Looks like the Atwater-esque "divide & conquer" strategy is starting to run into a brick wall. Or, at the very least, it's running into problems at the border.

In the latest show of force act of deep desperation to shore up his floundering support, pResident Bush appears ready to send National Guard troops to the Mexican border to "enforce" immigration policy. (edit: crossposted with R. Neal)

I can see it now. We're going to take stop-lossed troops, battle-weary from their 2nd, 3rd, 4th tours in the deserts of Iraq and send them to Desert America as law enforcement officers. Good idea. That's a way to win back the admiration of military families. (Whatever happened to the drunken redneck posse known as The Minutemen? You send them an adequate supply of lawnchairs and beer, and they'll do the job for free.)

Just goes to show you -- you can only divide so many times before your margins start to erode. Now you have the economic conservatives in the American business community advocating a ready supply of cheap labor pitted against the xenophobic law & order social conservatives among the 30% 29% dead-enders. Starved for yet another wedge issue to feed upon, it appears that the conservative wing of the GOP is once again eating its own. It is eating its own in a way not seen since Bill Frist convened a quorum of three (Sen. Frist, Sen. Martinez, Sen. Warner) to rush through a sop to the "life" lobby.

I see a significant downside here... maybe someone else does, too.

(1) Escalation of tensions along the border with battle-weary, thinly-spread troops is a recipe for disaster. Imagine that a National Guardsman pops off a few rounds and kills someone. (Sound farfetched? Remember Kent State?) Let's just say for the sake of argument that we witness a 21st century Wounded Knee (or would that be Rodilla Herida?) at the border.

Remember those immigration protests of hundreds of thousands of Latinos in the last couple of weeks? Imagine those as immigration riots.

Think we had a "law enforcement" issue before?

(2) I am loathe to point this out, but this is just stupid from an electoral standpoint for the GOP. So this is more in laughter than in sorrow or anger...

I remember the endless dissections following the 2004 election, which more or less served to reinforce the long-held political axiom, "One never goes broke underestimating the tastes of the American public." (At least, that's generally how Mencken is paraphrased.)

Chief among the claims of the Beltway Blathersphere was that Bush was El Milagro among Hispanic voters. (Warning: TownHall link.)

The biggest reason for Bush's victory was that he finally cracked the Democratic stranglehold on the Hispanic vote.

While Gore won 65 percent of the Latino community, holding Bush to a mere 35 percent, Kerry only carried the Hispanic vote by 55-45, paving the way for the Bush victory.

Since Hispanics cast 12 percent of the vote in 2004, their 10-point movement to the GOP gave the president an additional 1.2 percent of the national vote.

Take a similar amount away from Kerry, and the Latinos gave Bush a 2.4 percent edge in the general election balloting.

Since Bush beat Kerry by only 3.1 percent, how important was the Hispanic vote? Vital and crucial. There are two reasons for Bush’s success among Hispanics. The most important seems to be his emphasis on social values issues, particularly his opposition to gay marriage.

Here's my favorite part...

The long-term consequences of the Bush gain among Hispanics may be enormous. Beyond just winning this election, Bush may have begun to crack the unholy triple alliance of blacks, Hispanics and single women that anchors the political base of the Democratic Party.

(As opposed to the "holy" triple alliance of "God, guns, and gays" held by the GOP, natch.)

So the GOP is prepared to throw away its hard won gains among Hispanics in order to ... what? Keep the voting bloc of whacko social conservatives in the Buchanan wing of the party who's not going to abandon the GOP no matter what? Are they really that desperate?

I really don't get this. I really don't.

There has to be another rational solution which stops short of deploying troops along our border. I mean, c'mon. This has been going on for more than three decades. Why is this a crisis now? What dog is the lunatic Bush political operation possibly trying to wag here?

Borderline Personality Disorder is diagnosed if a patient exhibits at least five of the following:

* frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. (not including suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5)
* a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.
* identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
* impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge eating; [not including] suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5).
* recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior
* affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)
* chronic feelings of emptiness.
* inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).
* transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

IMNSHO, no matter how you slice this, it's just sick.

Please -- for the sake of our society, stop. Stop this madness now before it gets out of hand.