DREAM politics

Tom Curry:

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The vote was a significant leading indicator for 2008 of the potency of illegal immigration as an election issue.

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Sen. Max Baucus of Montana — who is up for re-election next year — said the Dream Act was “huge, huge” as an issue on the minds of people in his state.

“People are very upset, they’re outraged; it’s like amnesty, it’s virtually the same” he said after casting his “no” vote.

Mail, phone calls, and e-mail on the issue pouring into his office were “off the wall,” Baucus said.

Most Montanans, he said, believed the bill would have given an unfair benefit to illegal immigrants.

Baucus’s freshman Democratic colleague from Montana Sen. Jon Tester also voted “no,” as did another freshman Democrat, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

Southern Democrats Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Robert Byrd of West Virginia all voted against the Dream Act.

Most analysts see Landrieu as the most endangered Senate Democrat up for re-election next year.

Pryor, too, is up for re-election in 2008.

Republican presidential contender Sen. John McCain of Arizona was absent for the vote, even though he’d been present for a vote just an hour earlier on the nomination of appeals court judge Leslie Southwick.

The bill would have allowed illegal immigrants, if they passed background checks and became permanent legal residents, to qualify for lower in-state tuition rates at state colleges and universities, a point cited by Sen. Kent Conrad, D- N.D, who voted “no.”

Conrad explained that from his constituents in North Dakota, “I was hearing, ‘wait a minute, this is more generous than what we’re doing for people who were born in this country.’ And it’s certainly commendable to want to give this kind of educational assistance to people. But how can you justify that when we don’t do it for people who were raised in our country?”

From North Dakotans, Conrad said, “What I hear is, ‘look, you’ve got to secure the border. That’s got to be priority number one.’”

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Durbin who pushed the legislation called this "hate speech." That is another problem for Democrats. Labeling people who support the rule of law as "haters" may work in some Democrat caucus rooms, but it will alienate voters. For some reason Democrats thought the Republicans had hurt themselves with their opposition to the comprehensive immigration reform bill, but when you get down tot he specifics it is the Democrats who come up short.