Junior GOP senators defeat old guard

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The immigration-reform bill was supposed to be a defining moment for the old guard.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy could establish a new civil rights legacy to rival his brothers'; Sen. John McCain could show leadership and accomplishment by standing up to his party's base; and President Bush could secure a major domestic achievement for his second term.

Instead, the young guns — a small, wily group of junior Republican senators, most of them with less than a full term in the upper chamber — sent the bill into a tailspin, tying Democratic leaders into legislative knots and earning enough opposition among senators to block the Senate bill, culminating in yesterday's vote to kill the measure.

"Those of us who have been on the campaign trail in the last couple of years have had to talk about immigration reform and we've campaigned — [Sen. David] Vitter made campaign promises, I made campaign promises — we should not reward those who came here illegally with a path to citizenship," said Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican.

"These issues are fresh in our minds, and I think we also come in from the House with the knowledge that just going along isn't going to make anything happen, and we need to get out and fight for things. We're not beaten down yet, we're willing to fight for something," he said.

In the process they stood toe-to-toe with Mr. Bush and their own party's leaders and, buoyed by an outpouring of support from voters, prevailed.

"The president's major initiatives — No Child Left Behind started with Kennedy and a few Republicans; the prescription drug bill was Kennedy and a few Republicans. And so he was going back to his standby of Kennedy and a few Republicans," Mr. DeMint said. "The idea was to marginalize the conservatives. And we would have been railroaded, run over, completely flat, if the American people hadn't gotten so mad about this."

They went up against the full array of Senate tools, including blocking amendments, denying floor time and even a rarely used technique called the "clay pigeon" — named after the target in skeet shooting, because it allows its author to launch a complicated amendment and then split it into many different parts.

Mr. DeMint, Mr. Vitter of Louisiana and Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, all of them in the class of 2004, spent hours camped on the Senate floor protecting their rights, objecting to Democratic requests and generally making life difficult for Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat.

They were often joined by Sen. Elizabeth Dole, North Carolina Republican from the class of 2002, and Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican who completes his second term next year.