May 5, 2006
Immigration, Continued Posted by John Steele Gordon at 10:30 AM EST Mr. Zeitz made a flat, and wholly unsupported, statement: “It was a group of conservative Republicans who scuttled it [the immigration bill before the Senate last month], by insisting on last-minute amendments that would essentially destroy the compromise ironed out by leading members of both parties, most notably, John McCain and Edward Kennedy.”
In other words, in Mr. Zeitz’s opinion, the blame for the failure of the immigration bill lay wholly with “a group of conservative Republicans.”
Among the evidence I presented to show that that wasn’t true was a quote from The New York Times editorial on the subject saying that, with regard to the failure, “the Democrats’ motives were undoubtedly less than pristine.” Since The New York Times has probably the most liberal and fawningly Democratic editorial page of any major newspaper in the country—many of its editorials could appear on Democratic National Committee stationery and no one would doubt their coming from the DNC—it seemed to me that this was a strong point. Apparently so does Mr. Zeitz, as he follows the old lawyers’ adage: If both the law and the facts are against you, give your opponent hell.
The fact that the Times goes on to say that the “Democrats also had a lot to worry about” has absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand: whether the Democrats were blameless or blamable. (And whether the Democrats had in fact “a lot to worry about” is dubious at best. See below.) Yet Mr. Zeitz accuses me of a considerable intellectual sin: “What Mr. Gordon has done here is quote a source wildly out of context.” I did, of course, no such thing. Democratic worries and Democratic motives are two different things, and the point under discussion was motives, not worries.
Let me give an example of quoting “wildly out of context.” In his confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense, the then-president of General Motors, Charles E. Wilson, was asked, if it were necessary, could he make a decision that would be good for the United States, but bad for General Motors. He replied (I’m quoting from memory, but exactitude is not necessary here), “Yes, sir, I could. But I can’t imagine such a circumstance arising as I have always thought that what is good for the country is good for General Motors and vice versa.” Liberal Democrats took “vice versa” and turned it into the robber-baron sounding “What is good for General Motors is good for the country.”
Did I do anything remotely comparable? No. Did I in any way misconvey the thrust of what The New York Times had said regarding the motives of the Democrats? No. My only sin was to produce evidence that helps refute Mr. Zeitz’s ex cathedra argument. I’m sure in Mr. Zeitz’s world that is an intellectual sin indeed, for liberals will tolerate nearly anything except disagreement with their pronouncements by those who do not define themselves as liberals. In their strange, ever more self-referential (and self-reverential) world, they speak only the truth, and the peasants are expected gratefully to accept it.
Further, Mr. Zeitz dismisses my quotes from Senators McCain and Specter as merely partisan political statements and therefore of no probative value: “Should we be surprised that two Republican senators (one of them a probable candidate for his party’s presidential nomination; the other a moderate who has only a tenuous hold on his committee chairmanship due to conservative intraparty opposition) lay the blame for legislative gridlock with the Democrats?”
But a few posts ago he described Senator McCain as one of the “principled conservative Republicans like John McCain and Sam Brownback [who] can revive hopes for a sane immigration bill.” I guess Senator McCain is a man of principle when he is in agreement with Joshua Zeitz and a mere political hack when he is not.
Did the Democrats have a lot to worry about? Mr. Zeitz very conveniently ignores my quote from the Times news story regarding Senator Edward Kennedy: “Mr. Kennedy said they had the votes to defeat those proposals and protect the underlying bill.” Senator McCain said the same. Both wanted to go full steam ahead. They would hardly have been willing—nay, eager—to do so had there been a realistic possibility of the bill being amended to death.
So let’s see. Kennedy, a Democrat—a very liberal one of vast seniority, with great parliamentary expertise, and the leading Democratic senator on the bill—said flatly that the votes to stop any obnoxious amendments were there. Mr. Zeitz, by his own nose counting, would seem to agree with that: All the Democrats and half the Republicans equals absolute control of the legislation, even in the Senate.
But Harry Reid—shortly after declaring a compromise had been reached, shaking hands, patting backs, hail-fellow-well-metting all over television—the next morning is suddenly “worried,” despite the confident assurances of both the Democratic and Republican sponsors, and insists that the Republican leadership deliver the heads of half their caucus on a silver platter or he won’t let the bill come up for a vote. He offered the Republicans a deal they had to refuse and blamed the loss of the bill on the Republicans when they refused it.
Mr. Zeitz chooses to believe what he finds convenient to believe: that Senator Reid’s transparently phony explanation and blame-laying that not even the Washington Post and The New York Times could swallow is true.
I believe Senator Kennedy.
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