Are you saying President Bush promised amnesty for illegals to some folks prior to the proposal?
And GWB *is* a "wepubwican". If he's trying to paint the conservatives in his party--the anti-illegal-immigration folks--as the "bad cops" that'd make it even worse than I thought.
Basically I'm saying that W uses the good cop bad cop scenario in a few select situations as he deems necessary. For example, I've seen him use it with Sharon and the Palis.
Since you were posing 3 possibilities in your original response and asked if there were any others, I thought I'd throw this one in as a possibility #4. I'm sure there are many others.
In this case I think W made certain 'accomodations or committments' with Fox concerning Mexican immigrants. To fulfill that committment he (or Rove) came up with this idea. I think he/they knew it would go over like a fart in church with the congress. As a matter of fact, I think they are counting on it to fail.
JMO of course.