Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) approval rating is taking a pounding in his home state as a result of his strong support for a bipartisan immigration reform bill, a new poll showed Friday.

Graham’s approval rating has sunk to 31 percent and he has a 40 percent disapproval rating, according to a poll released Friday by Atlanta-based InsiderAdvantage. The new poll points to Graham’s support for the Senate immigration bill, which includes a path to citizenship, as a likely reason for his apparent unpopularity.

The Hill

What happens to these people in Washington? Honestly, what happens to them, especially when they get into the Senate. Lindsey Graham was a rock star in the House, but now he seems to think that when he was elected to the Senate, he was crowned King of South Carolina.

Somebody credible better step up and primary this man because, I don’t care how “red” South Carolina is, we are going to lose this seat to a Democrat next year if he is our candidate again.

There is an absolutely fascinating blog post over at RedState that is a must read on the voting record of Fred! Thompson. It’s basic point is that in his time in the Senate, Thompson was the leading defender of federalism. That he did cast votes that angered some conservatives such as on tort reform but that his intellectual defense was consistently federalism. He viewed it as the first order of business in deliberations. Maybe he thought something was a good idea (take for example the Good Samaritan Act) but it simply was not the federal governments business.

Now for many of us in the conservative movement this is an incredibly exciting prospect of having a President who took federalism seriously. George W Bush has often tried to push conservative policy from the federal level but with absolutely no regard for federalism (No Child Left Behind, the premier example). The question simply is, does the public care. Or maybe put more accurately, can Fred! make the public care. We shall see, but all I know is I am a believer.

Redstate put up the list of Republican traitors to America:

Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Burr (R-NC)
Collins (R-ME)
Craig (R-ID)
Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stevens (R-AK)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)

Well I think we just saw what is essentially the end for the Brownback campaign and their longshot hopes. By voting for cloture on the shamnesty bill, he loses any leverage at all on the issue which is HUGE in the GOP primary in Iowa. Brownback has bet everything on Iowa and is struggling to get out of the low single digits. Fred!’s entry into the race was a body blow to his campaign, but this ends any real Brownback 08 rationale.

Its funny a few months ago I thought Brownback might climb his way from the third tier into the second tier, but it has turned out that Gov. Huckabee is the new second tier. We’ll wait to see the fundraising numbers this quarter but unless he has a tremendously above expectations haul I think the campaign is on life support at best.

We do have some good news today as one of the most insidious anti-freedom measures in recent history, “The Employee Free Choice Act” which would have ended open and free unionization elections failed its cloture vote. The secret ballot is safe for now but make no mistakes that the union heads realize this is their only way to reclaim their old power. This isn’t about protecting the worker this is about forcing workers to do something they don’t want to do in order to gain more power, money, and prestige for the union heads.

This is a big victory but we will have to fight this proposal again in the next session.

Update, this was a remarkable party line vote, the only person crossing the aisle was Sen. Specter.
Republicans voting FOR cloture:
Specter (PA)

Democrats voting AGAINST cloture:
NONE

So the next time someone tells you there are a lot of moderate Democrats, you can just use this vote to show that no there really are not.  If there’s any doubt how much the unions control the Democratic party well…

President Bush encouraged the Senate on Tuesday to put aside bitter differences and pass a bill that would legalize millions of illegal immigrants.

Bush appeared optimistic about winning a test vote Tuesday and the Senate’s passage of the bill by week’s end.

“We’ll be moving our attention to the House after the Senate passes this comprehensive piece of legislation,” Bush told business leaders and representatives of religious, Hispanic and agricultural communities. “I think this is an historic opportunity for Congress to act.”

Joel Kaplan, Bush’s deputy chief of staff, also was optimistic. “Our intelligence suggests that there will be the votes there,” he said.

Conservative critics who paint the measure as amnesty for lawbreakers, however, said their efforts to stop the legislation were gaining momentum. Bush’s team is predicting victory Tuesday on the effort to allow the bill - among the president’s top domestic priorities - to go forward.

With GOP conservatives determined to block the legislation, backers need 60 votes to clear procedural hurdles and resurrect it Tuesday. Just 45 senators - only seven of them Republicans - supported such a move two weeks ago.

Myway