"A Major Victory for the Conservative Grass Roots"

That's the response of John Hinderaker at Power Line to tonight's defeat -- at least for the time being -- of the cloture vote on the Senate's immigration bill.

Michelle Malkin live-blogged the proceedings all day and all of her posts contain interesting information. Her final post of the night contained the votes. It was fascinating, Senator Barbara Boxer of California voted with most of the Republicans against cloture. Maybe the bill wasn't liberal enough for her...or maybe she's aware of how unpopular the bill seems to be as reflected in polls and didn't want to anger her constituents. 11 Democrats joined Boxer in voting against cloture.

California's other Democrat Senator, Dianne Feinstein, on the other hand, voted with the Democrats.

While Senators McCain, Graham, and other Republican architects of the "grand bargain" voted with many Democrats for cloture, Senator Kyl turned his back on the bill he'd helped to create and voted against it.

Trent Lott, who had an unbecoming, arrogant hissy fit over his fellow Republicans not supporting the bill, backed off at the last moment and also voted against cloture.

Dean Barnett suggests that Republicans are not as divided as has been suggested by some pundits: "I have never seen the Republican Party more united than in its hatred for this bill. On one side you have George Bush, Lindsey Graham, Trent Lott and John McCain. On the other side, you have virtually every other Republican in America save the Wall Street Journal editorial board. 30 million people united against roughly 13 individuals - when you think about it, that’s pretty good unity."

Of course, Harry Reid and Co. will try to spin this victory into a Republican defeat -- Harry Reid said "Democrats vote for the bill, Republicans vote against it, the president fails again." But the reality is that this was a victory for common sense and national sovereignty. Hopefully now, as Captain Ed suggests, we can get down to dealing with this problem issue by issue, starting with securing the border.