The fight is won at the moment.  By no means do I believe it’s over.  But today is a good day for the United States of America!

Information from Roy Beck at Numbers USA:

You sent more than 750,000 faxes through NumbersUSA in May alone, and more than 100,000 faxes just since our Virtual Rally Conference Call with thousands of you Wednesday afternoon! And your tens of thousands of phone calls the last two weeks have created a firestorm that the majority of Senators simply didn’t want to face.

Tonight, 12 Senators from the Democratic side of the aisle joined us in opposing the amnesty and huge increase in foreign workers:

Baucus (D-Mont.)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-Calif.)
Byrd (D-WV)
Dorgan (D-ND)
* Landrieu (D-La.)
McCaskill (D-Mo.)
* Pryor (D-Ark.)
* Rockefeller(D-WV)
Sanders (I-Vt.)
Tester (D-Mont.)
Webb (D-Va.)

Interestingly, Landrieu, Pryor and Rockefeller are up for re-election next year.

McCaskill, Tester and Webb unseated incumbent Republicans last year while promising to oppose amnesties. They upheld their promises tonight.

Bingaman, Boxer and Sanders are the surprises here. We will be interested in learning more about how they happened to end up on our side when they generally are so bad on our issues.

Of course, Dorgan and Byrd have been two of our staunchest allies for some time.

In those states, you will want to give as much positive reinforcement as possible. Let’s hold onto these Senators for future votes.

Two major disappointments on the Democratic side were:

Nelson (D-Neb.)
Stabenow (D-Mich.)

Last year when they were running for re-election, they voted AGAINST the amnesty bill, surely sensing what most voters wanted them to do.

Their support FOR the amnesty tonight raises serious questions about the integrity of their re-election campaigns.

REDUCE REPUBLICAN AMNESTY SUPPORT

We had said that we had to limit Republican supporters of the Bush/Kennedy Comprehensive Amnesty bill to no more than 15, even though 27 of the sitting Republicans voted FOR cloture to allow last year’s amnesty to pass..

Thanks to your incredible pressure on these Republicans, only 7 of those 27 ended up voting for the amnesty cloture tonight:

THE SELLOUT SEVEN
* Graham (R-SC)
* Hagel (R-Neb.)
Lugar (R-Ind.)
Martinez (R-Fla.)
McCain (R-Ariz.)
Specter (R-Pa.)
Voinovich (R-Ohio)

Although the Republican President devoted huge amounts of time from his top officials to getting this amnesty passed, only these seven Republicans stood with Pres. Bush tonight.

I hope that those of you in those states will pour on a huge amount of criticism, even if you think these Senators are hopeless sentimentalists for open borders.

The really exciting news from tonight was the list of 19 Republicans who voted AGAINST cloture even though they voted for it on last year’s amnesty.

Some of these Senators had some pretty lousy votes on amendments the last two weeks, but in the end they did the right thing and voted to effectively kill the bill tonight:

SWITCHED FROM BAD TO GOOD
* Alexander (R-TN) [Lamar does not believe this bill was amnesty - he is running for re-election in 2008. He needs to be gone from the Senate]
Bennett (R-UT)
* Cochran (R-MS)
* Coleman (R-MN)
* Collins (R-ME)
* Cornyn (R-TX)
* Craig (R-ID)
* Domenici (R-NM)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lott (R-MS)
* McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
* Smith (R-OR)
Snowe (R-ME)
Stevens (R-AK)
* Warner (R-VA)

HOLD ANTI-AMNESTY REPUBLICANS FROM LAST YEAR

Perhaps the hardest was to hold on to all 19 Republicans who voted AGAINST cloture on last year’s amnesty and who are still in Congress.

Several of these had been strongly indicating their interest in supporting Pres. Bush’s and Sen. McCain’s amnesty efforts, despite being so strong against amnesty last year — and despite some of them running for re-election last year on a claim of being anti-amnesty.

Particularly rewarding tonight was to see Georgia’s two Senators and Arizona’s Sen. Kyl voting against the amnesty bill that they had championed after being part of closed-door negotiations that created it. We had told you in Georgia and Arizona that if you could turn these three back to the right path, we would have a chance to beat this bill.

VOTED AGAINST AMNESTY LAST YEAR & THIS YEAR
* Allard (R-CO)
Bond (R-MO)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
* Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Grassley (R-IA)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Roberts (R-KS)
* Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
* Sununu (R-NH)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)

In addition, the one new Republican Senator, Corker of Tennessee, lived up to his campaign promise to oppose amnesties.

Two Republican Senators who voted against last year’s amnesty weren’t available to vote tonight: Coburn (R-OK) and Enzi (R-Wyo.).

And Sen. Brownback (R-Kan.) — who supported amnesty last year but has backed away some from that stance as he runs for President — also missed the vote. [Brownback believes this bill is not amnesty and if not for his running for President I believe he would have voted for cloture. He is no better than McCain or President Bush on this issue.]

WHAT’S NEXT?

Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-Nev.) sounded mighty discouraged after losing the cloture vote 45-50 tonight. If we are lucky, he won’t try again this year to pass the Bush/Kennedy Comprehensive Amnesty Bill.

He had earlier promised to hold the Senators at work late into the night Friday and even into Saturday if needed to get S. 1348 passed.

But when he got only 45 of the 60 votes needed to stop debate and allow a final vote on the bill, he sent the Senators home for a long weekend and has set other issues for consideration next Monday.

There were lots of scary speeches after the vote tonight, with Senators talking about their insistence that the bill be brought up again in some other form. But it sounded like bluster.

Nonetheless, we will be vigilant and let you know if anything is on the horizon.

In the meantime, our best hope this year is that the Administration can be pushed to continue to increase enforcement while local governments do the same so that more and more illegal aliens leave the country on their own.

And there is a remote possibility that Congress might pass some smaller bills that strengthen enforcement.

DON’T LET THE AMNESTY DEMOCRATS OFF THE HOOK

We are going to have to watch this Senate, I do believe they will try to include some of the provisions of this bill in other bills by tucking them in nonrelated bills and thus slipping them by. Do not believe that the fight is over.

We need to continue to put pressure on Senators and Representatives.  ICE and the Department of Homeland Security needs to start to enforce the laws on the books now.  DHS needs to build the fence the Senate voted for in 2006. 

Other CAII news and a list of those from the Coalition Against Illegal Immigration who have worked to keep the pressure on with this latest attempt at giving amnesty to illegal aliens:

People’s Patriot

stikNstein

Commonsense America

The Violence Worker

My Country My View

Demediacratic Nation

Right Truth

Uncooperative Blogger

Georgia Crime Watch

JC Cordray

Blue Collar Muse

**This was a production of The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the above link to learn more. Afterwards, email stiknstein-at-gmail-dot-com and let us know at what level you would like to participate.

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