, but he was optimistic that they would get there. And 'Dingy Harry' Reid is apparently quite confident he has 60 votes to clear the bill. "Dingy' went so far as to say recently on a Nevada television show that at most he’ll only lose two or three of his fellow Democrats. But with four of the bill’s sponsors being Republicans, Reid also made the claim that it would be "pretty easy" to pick off enough GOP votes to be able to reach the necessary 60-vote threshold.
But now that old Frank Lautenberg has finally departed this world and moved on to that fiery repository for corrupt old liberals where he will no doubt get to spend an eternity hobnobbing with the likes of Teddy Kennedy, there are 54 Democrat votes in the Senate. Which means that six Republicans will now have to be willing to join with all of the Democrats in order to get this thing passed and moved onto the House. Which I suppose, taking into consideration some of those we have on our side, is not that far outside the realm of possibility. But I’ll tell ya, Rubio would be doing himself a huge favor if he were to remove this potential albatross from around his neck.
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