From Newsday:

BY CRAIG GORDON
Newsday Washington Bureau

May 17, 2006

WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush's immigration speech made little headway with Republican hardliners yesterday as critics questioned whether sending in the National Guard would really tighten up the border.

White House officials had said sending 6,000 part-time troops would free up Border Patrol agents from desk jobs and other duties for hands-on enforcement, but revealed how many yesterday: 500, or one added agent for every four miles of U.S.-Mexico border.

Bush got a boost yesterday in the Senate, where supporters of the comprehensive overhaul he proposed Monday night beat back an effort to require stiffer border security before considering other legalization schemes.

Republicans said Bush's speech gave the legislation a little added momentum in the Senate, where backers have been predicting they will carry the day by as many as 70 of 100 votes, including the support of many Democrats.

But one anti-immigration hawk, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), said Bush's combined approach gives a "wink and a nod one more time to those who would come here" illegally.

Bush's bigger problem is looming in the House, where hard-line security proponents such as Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) want to make sure border security is working before even considering any guest-worker ideas, and even if that takes years.

One Republican consultant who works with conservatives, Greg Mueller, said he saw little new appetite yesterday among House Republicans facing tough mid-term elections to embrace anything that could be labeled "amnesty," such as Bush's idea for a guest-worker program.

"It would be very tough for somebody running for re-election to take on that position right now and expect to have this energized base behind him 150 percent," Mueller said.

As for the National Guard, Pentagon officials acknowledged yesterday that a host of questions remain.Those include the total cost, the exact units and specialties required, what states would provide them and perhaps most important, the rules for use of force by the part-time soldiers.

In addition, two of the border-state governors in line to receive troops, California's Arnold Schwarzenegger and New Mexico's Bill Richardson, have questioned the program.

U.S. officials insisted that sending in the National Guard troops would simply follow a two-decade-old model used for counter-narcotics missions at the border, even though that program has just 400 soldiers there now -- meaning this would be a 15-fold increase.

"I don't want to say this is business as usual, but it's usual business done at a little bit more expanded pace," said the National Guard chief, Lt. Gen. Steven Blum.

But Christine Wormuth, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who is examining the National Guard, questioned whether the program could be effective if it relies mainly on troops doing their normal summer rotation at the Mexican border.

"It's fair to say, 'how much are those people going to be able to accomplish when you have new faces coming in every two to three weeks?' " she said.

One sign of how much Bush is swimming upstream with members of his own party came in an interview Vice President Dick Cheney did yesterday with conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, who a day earlier had labeled Bush's border security plan "window dressing."

His listeners "don't think that this number of 6,000 ... is actually going to make much of an impact," Limbaugh told Cheney.

Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.