Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sees the polls and wants Republicans to take the blame for killing a huge mess — this immigration bill — that Senator Kennedy cooked up (Senator McCain was too busy running for President to do kitchen police). Democrats introduced the menu, were whipping up a legislative side dish for all their patrons, and then they saw the faces:

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, said Tuesday that he would try to force an end to debate on a comprehensive immigration bill, leaving the fate of the legislation in question. Mr. Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said the Senate would vote Thursday on whether to limit debate, a process that requires 60 votes to succeed. He said he would pull the bill if he failed to get the necessary votes.

The majority leader said he wanted to complete work on the legislation this week, and he suggested that Republicans were trying to “stall this bill” with amendments. “When is enough enough?” he asked. “People are looking for excuses on the Republican side to kill this bill,” he said.

His announcement provoked an outcry from Republican supporters and opponents of the bill, who said the Senate needed more time.

Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the chief Republican architect of the bill, said “it would be a big mistake” to try to invoke cloture this week. A motion to cut off debate would be “an extreme act of bad faith,” Mr. Kyl said, and he asserted on Tuesday afternoon that “we are not anywhere near finishing this bill.”

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said, “The overwhelming majority of our conference would insist on having additional days to make sure that all of our important amendments have been given an opportunity to be considered.”

The feast was served and yuck the food sucks:

The Senate’s immigration bill will only reduce illegal immigration by about 25 percent a year, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report, Stephen Dinan will report Tuesday in The Washington Times.

The bill’s new guest-worker program could lead to at least 500,000 more illegal immigrants within a decade, said the report from the CBO, which said in its official cost estimate that it assumes some future temporary workers will overstay their time in the plan, adding up to a half-million by 2017 and 1 million by 2027.

“We anticipate that many of those would remain in the United States illegally after their visas expire,” CBO said of the guest-worker program, which would allow 200,000 new workers a year to rotate into the country.

And in a blow to President Bush’s timetable, the CBO said the “triggers” — setting up the verification system, deploying 20,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents to duty and constructing hundreds of miles of fencing and vehicle barriers — won’t be met until 2010.

The restaurant is emptying fast so Reid wants to close for the night and for Republicans to pay up.

Yet liberals and the open borders crowd need not worry. Chefs Reid and Nancy will have more bad selections for you to sample tommorrow [sic].

Bill Steigerwald’s question and answer interview of Mark Krikorian is worth a read. Here is a sample and a link:

Q: Let’s pretend it’s 2009 and we have a new president. What’s your solution to the immigration crisis?

A: The way this is often presented is that there are only two choices: One is deport 12 million people tomorrow, which we couldn’t do if we wanted to, and the other is amnesty, one way or another. In fact, those aren’t the options we face. The only thing that will actually work is the third way, which is attrition through enforcement — reducing the number of new illegals coming in and compelling a large number of illegals to give up and deport themselves because they can’t find a job, they can’t live a normal life here. What that does is reverse the trend. Instead of seeing the illegal population grow every year, we can — realistically — change things so that it starts declining every year. And after a few years, then we can talk about what we do. Do we live with it as a manageable nuisance — the smaller illegal population — or do we then maybe want to talk about legalizing some people? I don’t know. But that’s a debate we can have in the future. It’s not even an appropriate subject for discussion now.

I disagree with Mr. Krikorian on one major point. Let’s stop saying we can discuss parts of the problem later.

Let’s do now what we should have done in 2002, when there were “only” 9 million illegal immigrants: secure our borders immediately to stop the tide; treat the really good and decent illegal immigrants humanely and with respect; and round up the gang members, convicted criminals, and terrorists among them and deport them without appeal.

BTW: I know some who read this will ask: what about due process? Like enemy combatants, I think we owe illegal immigrants no ‘due process’ 14th Amendment protections.