Blocking Bush at the Border

By Mike Allen

Before heading to Congress, Republican J.D. Hayworth of Arizona was a sportscaster with a signature home-run call: "It's vapor!" Now the conservative Hayworth, 47, is making a similar charge about President Bush's plan to tighten the border with Mexico and establish a limited guest-worker program. He is about to publish an anti-immigration manifesto, Whatever It Takes, that should rile up right-wing radio just as the White House was hoping to gain traction for a broad immigration-reform package.

In the book, due out January 16 from conservative publisher Regnery, Hayworth calls for deploying active-duty troops to the border and considering a "border security fence from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico." Hayworth is unlikely to please the West Wing with his assertion about a chat he had at a House Republican retreat in West Virginia a year ago with White House senior adviser Karl Rove. When Hayworth criticized an Administration overture to Mexico, he writes, "Rove became somewhat exasperated and spluttered, 'You just don't want to help brown people, do you?'" A White House official says Rove recalls the conversation, in which he encouraged Hayworth to be sensitive to all citizens, but said the quote is inaccurate.

Hayworth, who says Rove may have been joking, contends that Bush's plan to confer temporary legal status on Mexicans working in the U.S. amounts to "false compassion." But Senator John McCain plans to push hard this winter for such a program. House Republican leaders say they might accept one if immigrants had to return home to apply for temporary work permits. Hayworth tells TIME that even that would be too lenient, designed to appease "left-wing grievance mongers" and businesses that want cheap labor. Bush may have sounded as if he were running for sheriff during his recent border visits, but to convince the likes of Hayworth, he'll have to talk a lot tougher.