I already posted this in Twitter — albeit constrained by the 140 character limit — so if you’ve already seen it, forgive me. Here in this venue, though, you have an opportunity to discuss it. So here it goes:

The Senate’s Comprehensive Immigration Reform measure is essentially an attempt to institutionalize, on a national scale, the ward politics of the Tammany Hall days. In this striving it mirrors ObamaCare, which has always been about expanding and securing federal statist control over newly-minted subjects who will be ruled outside of the reach of the ballot box by an administrative state erected and bolstered by both parties. The IRS and NRA scandals have both shown us where that can lead. And the failure of Congress to do anything substantive to punish or neuter those agencies or the people involved in running them, is more than merely suggestive: it is dispositive, in my view — the upshot being that elected officials may come and go but the power of the federal government cannot be restrained; and once you’ve been part of the elected fraternity, there will always be ways to capitalize on such a system, even if you are voted out of office.

We have what is essentially a one-party system with two actors playing warring factions in a kind of perverse, increasingly unbelievable (and utterly transparent) national theater. The House’s show votes on repealing ObamaCare are just that: they have no teeth because they have no chance to pass the Senate, so their purpose is to provide a fig leaf for Republicans who have joined in with a statist ruling class cabal. Any real attempts to trouble ObamaCare through continuing resolutions, etc., where the power of the purse can be brought to bear, have been shot down by House Republicans (who demonize not the Democrats but their obstreperous conservative / classical liberal base who refuse to “get their asses in line”).

And the Senate GOP’s willingness to pretend Corker/Hoeven fixes the security problem with the original Gang of 8 bill — knowing as they do, and as we all do, that this eleventh hour amendment was a product of Schumer and Menendez working closely with the White House, prepared well in advance to further the theater and given a Republican face to give this 1100 page monstrosity bi-partisan cover — shows that it, too, has adopted a statist posture, against the wishes of its constituencies.

Buried in this bill, as with Obamacare, are provisions that provide funding for community organizing groups to act as the agents of the legislation. They will will walk people through the rules and procedures and register them to vote. In ten-20 years, 46 million new citizens, almost all registered by Democrats and nurtured by leftwing groups, will represent an additional 12% or so of the population. And by the GAO’s own estimate, only 25% of illegal traffic will be stopped by this bill, meaning we’ll be revisiting this amnesty issue yet again down the road, with the same promises and the same failures.

Betsy McCaughey says that what’s being created here is a 5th branch of government run by activists in a move that will destroy a “fair” two party system. I believe we’re already there, but I take her point.

The truth is, and I’ve mentioned this before, the GOP’s impetus for supporting this legislation — in addition to mere pandering, crony capitalist impulses, and corporatism– is that it dilutes, demographically, the influence of the TEA Party, whom the establishment Republicans detest more so than they do statist Democrats. When everything moves left, the GOP figures it will find its niche on the right side of permanent statism, the technocratic efficient managers of big government statism. That way, they remain viable.

Pragmatism over principle allows for this. In fact, it is the very thing that encouraged it.

It’s uncomfortable for a lot of people to hear this, but plugging your ears to it and pretending we’re dealing with good men when we’re dealing with cynical, self-serving rulers who use pragmatism as an intellectual crutch isn’t collegial or noble. It’s harmful and complicit

Rush Limbaugh hoped Obama would fail in his attempts at fundamental transformation. He hasn’t. From the nationalization of the financial sector to student loans to parts of the auto industry to health care; from immigration reform to attacks on the first, second, fourth, fifth, ninth, tenth, and fourteenth amendments, followed soon by attacks on human exhalation, Obama and the left — aided by the statist establishment RINO and a SCOTUS helmed by a man worried more about appearances than law — has in fact laid the groundwork for a complete paradigm shift away from individual liberty and autonomy and representative federalist government republicanism toward the same failed centralized statist government that has everywhere historically promoted tyranny, be it hard or soft. And this is due largely to the failure of the GOP establishment to mount a defense, coupled with their attempts to sabotage those in their base who have risen up to throw roadblocks in the way of a smoothly-paved path to soft-socialism.

The fight isn’t over. But the fix most definitely is in. And I fear the way out will not through any reform of DC, but rather resistance to it from the state and local level.

Let’s wish ourselves well as we prepare for the last stand in defense of liberty.

And yes, I realize that was a bit more than a nutshell response. But sometimes I get carried away. Sue me.