“If I have to, I’ll send the National Guard to the border. If that doesn’t work, I’ll send the California Highway patrol to the border. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll send the California Republican Party to the border.” – Steve Poizner, March 2010
CALEXICO, Calif. (Associated Press), July 5, 2011 — The difficult first day of Gov. Steve Poizner’s deployment of thousands of California Republican Party regulars to the Mexican border ended in frustration, with reports of dozens of injuries.
No immigrants were harmed during the day – or even apprehended. Those who were confronted by Republicans as they tried to cross the border found that they could easily outrun their would-be GOP capturers, who in most cases appeared to be more than a quarter-century older than the would-be migrants they attempted to turn back.
The Republican border watchers were not nearly as fortunate. Several collapsed from the heat during the chase for immigrants. There were dozens of reports of falls and broken hips, and paramedics were dispatched to treat two GOP border police for heart attacks.
Taken together, the difficulties highlighted an apparent flaw in Poizner’s controversial strategy to defend the border with members of his party: today’s smaller, older and whiter California GOP may be ill-suited to the harsh realities of border protection.
The operational challenges of Poizner’s deployment became apparent in the early morning hours when supplies were delivered. The dozens of bottles of sunscreen shipped in for the party regulars ran out within minutes, leaving the pale-faced hordes unprotected from the desert glare. It took a group of gun rights activists from the Sierra counties most of the morning to commandeer a Banana Boat truck on Interstate 8 and distribute its contents.
While waiting on sunscreen, hundreds of the GOP border police with bladder control issues refused assignments that they considered too far from the port-a-potties provided by the Department of General Services. As a result, vast, un-port-a-pottied expanses of the border remained unguarded. Those who managed to engage border-crosssers complained that their shouted commands, issued in English, seemed to be ignored.
“Why don’t they speak English?” said one GOPer on patrol.
Nevertheless, senior Poizner administration officials declared the day a qualified success and noted that they had surpassed low expectations simply by deploying so many Republicans to the border.
These officials compared the rough start of Poizner’s deployment to the difficult early days of his gubernatorial campaign. His unlikely triumph came after his Republican rival Meg Whitman unexpectedly quit the primary race, having abruptly decided that she could cure at least three tropical diseases with the $150 million she had planned to spend on air time and consultants, and after Democratic nominee Jerry Brown, during a meditation session focused on the benefits of inaction, entered a trance from which he had yet to awake as of yesterday, according to doctors at UCSF Medical Center.
“I’m proud of my fellow Republicans for protecting our border,” Gov. Poizner said in a statement. “Their work is vital because our entire budget problem is caused by illegal immigration, with the exception of a few minor issues involving the prisons, health care costs, pensions, voter-approved auto-pilot spending, and the two-thirds vote for raising revenues.”