As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, Vice President Cheney referred to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as the leader of Peru in a speech in Dallas. The Washington Post followed-up with Cheney’s office:

A spokeswoman for Cheney, Lea Anne McBride, said later that Cheney’s reference to Peru was “a simple slip of the tongue.” Referring to Peruvian leader Alan Garcia, she said by e-mail: “Both the president and vice president hold President Garcia and the people of Peru in high regard.”

EJ Dionne runs down the atmosphere of fear and dread in Democratic circles that being painted as soft on illegal immigration will wreck the party’s fortunes. My sense is that a lot of folks in town are furrowing their brows trying to think of a way to thread the policy needle here. What I wonder is whether these concerned couldn’t be effectively blunted with cheap political rhetoric and a minor dose of dishonesty. How hard is it, really, to just say something like “the Bush Republicans have had eight years to get the borders under control and things just get worse and worse; from Katrina to Iraq to no-bid contracts back to immigration these guys can’t do anything right.”

That doesn’t really mean anything, sure, but insofar as the goal is just to muddy the waters and prevent public outrage from overwhelming everything else it seems viable to me. In general, it shouldn’t be easy for the GOP to ride in on a wave of outrage at their own party’s inability to enforce immigration law. Sure, Bush actually broke with his party over this, but professional ad men exist to confuse people about this kind of nuance.