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Governor's border policies aimed at 2010 GOP primary

To understand Texas' border security policy, you don't actually need to know anything about security, but it sure helps to know about elections.Since at least 2005, Texas Governor Rick Perry's re-election priorities have openly dominated Texas' border security policy. Campaign ads stoking fears of "terrorists" crossing the border were the centerpiece of Perry's 2006 gubernatorial re-election bid, and in 2007 the Legislature ponied up more than $100 million in pork-barrel grants - some of it going to people who where themselves working for the drug cartels - in an effort to create what's really quite a tenuous, money-driven coalition between law enforcement on the border and anti-immigrant activists in Texas cities and suburbs.Perry's incumbency advantage combined with a strategy of pandering to xenophobia worked well enough to earn his 2006 re-election, albeit in an odd, 4-way contest in which only 39% of the electorate voted for him...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on December 26, 2008 (boomark / email).