How do we know the Senate's attempt to pass a jumble of border-enforcement and foreign-aid measures is doomed to failure? Even the Senate Republicans who backed the bill this weekend have begun hitting reverse. After pushing hard for the deal this weekend, Mitch McConnell himself has reassessed the situation and has decided to back away (via Memeorandum):

Here’s MITCH McCONNELL speaking about the $188 billion national security supplemental on the Senate floor yesterday afternoon: “It’s now time for Congress to take action.”

And here’s the Senate minority leader speaking to fellow Republicans in a closed-door meeting last night, per Burgess Everett and Ursula Perano, amid a fierce revolt over the border security negotiations he had cultivated for months: “McConnell told Republicans that if they didn’t like the direction that the bill is going, they should vote against moving forward this week.”

The abrupt about-face from McConnell tells you everything you need to know about how the bill’s debut went yesterday, when a morning trickle of GOP opponents turned into a flood — 22, by the WSJ’s count — by the time the minority leader faced his conference in their 90-minute meeting and he bowed to political reality.

And it got worse this morning, when a member of McConnell's own leadership team came out to oppose the bill:

Sen. Barrasso, the number three Republican, comes out against the immigration legislation. "...I cannot vote for this bill. Americans will turn to the upcoming election to end the border crisis.” (Which is 272 days away.)

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) February 6, 2024

Barasso wasn't the first member of McConnell's team to signal a defection, either. Yesterday afternoon, John Cornyn told reporters that he had developed "serious concerns" about the bill -- after spending several weeks cheerleading the negotiations:

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn says he has “serious concerns” about the border security bill the Senate is expected to vote on this week — a significant shift for the Texas Republican who was one of the most vocal supporters of the monthslong negotiations that led to the package. ...

Cornyn, a top Senate Republican who in the past has been a key player in long-shot legislation on guns and more, spent months cheering the negotiations and urging his GOP colleagues to capitalize on a “point of maximum leverage” as Democrats were willing to deliver tougher border policies in exchange for aid to Ukraine. 

But after seeing the result of those negotiations, Cornyn appears to be backing off.

Somehow, I doubt that it's the negotiation results that has Cornyn spooked. After all, Cornyn saw those results a few days ago. It's the reaction from the rank and file and from outraged conservatives that has Cornyn rethinking his position. 

And well he might reconsider. What did Republicans get out of this negotiation anyway? All they got was mealy-mouthed limits on illegal entries at 5,000 a day, a ridiculously high threshold in terms of national security. How many terrorists need to sneak through the border to create a 9/11 or an October 7? Al-Qaeda accomplished 9/11 with just 19 terrorists and some box cutters. The idea that we should be satisfied with dialing down the flood from a tsunami to a rogue wave is ludicrous, especially in light of the 9/11 Commission's warnings about actually securing our borders. 

To get a perspective on just how badly this has collapsed under Biden, Phil Kerpen provided this handy chart today:

And here is the monthly releases into the US chart again but with a clearer title. pic.twitter.com/Ep4WFwblet

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) February 6, 2024

Allowing 5,000 a day would have 150,000 a month coming across the border. That would be second-worst in this series. 

David Harsanyi highlights some of the other lowlights of the bill today:

Most of the provisions in the bill are so loophole-riddled they are worse than irrelevant. One provision allows administration officers to grant asylum without any oversight from judges, who (at least, theoretically) use a set of criteria to adjudicate these cases. “Asylum” might have been stripped of any real meaning, as well, but it’s a mystery why James Lankford wants to hand Alejandro Mayorkas more autonomy on this front. Or any front. ...

Meanwhile, Democrats are acting as if they’ve made some giant, historic concession even deigning to address the crisis. But where is the compromise? They’ve rigged the bill, making it so malleable that Biden can basically interpret and implement its provisions in any fashion he chooses. 

That's the real problem on the border -- a refusal to execute the laws already in place. Adding more discretion to executive-branch action makes the situation even worse. 

In fact, that's so obvious as to call into question the sanity of the GOP's negotiators. Biden doesn't need new laws to enforce border security; he needs to properly execute the laws already in place. And at this moment, Biden's refusal to do so is costing him support from urban cores and working classes who are getting overrun and displaced by the flood of illegal immigrants he's enabled. Why give him even more discretion to do nothing? And why set up a bill that was doomed to failure and let Biden off the hook politically in the end for its collapse?

Are these Senate Republicans that inexperienced? Or just incompetent?

Make no mistake about that, either. The collapse of this bill means that the issue is now dead in this Congress, and Democrats and the media are already salivating at the prospect of blaming "ultra-MAGA" Republicans:

“I’m coming to the notion that everything is dead,” said the Dem lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to render the frank judgment. “All of it.”

If you want to know how the mainstream media will cover it, look no further than this headline from HuffPost: "In Huge Reversal, GOP Poised To Kill The Border-Ukraine Package It Demanded." That's just true enough to pass muster, although it's still deceptive. The GOP demanded real border security and an end to the massive flood of illegal immigrants over the southern border. What it got was a bill that doesn't even firmly limit that flood, except at Biden's discretion -- which is already the case. And they will paint House Republicans who are still demanding an end to the border crisis as "extremists" for passing a bill that gets a lot closer to the goal. 

That's the corner into which Senate Republicans have painted their party. As Casey Stengel once observed about the 1962 Mets, "Can't anyone here play this game?"

Update: Cornyn now says he's a solid no:

John Cornyn tells us he’s a NO on moving ahead with the bill tomorrow

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 6, 2024

It's dead, Jim. 

Addendum: This brings me to how we can support free and independent voices and exercise such vigilance. Many of our readers have joined the fight as part of our VIP and VIP Gold membership, and they have been crucial to our operations as an independent platform and the ability to debate all of the issues honestly. 

Join us in the fight. Become a HotAir VIP member today and use promo code SAVEAMERICA to receive a 50% discount on your membership.