Wednesday, May 17, 2006

He who lives by the sword

This is fun to watch. Bush has for five years cultivated and catered to the Far Right, his base, and now with the Dubai ports deal, the half-measure immigration proposal, the sale of goodies to India and so forth he's losing them. He didn't realize what radical crazies they were. But I did. I spent five hours driving along the I-10 a few months ago listening to a radio talk show from somewhere in southern Arizona. The question was "immigration" and the language was foul. Minutemen calling in, calling their fellow citizens (lumped in with legal and illegal immigrants) Spics and losers and pachukos and worse. Calling for on-sight shootings of wetbacks (even though there's no river to cross in Arizona), calling for martial law.

So Bush finds himself caught between a rock (the bigoted base) and a hard place (the capitalist pigs). The former want all the people of color gone from America, the latter want some kind of "limited" work-release program that allows them to exploit Latino labor without having to pay benefits, a living wage, and provide any security.

Rove, I know, conjured this latest gambit, trying to play the "immigration card" to staunch the bleeding, the inexorable drop in the polls of his puppet. But he didn't realize how rotten was his base.

There's a good novel here, except that it's really happening. And I'm really enjoying the show.

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