Just how deeply motivated the betrayal by the Washington Republican Establishment of Randy Graf, fighting to hold Arizona’s 8th House district for the party is, emerges from two recent gleeful reports from basically pro-Democrat news channels:

GOP Split in Ariz. 8 Provides Huge Opening for Giffords by Marie Horrigan The New York Times October 6 2006

Conservative activist Randy Graf, the Republican nominee in Arizona’s open 8th Congressional District, has drawn the open opposition of the retiring 11-term Republican incumbent, popular moderate Jim Kolbe. National Republican strategists have pulled their money out of the race, cancelling a big independent expenditure campaign they had planned for the general election.

With this seat in southeast Arizona now appearing one of the Democrats’ surer pickups in their bid to take control of the House, CQPolitics.com has changed its rating on the race to Democrat Favored from No Clear Favorite.

The New York Times action in publicizing this action is in itself significant.

Much more incisive (of course) is The Nation’s article

The Minutemen Hit the Wall MARC COOPER posted October 5, 2006 (October 23, 2006 issue)

As about sixty supporters of Democratic Congressional candidate and businesswoman Gabrielle Giffords gathered in late September for a wine and guacamole fundraiser at a local hillside home, their mood was nothing short of electric. Earlier in the day a news report had swept through this desert district with all the drama and punch of a late summer monsoon: The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) had just canceled about $1 million in planned TV ads for Giffords’s GOP rival, Randy Graf. “The Republicans have firmly planted the white flag in this district,” said a jubilant Giffords campaign official. “This is nothing short of surrender.”

The campaign official is right. The Nation found a “veteran Arizona Republican consultant” willing (a.k.a eager) to say

If something freakish were to happen in the next few weeks and this guy were actually to get elected, it would be a disaster for us. Right-wing tirades in a border area like this make Republicans look like crackers. With more and more people coming to live in Arizona and many of them at least slightly liberal, Republicans can’t afford to sound like racists.”

Sounds like Ken Mehlman again.

This is a socially temperate district that sometimes gave the openly gay Republican Kolbe more than 60 percent of the vote

How nice.

Much more relevant long term is how Graf’s opponent Gabrielle Giffords, is handing the immigration issue, which amounts to Chris Cannon’s me tooism.

Enforcement-plus” is the way Giffords describes her immigration position: tighter enforcement, plus an expanded visa and guest-worker program. But listening to Giffords address her campaign supporters at that hillside fundraiser, it sounded like “enforcement” was 90 percent of the equation and that the “plus” was maybe 10 percent

Needless to say, this stand is utterly fraudulent:

To stem the tide, she called for more “radar, aerial drones, electronic surveillance, tough employer sanctions”–and, yes, “a guest-worker program.”…

Giffords also has the solid support of the local Democratic political network headed by Representative Raúl Grijalva, one of the strongest voices for immigration reform.

The Democrats are against him … The Washington Republicans are against him… What more do you need to know?

This story is every parent’s nightmare. Imagine your 15-year-old daughter is walking over to a friend’s nearby home in the early evening when it is still daylight. But she never gets to her destination because of being brutally attacked by an illegal alien.

That’s the short version of what happened to Rebecca McDonald in August 2005. She was accosted in Spotsylvania County Virginia by Jose Ramirez while he was working on a townhouse as part of a construction crew. She ignored his rude catcalls and tried to walk on by, but he grabbed her and dragged her into the woods.

Ramirez slammed a rock against her face several times and tried to drown her by holding her head under water in a stream. She fought back and was lucky that a local man, history teacher James Snyder, heard her screams and came to her aid. Ramirez ran off but was soon captured by police, despite his resisting arrest.

Doctors determined that Rebecca’s left eye socket had been shattered, and that the ligaments holding her eye in place had been severely damaged. She has undergone three operations, but her left eye still doesn’t rest in its proper place, and her eyesight is still impaired. Additional surgery is possible, Sullivan said.
[Guilty plea in beating , Fredricksburg Free Lance-Star 7/18/2006]

Rebecca also suffered a broken nose, a concussion and cuts requiring around 30 stitches on her face and the back of her head. She stayed out of school for months because of her damaged vision.

On Friday, Ramirez was sentenced to 27 years in prison, a disappointingly light jail term considering that he could have gotten life.

In addition, Ramirez had been convicted of two burglaries in Prince William County that occurred a month before his attack on Rebecca — why wasn’t he in jail and then deported back to El Salvador? If he had been properly incarcerated for his previous felonies, he wouldn’t have been free to brutalize an innocent girl. Why can’t law enforcement do its job?

As frequently happens (alas) the Chinese People’s Daily Online has come up with a story (on the Border fence row this time) far more succinct and penetrating than anything which the PC and verbose US MSM could achieve. (Yes, I am aware they would never do this for their own country. That is an example of the reflexive double standard which needs to be considered when importing people from other that the traditional American population base.)

Mexican president says U.S. lacks vision on immigration October 7 2006-10-07

Mexican President Vicente Fox said on Friday that there was a lack of vision in the United States relating to immigration, following the U.S. legislature’s decision to build a 1,200-km wall along its border with Mexico.
“There is a lack of vision of what this means, and of all that it can cause in both nations, and of the need we have to manage migration in a legal, orderly way that respects human rights,” Fox told media in the central state of Aguascalientes.

Disliking what one sees, of course, is invariably countered by the assertion that one has not seen correctly.

On Thursday, Mexico’s legislature, the Chamber of Deputies, urged Fox to go to international tribunals and bodies to try and halt the wall’s construction.

So international bureaucrats should be able to over rule what this country does on its own soil? Is America not sovereign?

The Founding Fathers would have disagreed.