Immigration, Bush in crossfire

Ten Republican presidential hopefuls, sharing a stage once more, clashed Tuesday night over immigration. But some of their harshest rhetoric was aimed at a surprising off-stage target: President Bush.

The rift between the White House and some fellow Republicans has grown increasingly pronounced in recent days as the president has promoted an immigration overhaul that is anathema to many party conservatives.

But criticism of the incumbent extended beyond that volatile issue, encompassing the war in Iraq and the administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina.

The criticism started when the GOP candidates, participating in their third debate, were asked how they would employ Bush after he left office. The first to answer, former Bush Cabinet member Tommy G. Thompson, brought a momentary hush to the audience with his tart response. “I certainly would not send him to the United Nations,” said Thompson, a former secretary of Health and Human Services.

Others chimed in. Thrashing Bush and Republicans in Congress, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said the party “deserved to get beat” in the 2006 election.

“We’ve lost credibility, the way we bungled Katrina, the fact that there was corruption that was unchecked in Washington, and the fact that there was a feeling that there was not a proper handling of the Iraqi war,” along with “indifference to people pouring over our borders,” Huckabee said.

Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, a harsh critic of Bush on immigration, recalled that White House aide Karl Rove once told him, “Never darken the door of the White House.” The congressman said he would tell Bush the same thing.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona faulted the administration’s conduct of the Iraq war in responding to a question from a distraught voter, Erin Flanagan of nearby Bedford. She described her family as devastated by the 2005 death in Iraq of her younger brother, Army 1st Lt. Michael J. Cleary.

“I’m going to give you a little straight talk,” McCain told her, invoking the slogan of his 2000 White House campaign against Bush as he stood up and approached Flanagan. “This war was very badly mismanaged for a long time, and Americans have made great sacrifices, some of which were unnecessary because of this ... mismanagement of this conflict.”

The rupture between Bush and his own party’s White House hopefuls on a stage here at St. Anselm College underscored the foul political climate facing Republicans as they try to retain the White House in 2008 amid an unpopular war that has badly damaged the GOP brand.

However, the main source of conflict between the candidates was on the deal that Bush struck last month with a bipartisan group of senators to overhaul immigration laws. McCain, a key negotiator of the compromise, was attacked by several rivals.

“It’s a typical Washington mess,” said Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose pro-immigration stands as New York mayor have caused him grief with conservatives.

The plan, under debate in the Senate, would offer probationary legal status and a path to citizenship to many of the nation’s undocumented immigrants. It also would increase border security and stiffen penalties on employers who hired illegal immigrants, and it would allow hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to enter the country temporarily.

Tancredo, who called for stopping nearly all immigration, cast the plan as a threat to the nation’s survival. “We are becoming a bilingual nation, and that is not good,” he said.

Rep. Duncan Hunter of El Cajon echoed Tancredo’s description of the proposal as “disastrous.” He also accused the Bush administration of stalling on construction of an 854-mile fence along the Mexican border. “It’s been six months, and they’ve done 11 miles, so the administration has a case of the slows,” Hunter said.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney joined in the criticism, saying visas for undocumented immigrants should be temporary instead of offering a “permanent right to stay in America.”

“That’s simply just not fair,” he said.

For his part, McCain argued that inaction amounted to “de-facto amnesty,” calling the troubled immigration system “a serious national security problem.”

“We need to act, my friends, and if someone else has a better idea, I’d love to have them give it to us,” he said.

Iraq dominated much of the night’s discussion. “We must succeed in this conflict,” McCain said, rejecting any timetable for withdrawal.

“Iraq should not be seen in a vacuum,” Giuliani added. “Iraq is part of the overall terrorist war against the United States.”

Still, the issue made for some uncomfortable moments.

Romney twice ducked when asked whether he considered the war a mistake, knowing everything he knows today.

“I think it’s an unreasonable hypothetical,” Romney said when pressed by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, the debate moderator. The administration “did the right thing based on what we knew at that time,” but “made mistakes” after overthrowing Saddam Hussein, Romney said.

Under questioning, McCain conceded he had not read the National Intelligence Estimate prepared in advance of the war, though he said he studied voluminous amounts of information before voting in favor of the U.S. invasion. Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas said he did not “remember the report.”

That led former Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore to snap: “You know, I think the people who are in Congress who are responsible for sending this country to war, with the enormous dangers that it has geopolitically and strategically, ought to read at least that kind of material.”

Mostly, though, the candidates endorsed the thrust -- if not the execution -- of Bush’s approach toward Iraq.

The exceptions were Reps. Ron Paul of Texas and Tancredo. Paul, who opposed the war from the start, reiterated his stance that “it was a mistake to go, so it’s a mistake to stay.” Tancredo said Americans had done their part to liberate Iraq from dictatorship and it was now the Iraqis’ job to fight to preserve their freedom

Asked about Iran, several candidates said they would consider using tactical nuclear arms to prevent Tehran from building a nuclear weapon. “You can’t rule out anything, and you shouldn’t take any option off the table,” said Giuliani, a sentiment shared by Gilmore, Romney and Hunter.

That brought a passionate denunciation from Paul. Responding later to a question on the nation’s greatest moral issue, he said it was the need to repudiate the “preemptive war” policy that led to the invasion of Iraq.

“We have rejected the just-war theory of Christianity,” he said, moving to the lip of the stage to address the audience. “And now, tonight, we hear that we’re not even willing to remove from the table a preemptive nuclear strike against a country that has done no harm to us directly and is no threat to our national security.... I mean, we have to come to our senses about this issue of war and preemption.”

The candidate lurking in the shadows was former Sen. Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee, who has yet to jump into the race but is inching ever closer. His name came up early on -- “My name is Thompson. I’m the candidate, not the actor,” said Tommy Thompson introducing himself -- and again later when Gilmore suggested the Tennessean’s free ride would end once he became a declared candidate.

“When Fred Thompson comes into the race -- and maybe even [former House] Speaker [Newt] Gingrich may come into the race -- they will have to stand on their records and stand on their credentials and offer their ideas the same way that every person here on the stage is doing,” Gilmore said.

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michael.finnegan@latimes.com

mark.barabak@latimes.com