Well, as it turns out, Frist didn't have the backing from his own caucus for the immigration compromise yesterday...Lord, what a putz....

UPDATE (4/8): It now appears to have been Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid's fault for the scuttlement, not Frist's. From a partisan perspective, it may not be a bad idea to have an untrustworthy, unprincipled Machiavellian as your leader, but if you actually care about government being an instrument for good, we can do better than Reid.

So my apologies for calling Dr. Frist a putz, at least in this instance. Republican readers may not be so generous: being unable to pass anything, or passing only palliative measures, won't satisfy the nativists in their ranks, and will demoralize their base for November. If this sounds familiar, it's because it was the GOP strategy against Bill Clinton, circa 1994. Then, the issue was universal health care, which Clinton had to press forward because he had already outraged the base with NAFTA and Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Not getting a bill passed sounded a death knell to Democratic control of Congress, since it alerted the party base that the Democrats couldn't get anything done, even with comfortable majorities, while signalling to swing voters that Clinton, Foley, Rostenkowski, et al., were incompetent.

So not being able to pass any grand initiative should be a good thing for Democrats, no? Well, I think it's safe to say that there were Republican voters in 1994 who are dead today, because Congress didn't pass a healthcare bill. There were a lot of people who filed bankruptcy in the intervening years, unable to maintain a staggering health care burden, who probably wished Congress hadn't dicked around on the issue back when it was in the public forefront. If there's an opportunity to pass a good bill, then do it, no matter who gets the partisan credit in the end.