DEMOCRATS WRONG TO PROPOSE CUTTING MEXICAN DRUG-WAR AID PACKAGE

The murder of the acting chief of Mexico's federal police, amid an
unprecedented wave of drug-gang attacks on security officials, will
soon become a major issue in the U.S. presidential candidates'
escalating war for Hispanic votes.

Until now, Republicans and Democrats had tried to make as little
noise as possible about the Bush administration's Merida Initiative,
a request for $500 million to help Mexico fight its drug cartels.
They hoped to pass it quietly, fearing that a high-profile debate
would stir up political passions on both sides of the border and kill
the proposal.

But with drug-war violence in Mexico escalating to record levels in
recent memory, that's changing fast.

Likely Republican candidate Sen. John McCain will probably try to cut
into the Democrats' growing lead among Hispanics, saying their
proposal to reduce the Merida Initiative up to $190 million amounts
to "abandoning" Mexico when President Felipe Calderon's government is
facing a bigger-than-ever attack from the drug cartels.

It might be much like when McCain blamed Democrats for "abandoning"
Colombia by resisting ratification of the U.S.-Colombian free-trade
agreement. Only that in Mexico's case, the political stakes at home
are higher because more than 65 percent of the more than 10 million
U.S. Hispanic voters are of Mexican origin.

When I asked the McCain campaign for a reaction to the Democratic
majority-proposed cuts to the Merida Initiative, I got a statement
from McCain's top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, that
sounded like the opening salvo of the coming Republican offensive.

"At a time when we have a Mexican president willing to take the fight
to vicious narco-traffickers, it is appalling and irresponsible that
congressional Democrats would cut funding," Scheunemann said.

The slain police chief was the highest-ranking of about 200 officers
killed by drug-trafficking gangs over the past year and a half, in
apparent retaliation against Calderon's military offensive against
the drug cartels.

According to a U.S. Senate report by Carl Meacham, a senior
Republican staffer at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 2,600
Mexicans have lost their lives in police actions against drug
traffickers over the past year. The Mexican government has invested
$3 billion and deployed 30,000 troops in an effort to combat the drug cartels.

The Merida aid package is aimed at helping Mexico buy eight transport
helicopters, improve intelligence sharing and reduce the smuggling of
.50-caliber rifles, grenades and other high-power U.S. weapons to
Mexico. The plan doesn't contemplate the presence of U.S. troops in Mexico.

Most Democrats in Congress say they want to vote for aid to Mexico.
But they object to what they say is an excessive focus on military
aid at the expense of institution-building assistance, and they note
that some anti-immigration Republican legislators are opposing the
Merida initiative.

On Friday, the AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers -- backing the
Democrats in the November elections -- called for blocking the aid
plan, citing concerns over human rights abuses. A week ago, I ripped
McCain for moving increasingly closer to anti-immigration hawks in
his party. I also ripped him for leaving behind the comprehensive
immigration plan he once supported to embrace a new stand that I
described as economically stupid, politically unwise and dangerous
from a national security point of view.

Today, it's the Democrats' turn to be singled out for caving in to
the populist-isolationist wing of their party and irresponsibly
turning their back on an escalating war against the bad guys on the
U.S. border. Unless Democrats and their candidates give their full
support to the initiative, they should face a backlash among some of
the growing numbers of Hispanic voters who have flocked to the
Democratic Party.