As they say, "Praise the Lord and pass the buttermilk!" In today's second, and 
most important, cloture vote to end debate on the so-called immigration reform bill, common sense prevailed and the final tally was 46-53....meaning only 46 voted FOR cloture...14 less than the 60 votes needed....and much, much less than the 64 votes it got in the first round that revived this bill on Tuesday.
From Fox News [3]:
Senate leaders began to see the writing on the wall as tallies for the necessary 60 votes on Thursday morning's crucial procedural vote had lost critical support.
Republican Sens. Pete Sessions of Alabama and Jim DeMint [4] of South Carolina remarked on the Senate floor that the sergeant-at-arms' office told them that the volume of calls leading up to the immigration vote was so high it had crashed the phone system, and no one was able to get through during morning debate. ...
...a FOX News tally of senators ahead of the vote revealed that at least four of the 64 senators who voted Tuesday to bring the bill back to the Senate were going to vote to curtail debate.
Another eight other senators who also voted to bring the bill back before the Senate now described themselves as leaning against the vote or undecided.
Opponents appeared to sense that victory was within grasp. DeMint said the whole debate demonstrated why Americans are feeling a "crisis of confidence" in their government.
"This immigration bill has become a war between the American people and their government. ... This vote today is really not about immigration, it's about whether we're going to listen to the American people," he said. ...
One Republican senator (among others I'm sure) took a practical approach to the bill in light of opposition from the GOP base...
...New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici once supported the bill. Up for re-election in 2008, he told FOX News that Republicans are "getting hammered here at home and for what? Something that doesn't even have the chance of becoming law? No. This bill is going down. ... Why are we having all these big amendments? They (supporters) don't even know what's in this bill. We learned it's not even enforceable. I just don't think I can support this bill."
It's amazing what a pending election, coupled with grassroots outrage can do.
Big, BIG thanks go out to Senator's DeMint, Sessions, Cornyn, Inhofe and others who stood strong in the face of pressure from the White House, the liberal media, Republican leadership, and general whiney arguments about "fairness", etc... The country and future generations owe a debt of gratitude.
The only probelm with winning battles like this one however, is that you have to win them over, and over, and over... The liberal forces of "progress" never stop. Granted, we'll likely not have to fight it again next year, given it's an election year, but mark it down, we'll be having this same fight again in 2009.
But, for now at least, some celebration is in order. Congrats to the conservative grassroots that made this win possible.
More: WaPo [5] - MSNBC [6] - Bluey [7] - Malkin [8] - Stop the ACLU [9] - Captain Ed [10]
UPDATE:
The WaPo [11] cries a river...
A flood of angry phone calls from reform opponents shut down the Capitol switchboard ahead of the vote, overwhelming the message of a small klatch of immigrant-rights demonstrators urging passage outside the Capitol. Latino lawmakers from the House flooded onto the Senate floor to encourage the Senate to keep the legislation alive and let the House have a turn. But it was not even close.
Opponents of the bill painted the fight as a battle between the people of the United States against a government that has grown insensitive to an illegal immigrant invasion that threatens the fabric of the nation. Proponents said the Senate had succumbed to the angry voices of hate, venom and racism.
