US: Senate Republicans kill plan to overhaul immigration law

Only 12 Republican senators backed the bill, which was strongly promoted by the Bush White House. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had appeared with Bush on Capitol Hill supporting the bill earlier this month, voted against it.

Following his reelection in 2004, Bush announced that he had "earned political capital" that he intended to "spend" in Washington. The demise of the immigration legislation and the turn by the predominant layer of the Senate’s Republican caucus against the White House position is the clearest confirmation that whatever capital Bush believed he had has been wiped out by the debacle over which his administration has presided in Iraq and the general shift by the American public to the left.

It signals the virtual impossibility of his lame-duck administration implementing any portion of its domestic agenda over the course of its remaining 18 months in office.