By Joe Guzzardi
04/23/2010
Keeping up with the various daily Obamnesty status reports coming out of the Beltway has become impossible.
Hourly, or so it seems, the Hispanic lobby makes a new threat, illegal aliens march somewhere or another to issue their latest demands, the Chuck Schumer-Lindsey Graham tandem floats out a rumor that a new Senate bill is in the immediate offing, potential DREAM Act beneficiaries weep to a reporter in the Main Stream Media, resulting in an editorial plea for "comprehensive immigration reform".
But what’s significant is this: the mere prospect of amnesty has put the re-election of Harry Read, the most powerful Senate Democrat, in grave jeopardy.
Which sends a message to other Congressional Democrats that has plainly caused them to pause.
They know that, in the words of former Democratic Texas U.S. Representative Martin Frost — defeated because of his pro-immigration platform — amnesty is "toxic".
A pleasant surprise, which increases the likelihood of Reid’s November exit: the Las Vegas Review-Journal is on our side!
The mind boggles — a Main Stream Media ally!
In an outspoken 2009 editorial, Las Vegas Review-Journal publisher Sherman Frederick described Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as a "bully!"
What prompted Frederick’s (accurate) charge was an incident last August at a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
Reid joined the Chamber’s board members for a photo op. One of the last in line to shake hands with Reid was the Review-Journal’s Bob Brown, the advertising director. Brown has nothing to do with the Review-Journal’s news coverage or its opinion pages which have consistently criticized Reid.
Yet when Brown extended his hand to Reid in what should have been nothing but a glad-handing atmosphere, the senator said: "I hope you go out of business."
Reid’s boorish behavior prompted a Frederick editorial that included these paragraphs:
"This newspaper traces its roots to before Las Vegas was Las Vegas.
"We've seen cattle ranches give way to railroads. We chronicled the construction of Hoover Dam. We reported on the first day of legalized gambling. The first hospital. The first school. The first church. We survived the mob, Howard Hughes, the Great Depression, several recessions, two world wars, dozens of news competitors and any number of two-bit politicians who couldn’t stand scrutiny, much less criticism.
""We're still here doing what we do for the people of Las Vegas and Nevada. So, let me assure you, if we weathered all of that, we can damn sure outlast the bully threats of Sen. Harry Reid."
Fredrick’s final paragraphs about Reid:
"If he thinks he can push the state’s largest newspaper around by exacting some kind of economic punishment in retaliation for not seeing eye-to-eye with him on matters of politics, I can only imagine how he pressures businesses and individuals who don’t have the wherewithal of the Review-Journal.
"For the sake of all who live and work in Nevada, we can’t let this bully behavior pass without calling out Sen. Reid. If he'll try it with the Review-Journal, you can bet that he’s tried it with others. So today, we serve notice on Sen. Reid that this creepy tactic will not be tolerated.
"We won’t allow you to bully us. And if you try it with anyone else, count on going through us first.
"That’s a promise, not a threat. And it’s a promise to our readers, not to you, Sen. Reid." [Enough Is Enough, by Sherman Frederick, Las Vegas Review-Journal, August 9, 2010]
See Frederick’s YouTube account of the Reid-Brown incident here.
Rudeness is the least of Reid’s flaws.
Earlier this month Reid, while pandering shamelessly to a Las Vegas crowd of illegal aliens and the Treason Lobby group Reform Immigration for America, lied about the status of a possible Senate amnesty bill.
Deceptively, Reid claimed that the Senate would take up amnesty "this year," saying there were "no excuses" for not getting it done and claiming he had 56 supportive votes already in hand.
That prompted another scathing editorial from the Review-Journal.
Identifying amnesty as unpopular with Nevada voters as the "poisonous" health care bill, the Review-Journal summed up with this challenge to Reid:
"Sen. Reid’s arrogance can’t be underestimated. He doesn’t care about the polls that show public opposition to his agenda and wide disfavor with him, personally. He’s too busy enacting the decades-old dreams of the Democratic elite — and creating future dependent Democratic voters.
""But if Sen. Reid insists on publicly proclaiming that Americans really want to turn illegals into citizens, then why doesn’t he make his re-election race a referendum on amnesty? He can spend his millions of dollars on commercials touting his position on 'comprehensive immigration reform.'
"Let’s see how that plays out for him." [Reid for Amnesty, Opinion, Las Vegas Review-Journal, April 13, 2010]
As it unsurprisingly turned out, three days after his Las Vegas alien pep rally, Reid changed his tune. [Reid’s Liberal Amnesty Promise Makes It To Print — But His Reversal Only Makes It Online, by Clay Waters, Media Research Center.org, April 14, 2010]
The reason: Reid’s endangered Democratic colleagues (in other words, those up for November re-election) didn’t want Reid tainting them with his loose tongue. They pressured Reid to back off, insisting that they did not want to be included in what he considered to be sure "yea" votes.
Reid then sheepishly admitted: "We won’t get to immigration reform this work period."
A comprehensive analysis of the Senate Democrats proves that Reid lied all along about having 56 secure amnesty votes.
The three Democrats Reid excluded are West Virginia’s Robert Byrd, Nebraska’s Ben Nelson and North Dakota’s Byron Dorgan.
And the following eleven Democrats would have to have changed from "no" on amnesty in 2007 to "yea" on amnesty in 2010 despite a 10 percent unemployment rate: Arkansas' Mark Pryor, Indiana’s Evan Bayh; Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow, Missouri’s Claire McCaskill, Montana’s Max Baucus, and Jon Tester, New Mexico’s Jeff Bingaman, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders (Independent) and West Virginia’s Jay Rockefeller.
Finally, every new Democratic Senator added since 2007 would also have to fall in line. Specifically, they are: Alaska’s Mark Begich, Colorado’s Michael Bennet; Colorado’s Mark Udall, Delaware’s Ted Kaufman, Illinois' Roland Burris, New Hampshire’s, Jeanne Shaheen, New Mexico’s Tom Udall, New York’s Kirsten Gillibrand, Oregon’s Jeff Merkley and Virginia’s Mark Warner.
For Reid to have 56 votes, every combination of circumstances would have to fall in his favor, an unlikely scenario to say the least given the explosive uproar immigration legislation creates among constituents of both parties.
While Reid should have been campaigning on how to overcome Nevada’s record high 13.4 percent unemployment (nearly 200,000 unemployed) or its foreclosure rate which is 3.5 times the national average, he skulked through the state on a bus tour hoping against hope to find a core group of supporters that will help him win a fifth term.
The Review-Journal, which describes itself as "one of the longest-running scientific measures of Nevada attitudes," finds no middle ground on Harry Reid. About 38 percent of Nevadans like him but everyone else will vote ABH — Anybody But Harry.
That means a straight up victory for Reid is impossible. He needs November’s vote to split so many ways that his hard-core 38 percent becomes enough to squeak out a victory.
The Review-Journal’s Frederick thinks Reid could win. But he compares his chances to "a full-court buzzer beater in basketball." [Harry Reid Comes Home, by Sherman Frederick, Las Vegas Review-Journal, April 18, 2010]
Reid may well decide to bring an amnesty bill forward. I continue to maintain that he can’t get it together.
My further prediction: Reid’s amnesty advocacy will doom him in November.
He'll go down to defeat — in what will be one of the sweetest patriotic victories ever registered.
Joe Guzzardi is a California native who recently fled the state because of over-immigration, over-population and a rapidly deteriorating quality of life. He has moved to Pittsburgh, PA where the air is clean and the growth rate stable. A long-time instructor in English at the Lodi Adult School, Guzzardi has been writing a weekly column since 1988. It currently appears in the Lodi News-Sentinel.
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