Let the refugee camps be built on their side of the border, so we don't have to absorb them.
Duncan Hunter 15' Fence 
Posted on 01/28/2006 6:53:57 AM PST by Dane
Mexico leftist holds 6-point presidential poll lead Thu Jan 26, 2006 11:01 AM ET
(Recasts; adds details, background)
By Greg Brosnan
MEXICO CITY, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Mexican leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's lead over his nearest rival has been halved to six points since November, according to poll results released on Thursday.
The survey by daily newspaper El Universal gave Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, 33 percent support, with Felipe Calderon of the ruling National Action Party in second place with 27 percent.
In its last poll in November, El Universal had Lopez Obrador with 34 percent, 12 points ahead of Calderon.
Three polls last week also gave Lopez Obrador a lead of between 6 and 8 points over Calderon. Surveys from different pollsters had differed wildly, but are now converging.
In the new El Universal poll, Roberto Madrazo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party was in third place with 20 percent, up from 18 percent in November. The election is set for July 2.
El Universal said that out of those polled who were likely to vote, 40 percent said they would support Lopez Obrador, 33 percent preferred Calderon and 26 percent picked Madrazo.
The El Universal poll of 1,000 people between Jan. 20 and Jan. 23 had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percent.
Lopez Obrador, who has promised heavy spending to help Mexico's poor, has recovered in opinion polls since his double-digit lead shrank late last year after he stepped down as mayor of Mexico City.
Lopez Obrador launched his own daily morning television show last week to win back the media limelight after falling out of the public eye during a low profile tour of Mexico's towns and villages.
Calderon, the least known of the candidates, challenged his rivals to a televised debate earlier this week to raise his profile and overcome a weak party structure
Mexico is a country with a ton of potential.
As I understand it, most right wingers is hoping the Mexican Left wing president will win. The current right wing Mexican President is a disgrace
An Obrador win will be like the Hamas win...forcing the light on what has been swept under the rug by multilateralist relativist diplomats. Hard to put a smiley face on either PRD or Hamas. Neither makes any effort to pretend to be other than what they really are.
He's not a "leftist." He's a commie.
And a very long history of political corruption at the highest levels......
There is less difference between Mexico's PRI and PAN than between RINOS and moderate DIMS in the U.S.
If PRD wins, I'll be surprised if Obrador doesn't take a bullet unless he buys into the system...i.e. superficial reforms with anti-American rhetoric while preserving the oligarchy.
Full of potential, yet full of corruption. They need to choose which path they will follow. Electing a Hugo Chavez wannabee is going to make things go from bad to worse.
Also does the Mexican President have broad executive powers?
Don't we want a lefty to win in Mexico? This type of guy might find a way to tax the $hit out of his own citizens and pay for healthcare and other stuff his fellow countrymen cannot seem to find at the moment. I am all for him winning. And if he succeeds, maybe some of the illegals will decide their former dump of a country (sorry to those offended, but they are leaving it in droves) isn't so bad after all. I say vote lefty in Mexico....it might help!
The Mexican president has powers comparable to the U.S. President with one important exception. The Mexican presidency is limited to one term of 6 years. Fox is a very lame duck right now. With the exception of the 2000 election, PRI has controlled the presidency in Mexico since the 1910 revolution. However, the players in both PAN and PRI are to be found from the same 40 families who control everything in the country as an oligarchy, be it from posts in industry, as politicians, or as the heads of unions.
A PRD win of the presidency would be comparable to what Chavez has done in Venezuela. It will challenge the power structure. He'll either sell out, create chaos, or be assassinated.
We won't bash Mexico even if a Marxist allied to Castro, Chavez, Lula and Communist China comes to power and starts bashing America as the others do.
In fact that might make life a bit easier.
Unfortunately, it has been run throughout its history by a small clique of billionaire oligarchs for their private enrichment.
THat's why they prefer to drive their desperate underclass north into the USA, to let us pay for them.
"...Obradee, Obrador, life goes on..."
This trend of Latin American countries electing extreme leftists does not bode well for the future. We may need to bring over some Israeli consultants on wall-building.
Let the refugee camps be built on their side of the border, so we don't have to absorb them.
Duncan Hunter 15' Fence
This guy might pull the trigger on taxing money coming from the USA.
Well, that would tend to stop the flow......if we know one thing, taxing things tends to stop the flow. Obviously, I am being cynical about his intentions, but if we suddenly suggested to our poor that they cross over into Mexico and demand driver's licenses, health benefits and quasi citizenship, they wouldn't like it either. Hhhhhmmmmm, now there's an idea! See how they like it!
Yes, that may be true, but it's also a country with 104 million people. That works out to three ten-thousandths of an ounce of potential per capita.
They'd end up in police station showers "attached" to old field telephones until they promised to leave and never come back.
You seem knowledgeable about Mexico. Can you recommend a book that describes how these 40 families came into power and how they maintain power? I know, corruption has a big part to do with it and the citizens are mostly disarmed so they cannot easily stage a revolution.
I've lived in Mexico (to clarify for the Tancredo gang - I was born in the U.S., i.e. not an immigrant) before and traveled extensively in Mexico and Central American.
Unfortunately, I've not found a decent book on the issue in either English or Spanish. Sadly, the only authors to focus on the oligarchy in either language are socialists/communists. Some do it under the guise of liberation theology (a Marxist perversion of Catholicism).
If there is a decent book to be written on the subject, my bet is that it will come from a professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara. It is the preeminent conservative university in Mexico. However, it has ties to PAN (and PRI to a lesser extent), which means that there is no incentive for the university to rock the boat by discussing the oligarchy.
Note that the current oligarchy flows from the pre-revolution cacique system. The closest analogy in the U.S. was the Italian mafia at its peak...and even then, the mafia never achieved the power of the Mexican oligarchy.
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