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The Senate immigration reform bill yesterday died in the Senate when supporters failed to muster the 60 votes needed to end debate on the measure. The bill’s widely-reported demise on a 46-53 vote was portrayed by the media as a defeat for President Bush, who was unable to persuade more than 12 members of his own party to support it.

The story was the lead on CBS, and was reported prominently by the NBC and ABC, garnering a combined 11 and a half minutes of network tv coverage. The CBS Evening News reported, “The Senate killed the immigration overhaul. And members of the President’s own party deserted him.” A “new CBS News poll shows only 13% of Americans thought the Senate should pass the bill. 35% said no.” In a second story on the CBS Evening News, news analyst Douglas Brinkley was shown: “Failure of the immigration bill means that George Bush is beyond being a lame-duck President. He’s a dead-duck President.” NBC Nightly News reported, “It’s a big loss for President Bush, who pushed hard to revive this bill, only to see it lose big today.” In an analysis story on NBC Nightly News, Washington bureau chief Tim Russert said, “I think there’s a growing sense, a strong sense, that Washington is just broken.” Immigration reform is now “dead. Finito, mort. It is over, Brian, for this cycle legislatively.” ABC World News reported, “A grim President Bush today came before the cameras to bury the immigration reform bill, not to praise it.” President Bush: “A lot of us worked hard to see if we couldn’t find common ground. It didn’t work.”

Fox News Special Report reported, “Not only did the Senate immigration bill go down today, it was swamped. It sank so deep, it’s not likely to come back in this Congress or in this presidency.”

The Washington Times said it was “a devastating defeat for President Bush, who invested a tremendous amount of political capital into immigration reform.”

The AP reports the Senate “vote to drive a stake through the delicate compromise was a stinging setback for Bush - who had made reshaping immigration laws a centerpiece of his domestic agenda - engineered by members of his own party.” The New York Times notes Bush “placed telephone calls to lawmakers throughout the morning. But members of his party abandoned him in droves.”

The Washington Post reports in a front page story that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff “said the administration will continue trying to enforce existing immigration laws, building border fences and beefing up border patrols. But, he said, without the additional resources in the bill and its much more stringent system to verify the legality of job applicants, the flood of illegal immigration is not likely to recede.” Lou Dobbs said on his CNN program that Secretary Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez “said that they’re disappointed the Senate failed today to proceed with this legislation. Incredibly, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security declared that this legislation would have made it easier to enforce security at our borders and our immigration laws.”

McClatchy said “conservative grassroots organizations who denounced the bill as amnesty cheered its defeat while pro-immigrant advocates — and immigrants themselves — said the Senate’s failure means further hardship for millions of undocumented families.” The Los Angeles Times reports in a front page story that the “vote also revealed deep fissures within the GOP.”

The Wall Street Journal says that within “minutes of yesterday’s defeat in the Senate, Democrats were discussing how to salvage pieces of the immigration bill, including farm-labor provisions that could be attached to this summer’s farm bill.”

The Politico says a “small group of conservative senators succeeded in drawing out the debate for more than a month, allowing time for opponents to mobilize — or, in their view, get a close look at legislation that they ultimately rejected.” The Hill called the defeat a “dramatic political blow to the White House.”

USA Today says eleven senators “four Democrats and seven Republicans — who voted in favor of last year’s Senate immigration bill, which died in the House, voted against this year’s version. All of them are up for re-election in 2008.”

The Financial Times reports Senate Republicans “delivered a crushing political blow to” President Bush, and the defeat “exposed Mr Bush’s dwindling authority over his own party and increased the probability his troubled second term will end without a significant legislative achievement.”

The Washington Post reports in a front page story that President Bush “did something he almost never does: He admitted defeat.” USA Today reports Bush “on Thursday watched the breakdown of what seems destined to be his last major domestic initiative. Making the sting of defeat worse: The opposition was led by fellow Republicans.” The Los Angeles Times said in “a remarkable reversal for a president who once commanded nearly unflagging loyalty from lawmakers in his party, those most responsible for his setbacks are Republicans.”

Bush Approval At New Low In Fox Poll Fox News Special Report reported, “The latest Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll, meanwhile, finds President Bush at a new low point with the American people, showing a 31 percent approval rate. That is the lowest he has ever had in this poll. But Americans are handing out bad grades all around. Only 36 percent approve of the job Democrats are doing in Congress.”

From: http://www.usnews.com

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