Replies

What I fear most is turning over this country to a Howard Dean. It could happen if we allow another "read my lips" issue to shake up the party. Thankfully we don't have a Perot for these disillusioned republican voters to run to. Sadly these people that share Savages anger don't have a clue of how to handle the immigration issue themselves, and they don't know the details of what was negotiated between the U.S. and Mexico that made Bush feel it was a worthy political gamble, or how important it is to the party to have the Latino vote.
David Frums (former Bush speechwriter) book The Right Man has a whole chapter on Bush's early plans to design some kind of system for regulating the Mexican American labor relationship. A quote from the chapter "Mexican Americans were emerging as the single most powerful swing voting bloc in the U.S. elections, but one that is increasingly tilting against Bush's Republican Party. If Mexican Americans were lured to the Democratic column by the promise of more lavish social spending and racial preferences for their children in college and on the job, the Republicans would be locked out of the White House forever." Pretty scary thought. " On the other hand if Bush somehow found a way to reverse the Mexican American voting trend, he would reelect himself and bequeath a strongly competitive party to his successor."

I would not call Bush a sale-out. It was a very calculated and well thought out plan that has been in the offing since the early days of his presidency. The chapter goes into much greater detail of the settlement Bush was wanting, including helping to develop Mexico's oil rescources so that we could in time replace Arab oil with Mexican oil. Would the thought of that have the Arab sheikdom shaking in their pointy toe sandles?