Carrie Budoff of the Politico reports that Republicans in the Senate are working to put forth an immigration reform bill that would be acceptable to a majority of the GOP caucus and also win over the Dems. This is the effort Senator Brownback mentioned in his interview with me last week which is an interesting cross section of Republicans that includes Brownback, John Cornyn, Jon Kyl, Mel Martinez, Arlen Specter, and Lindsay Graham.

It appears from Budoff's reporting that the working group is making progress and might be able to field a bill in the near future. It'll be interesting to see what they've been able to come up with. Republicans are acutely aware of the pitfalls presented by the issue but it seems there's also a general consensus that they need to get something done this year.

As a purely political calculation, that's right. Senate Republicans are never going to be able to appease the Tancredo-types in the party no matter what they do, but if they are able to craft an enforcement-first bill that reforms the current system without taking on the whiff of providing amnesty, then it might well work out to be a case of good policy also being good politics. As always, the devil will be in the details, but the sooner Republicans can take this issue off the table with the right kind of bill, the better it will be for them heading into 2008.