"An Economist" Looks At the Bilbray Victory
06/08/2006
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"An Economist" writes

A very important special Congressional election be was held in Southern California yesterday between Republican Brian Bilbray and Democrat Francise Busby.

Bilbray has been an immigration activist for many years and is famous for promoting the "Bilbray Bill" to eliminate automatic US citizenship for babies born to illegal aliens (anchor babies). He served in Congress from 1994 to 2000 and then worked as a lobbyist for the Federation for American Immigration Reform .

Francine Busby is a typical, pro-Amnesty Democrat. Knowing that another amnesty is considered poison by most Americans, Busby tried to hide behind John McCain's skirts.

Indeed, she has a McCain video (where he lies about Amnesty) on her home page (check it out http://www.busbyforcongress.com/). A little lower she boasts that "McCain Bails on Bilbray".

McCain obviously thinks that supporting illegal aliens is more important than backing a fellow Republican. How many Democrats think they need Republican cover for their very unpopular views? When the votes were counted, Bilbray beat Busby 49.33 percent to 45.46 percent However, there is more to the story.

William Griffith ran as a Minuteman endorsed Independent and got 3.67 percent of the vote. Busby engaged in a remarkably sleazy effort to promote Griffith as the "real" immigration reformer in the race.

The folks over at the liberal Daily Kos blog were amused , at least before the votes counted. The Daily Kos post-mortem barely mentions immigration even though it was the key issue in the race. No doubt Bilbray would have done even better if he wasn't running to replace disgraced former Congressman Duke Cunningham. After a very distinguished career in the Navy (a real ace with five confirmed kills) see Cummingham became the most corrupt Congressmen in US history. In March, Cummingham was sentenced to 8 years and 4 months in prison. Without the "culture of corruption" baggage, Bilbray would have coasted. Even so, we won and the McCain/Bush Amnesty crowd lost.

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