Saturday, June 24, 2006

An Immigration ACT

So the latest state buzz has been about Arnold standing up to President Bush and refusing to send 1,500 more national guard to do border patrol after California had already sent 1,000. At first I thought it was Bush just getting shafted by his own party, again, but I never thought of the whole situation as an orchestrated act. Here's one Democratic take:

Bob Mulholland, an advisor to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides, said: "This so-called request [from the White House] was a phony political request to try to give Schwarzenegger political cover: 'Look it. I'm standing up to Bush.' But last week Schwarzenegger was a French poodle in Bush's lap — authorizing 1,000 stressed-out, overextended National Guard members to spend weeks and months at the border, even though many of them have done two tours in Iraq."

Who knows if this was all planned out; it is the oppositions job to come up with conspiracy theories but I frankly wouldn't be surprised if this was all a ploy. It'll be interesting to see if this strategy (if it is a strategy) will work or totally backfire. Arnold's walking a very fine line between his conservative base that wants more border patrol and the large Latino vote in California.

Finally if it is all an act, shame on people for playing politics with our National Guardsmen. I think they've already been disrespected enough.

Check out more here: Gov. Refuses Bush Request for Border Troops

1 comment:

Caitlin said...

Hah. I saw that, and wrinkled my nose.