Shocking! Bush with a Mexican flag!

I personally could care less, but someone might want to forward Lou "I don't think we should have St. Patrick's Day" Dobbs this LA Times article about the President's views on immigration, which features this interesting nugget:

During the 2000 election, Bush previewed a campaign video from ad-maker Lionel Sosa that used emotion-laden themes to woo Latinos.

As he watched, Sosa recalled, Bush's face lighted up. "How much do you need for this?" Bush asked as the two men sat with Rove in the governor's mansion in Texas, Sosa said.

Sosa replied that it would take $3 million. According to the ad-maker, Bush then turned to Rove, saying: "Give him five."

Four years later, Sosa produced a variation of that video for the 2004 campaign that was mailed to Latino voters across the country.

The video includes images that would probably rile those who today are calling for the most restrictive immigration laws. At one point, Bush is shown waving a Mexican flag. The footage was shot, Sosa said, during a Mexican Independence Day parade in San Antonio in 1998, when Bush was running for reelection as governor.

The President already has little support for his ideas on immigration from the hardcore anti-immigrant right. I don't know how much worse it could get. But I'd be willing to bet you that if Rove and Co. could dig up a picture of John Kerry waving a Palestinian flag, they'd FedEx overnight it to every national news bureau. Or they'd digitally insert the flag themselves.

But I don't think we should find this video and call attention to it. No. It woud be completely wrong to exploit fissures in our opponent's base like that.

Actually, I DO kind of think it would be wrong. This revelation about Bush actuallly humanizes him a smidge, IMO. I think the proper way to use this kind of information is in the context of the Administration being run in a "say-one-thing, do-another" kind of way. I mean, the facts about Bush's preferred policy on immigration is that it would create a permanent underclass of low-wage workers who would never be able to earn a path to citizenship. Slowly you would see less and less visas being handed out, increasingly the guest-worker option would become pretty much the only way to stay in the US. And the fact that last year THREE employers were fined for hiring undocumented workers, in the whole darn country, is proof that the President pays lip service on this issue.

But putting out a picture of Bush holding another country's flag, if not the point of the ad, would have a certain effect amongst his base. WE certainly didn't intend it that way. Oh no.

This is the kind of hard-knuckle politics the right has mastered over the years. Of course, this information has been out there for at least 8 years, it's casually slipped into an LA Times article. I don't know if there's anyone in the Democratic establishment that understands how to talk to your base AND the other side at the same time.