In the anticlimactic conclusion to the saga of the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005, the Senate failed to invoke cloture and so advance the Akaka bill. The vote was 56 for cloture against 41 against. Here is the roll call. Some rather curious, if not entirely inexplicable, Republican crossovers supporting cloture: Cochran of Mississippi, Coleman of Minnesota, Grassley of Iowa and New Mexico’s own Pete Domenici. Domenici I can understand (if there is pandering to be done, whether on Puerto Rican statehood or anything else, Pete is the man to do it), but what does a Senator from Mississippi get out of this? Lindsay Graham, said to be a supporter of the bill, didn’t cast a vote. In this, he was smarter than McCain. The two Arizonan Senators went along with the bill, as did a handful of the usual liberal Republican suspects. If rank-and-file Republicans needed any more reason to oppose John McCain’s future presidential aspirations, they just got it with this vote.