The fight is not over yet! Tancredo, Hayworth and the rest of the 90 + members of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus (CIRC) still have a very powerful ace up their sleeve, if they are willing to use it.
What they have to do is first go up to Hastert and warn him that if he packs the House side of the Conference Committee with those who favor amnesty, then they will do the following:
1. Immediately announce that they are publicly withdrawing their voting support for Speaker Hastert, probably by temporarily leaving the Republican Caucus. That would mean that Speaker Hastert would no longer have the majority of votes in the House to remain speaker. Remember, for voting on the Speaker of the House, the whole house votes for the Speaker, not just the majority party. Remember the bru ha ha a few years back when a Democrat crossed party lines to vote for Hastert as Speaker.
2. This would then force Hastert out as Speaker immediately, since he no longer has the majority of the House backing him as Speaker.
3. There would then be two possibilities of this:
a. This would mean that if the GOP wants the next Speaker to be from the GOP for the rest of this Congress, then they had better pick someone who the CIRC approves of. The CIRC can really show some leverage here, either they will cast their votes for someone who agrees with them on immigration or if they do not support whom the rest of the GOP puts up as Hasterts replacement, they then can:
b. The CIRC membership does not cast a vote for Speaker, sits out the election and Pelosi picks up the Speakership by default (YIKES). I doubt the rats would vote to retain Hastert or any other Republican as speaker.
The CIRC potentially holds an awful lot of leverage and power here, if they are willing to exercise it. I suggest we all contact the members of the CIRC and remind them of this. Give them the encouragement they need to pull this off. Below is the link to the CIRC membership where you can get contact info for their members:
http://tancredo.house.gov/irc/members.html
I know this is a stretch, but it can happen and should happen (option a. above, hopefully), if this story is true and Hastert intends on selling the American People out. If this story is true, then Hastert deserves to be fired IMMEDIATELY by his House collegues. Contact the CIRC members immediately and remind them of this.
They've all been quiet on the House side lately, I'm wondering if there's some backroom deal going on?? I don't know if the CIRC would take the steps that you said about temporarily leaving the GOP caucus but something drastic like that might be needed to stop any amnesty. I can only hope they'd have the guts to do it.