Can It Be? Republican Candidates Finally Understand?

In Porous Border, GOP Sees An Opening
Candidates Take Hard Line To Rally Conservative Base

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 21, 2006; Page A01

ORO VALLEY, Ariz. -- When 11-term Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) announced his retirement, he bestowed his endorsement on soft-spoken state Rep. Steve Huffman. Only someone in his own moderate mold, Kolbe declared, could prevail in a demographically diverse district stretching from the affluent foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains above Tucson to the rugged border of Mexico.

But when the long-simmering issue of illegal immigration boiled over this year, Huffman lost his favored status in the Sept. 12 Republican primary in the 8th Congressional District and was gasping to keep up with anti-immigration firebrands in his party -- and even with some in the other.

"Stop the invasion," conservative Democrat Bill Johnson bellowed at a candidates' forum last week, as the sun set through the picture window of the Church of the Nazarene here.

"Not only can we secure the border -- we must secure the border," trumpeted former state representative Randy Graf, widely considered the new front-runner for the Republican nomination.

Well I guess desperation is the mother of reason. It appears that those waffling members of Congress are beginning wake up to the fact that most American citizens consider the monsterous influx of illegal aliens a threat to our security, economy and national identity. I wish President Bush would wake up as well.

Unfortunately it appears that the President, and a disturbingly large number of "moderate" Senators are incapable of comprehending what is painfully obvious to the rest of us, a nation that can't control its borders ceases to be a nation.

The "Reconquista" and "Atzlan" groups are deadly serious in their goal of flooding the Southwestern United States with Mexican and other Hispanic illegals in hopes of rendering enforcement efforts untenable. It is time for our legislators to understand this. It now appears that those who are desperate enough from concern about their re-election chances are finally "getting it."

Full Story: The Threat of Illegal Immigration

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