On Friday, they seized upon statements he made praising the so-called Minutemen volunteers in Arizona who patrol the Mexican border for illegal immigrants. President Bush has described the volunteers as vigilantes, but Mr. Schwarzenegger said he would welcome them in California because “our government cannot secure the borders and keep our country protected.”
Art Torres, the chairman of the state Democratic Party, accused Mr. Schwarzenegger of exploiting fears about illegal immigration, a historically divisive subject in California, to divert attention from his problems as governor and to appeal to his conservative supporters.
“We don’t need an Austrian Minuteman,” Mr. Torres said in a reference to Mr. Schwarzenegger’s native country.
I’m not a fan of the Minutemen, but that is just out-and-out nativism. Arnold is an American just like Torres. What if he had called Torres a Mexican? There would be hell to pay, and rightly so.