As Katrina noted below, the DREAM Act amnesty should finally be voted on in the Senate tomorrow. One of the commenters on her post asked if there was a grid of yes and no votes, a la Rich’s grid on views of the tax deal among GOP presidential possibles. There isn’t a DREAM grid as far as I know, but the closest thing is Roy Beck’s post from earlier today listing the senators leaning the right way but needing encouragement and those leaning the wrong way but who can be moved. It helpfully includes telephone numbers for those who might want to politely relate their views to the members of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body™.
Mickey Kaus, from whom I stole the title of this posting, has a typically incisive analysis of the issue: “DREAM is all amnesty, no prevention. Maybe that’s because its backers care about amnesty but not prevention.” And he points to a way that a DREAM 2.0 might come up next year:
If DREAM fails today, then some liberal Republican can join with Democrats to hold hearings on what a Position 2 DREAM Act would look like. Krikorian has already sketched out some ideas. That would be a valuable negotiation to have. To get it, the DREAM Act bum’s rush needs to fail this weekend.
Right now, Mickey’s last sentence is the most important one.