"If the Republicans lose one of the Houses of Congress, not that I believe that will happen, there goes the funding for the Iraq/WOT program.
Do you think Dubya is willing to risk that?"
I think he IS risking it, but I think that the full magnitude of the BorderBot movement and the cost of its defection is not being properly registered by the decision takers.
Had Bush 41 known that the tax-hawks would never forgive him, no matter what, after he raised taxes, he would have stalwartly refused to have done so. But he underestimated the strength and depth of passion on taxes of the tax hawks.
Bush and Co. ALMOST made that mistake with Miers, but they got it in the end and pulled back from the brink.
I think they haven't gotten it yet about the Border, and are making the same mistake Bush's daddy made. Fortunately, this time it's easier to fix - with that Border Fence sea to sea - and they may get it yet.
Unfortunately, I think that there's a real desire to self-deceive that the President pulled it off with his speech. He didn't. The speech was the sum of all fears for those conservatives most passionate about the Border.
It made things worse.
Not unrecoverably so: the reconciliation committee in Congress could still give a sea-to-sea fence.
I think you are exactly right. I live in Phoenix, I work in Tempe, it is all you hear talked about when you can manage to find people who speak english. They do NOT understand the seriousness or the massive influx and what it has done.
Do you know why there was very little turnout for the rally on May 1st? Because on the last rally, it was announced that there was a 50% absentee rate at many of the schools. That scared the life out of many of the activist here since over 80% of the property tax goes to pay for schools.