Bush Abandonment Watch, Part 6Rep. J.D. Hayworth tells it like it is.

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Q: Would you welcome President Bush to Arizona to campaign for you?

A: I would welcome President Bush to Arizona to come with me along the border and see the problems that the ranchers and the law-abiding American citizens are having there. I would welcome President Bush to get tough on illegal immigration and understand that what happens on the border of the United States and Mexico is just as important as what's happening on the border of Syria and Iraq. ...

Q: Yeah, I was gonna point out that, of course, that wasn't even coming close to answering my question.

[Crosstalk.]

Now why don't you just answer my question. Would you like [President Bush] to come to Arizona and cut some campaign commercials for you and run them on all those TV stations in Phoenix and Tucson and Flagstaff and Prescott, and all?

A: In a word, no. Not at this time.

Q: That's being pretty honest, congressman!

—Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R.-Ariz., on Imus in the Morning, Nov. 9

My comment was just a realistic assessment of where the president is politically at this time, as the transcript makes clear. I'm going to do all I can to help the president turn things around, and I fully expect that by election time next year his troubles will be behind him.

—Subsequent clarification, which pointedly does not retract the previous statement, issued by Hayworth.

Bush Abandonment Watch archive:
Nov. 3, 2005: William F. Buckley
Oct. 31, 2005: Silvio Berlusconi
Oct. 13, 2005: Margaret Thatcher and Ari Fleischer
Oct. 21, 2005: Lawrence Wilkerson
Oct. 25, 2005: John Sununu

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.

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