McCain reverses himself, says amnesty will be top priority of his administration

Just a few days ago, showing fairness to someone I consider an enemy of this country, I defended John McCain from conservative commentators’ distortions of his speech in which he envisioned what he hoped to achieve by January 2013. I pointed out that McCain said he planned to have the border “secured” by 2013 and to have persuaded Americans of the need for comprehensive reform. McCain in his preview of 2013 said:

Border state governors have certified and the American people recognize that after tremendous improvements to border security infrastructure and increases in the border patrol, and vigorous prosecution of companies that employ illegal aliens, our southern border is now secure…. Illegal immigration has been finally brought under control, and the American people accepted the practical necessity to institute a temporary worker program and deal humanely with the millions of immigrants who have been in this country illegally.

I took this to mean that he would secure the southern border before he attempted to pass comprehensive reform including amnesty. While I am against amnesty at any time, period, this was at least a clear and unambiguous statement that McCain was NOT going to seek comprehensive reform/amnesty as soon as he became president, but was going to secure the border first, a task he seemed to believe would take his entire first term.

This statement was in conformity with earlier statements of his over the last 10 months, in which, manfully admitting that he had been beaten on comprehensive reform last year, he said explicitly that if elected president he would not proceed with comprehensive reform until there was a national consensus that the borders had been secured.

But now look at what he’s saying, reported in the New York Times, via HotAir:

In yet another sign of his pivoting toward the general election, Senator John McCain said at a roundtable with business leaders [in San Jose] today that comprehensive immigration reform should be a top priority for the next president…

“Senator Kennedy and I tried very hard to get immigration reform, a comprehensive plan, through the Congress of the United States,” he said. “It is a federal responsibility and because of our failure as a federal obligation, we’re seeing all these various conflicts and problems throughout our nation as different towns, cities, counties, whatever they are, implement different policies and different programs which makes things even worse and even more confusing.”

He added: “I believe we have to secure our borders, and I think most Americans agree with that, because it’s a matter of national security. But we must enact comprehensive immigration reform. We must make it a top agenda item if we don’t do it before, and we probably won’t, a little straight talk, as of January 2009.”

Meaning he will be push for amnesty the moment he takes office. Meaning everything he has said over the last eight or ten months about “getting it” on border security was a lie. Meaning that his speech of a week ago, for which I defended him, was a lie.

But McCain is not just a liar, he is stunningly stupid, by revealing to his own (already reluctant and unhappy) supporters that he has been lying to them all along. The bottom line for McCain is that he cannot repress himself. He despises the idea of border control, he despises the people whose victory over his open borders bill last year forced him to pledge to secure the borders, and he couldn’t wait until after his election to reveal his real feelings. That’s what he means by his new “straight talk,” by which he makes a lie of everything he said before. I think he has very likely just assured the election of Barack Obama.

John Hawkins, a Republican activist who had staunchly maintained his support McCain in the general election despite his dislike and distrust of him, has finally had it. In an article today at Right Wing News, entitled, “Why I Will No Longer Support John McCain For President,” he traces the history of McCain’s statements over the last year, which I’ve already summarized very briefly here, then quotes the same New York Times article that I just quoted, and concludes:

Put very simply: John McCain is a liar. He’s a man without honor, without integrity, who could not have captured the Republican nomination had he run on making comprehensive immigration a top priority of his administration. Quite frankly, this is little different from George Bush, Sr. breaking his “Read my lips, no new taxes pledge,” except that Bush’s father was at least smart enough to wait until he got elected before letting all of his supporters know that he was lying to them.

Under these circumstances, I simply cannot continue to support a man like John McCain for the presidency. Since that is the case, I have already written the campaign and asked them to take me off of their mailing list and to no longer send me invitations to their teleconferences. I see no point in asking questions to a man who has no compunction about lying through his teeth on one of the most crucial election issues and then changing his position the first time he believes he can get away with it.

Moreover, I genuinely regret having to do this because I do still believe the country would be better off with John McCain as President as opposed to Obama or Clinton. However, I just cannot in good conscience cast a vote for a man who has told this big of a lie, for this long, about this important of an issue.

That being said, although I cannot back John McCain, encourage others to vote for him, or contribute any more money to his campaign, I’m not going to tell you that you should do that same thing. What McCain has done here is a bridge too far for me, but others may not have as big a problem with being told this sort of lie. That’s their decision.

Furthermore, I will defend John McCain when I think he deserves to be defended, excoriate Barack Obama and/or Hillary Clinton at every opportunity, and I will continue to stand behind the sort of Republican candidates who actually deserve conservative support. But, what I will not do is vote for John McCain in November.

Meanwhile, Paul Cella at RedState says he ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s Farm no more.

—end of initial entry—

Paul Cella writes:

Remember back in late 2006 when everyone was warning us that we ought to take the best deal we can get on Dispossess America—excuse me, Comprehensive Immigration Reform while the GOP still held Congress; that, once the Dems took over they would send something even worse to Bush, who will sign anything? Remember all that “it’s inevitable” hectoring? Well, here we are 18 months later and … still no comprehensive bill. I’m willing to bet that even with Obama in the WH, opposition to the Dispossess American bill will be solid—maybe even solid enough to stop the disaster.

Conservatism always shines in opposition, and often enigmatically manages to win.

Adela G. writes:

Concerning McCain’s projection that by 2013 under his administration, ” … our southern border is now secure…. Illegal immigration has been finally brought under control, and the American people accepted the practical necessity to institute a temporary worker program and deal humanely with the millions of immigrants who have been in this country illegally,” you write: “I took this to mean that he would secure the southern border before he attempted to pass comprehensive reform including amnesty.”

But if you parse it (a little habit I picked up during the second Clinton administration), he says “secure” not “secured.” I don’t think a “secure border” is the same thing as a “secured border.” The second implies a kind of impenetrability that the first does not. I’m “secure” in my home, sitting here at my desk typing this email, but I am also free to move around, I am not “secured” in my home. And to me, the phrase, “illegal immigration has been finally brought under control” only implies it has been reduced to manageable proportions—and of course, President McCain would be the one to decide exactly what proportions are manageable.

I am not saying he is not a liar, I am saying he’s cleverly conveying his real intent just under the radar with his use of these seemingly clear-cut but actually ambiguous phrases.

I see no way he can win over the conservative vote now. The comments I read elsewhere are absolute in their damning of McCain, they repudiate him as a conservative and as a member of the GOP and are starting to bracket him with Clinton and Obama as one of the three liberals running for POTUS.

Shrewsbury writes:

McCain ran anti-illegal radio commercials during the primary here in God-forsaken California which made him sound like a Tancredo clone. And now he’s right back to acting like some crazed game-show host, waving his arm and yelling, “Hey, Mexico! Come on over!”

This level of narcissistic duplicity is nothing short of deranged. This is mendacity of the first water—Soviet-era Kremlin quality.

LA replies:

McCain, May 17, 2007: We must have amnesty, permanent guest workers, and vast increase of legal immigration, without any serious border protection, NOW, and we must not engage in “extracurricular politics” [i.e. we must not have a debate on one of the most radical and sloppily written bills in American history] but vote on it NOW.

McCain, August 2007 to May 15, 2008: You won. I got the message. We will secure the border and validate that the border is secured, a process that I expect to take four years, before proceeding with amnesty, permanent guest workers, and vast increase of legal immigration.

McCain, May 22, 2008: We must have amnesty, permanent guest workers, and vast increase of legal immigration, NOW.

John Hagan writes:

In a strange way I feel some relief that McCain has taken off the amnesty mask again. Perhaps it’s best we let the Republican party, at least on the presidential level, sink, and hope to hold off amnesty in the house and senate next year. I see no other alterative. McCain must not be elected or the conservative movement will be over.

Matthew H. writes:

One commenter at Red State asks, re the Republican Party’s ongoing betrayal of its base, “What’s going on out there?”

Imagine it like this: You are a senator or some other kind of Washington muckamuck. You fly in a near orbit to the nucleus (nuculus?) of earthly power. You have a retinue of suck-ups. Materially you have every need catered to. Celebrity status, travel, whores, drugs (if you want them), vacations in various sweetspots, a fine residence in DC and another back home. For your wife and family there is plastic surgery, private school and all the rest of the accoutrements of life as a dependant of a 21st century mandarin of the republic.

Now, we seem to see the class that inhabits this rarified garden has, in recent decades, gotten firm, if not total, control over the process by which one may attain the big prizes; Certainly firm enough that it is easier to play it their way than not. No more Reagans, please! How was George W. Bush (he’s just like Reagan! Isn’t that what they said?) selected as nominee in 2000? It just sort of happened. Ditto McCain. It even looked at one point like Mac was quite dead. But somehow he came back to life.

It seems, too, that this class has decided, entirely independently of the express will of the people, that we will not uphold any particular definition of ourselves as a nation, geographic, ethnic, cultural or otherwise. The borders will be left open, porn will not be banned, abortion will not be restricted (even to the extent it is in the UK), the War on Drugs will be cursorily waged only until the first moment it is politically possible to drop it.

Given this environment, socialized medicine is inevitable. Talk about getting a lock on power. Such a system would place the political class in a position to control the drip valve of health care to the “electorate.”

An elite should be an organic manifestation of the people and should be servants of the people’s best interests, not just their (manufactured) desires when those desires happen to coincide with the elite’s program. But our elite is depraved. It is, as John Adams said of 18th century London, “venal, and ripe for destruction.”

David B. writes:

Here is a thread were I speculated that McCain would “roll over” for Obama and not put up much of a campaign:

I mentioned GHWB and Dole “mailing it in” during the 1992 and 1996 elections. You answered that McCain has more “spunk” than Bush 41 and Dole. It looks like McCain will show “spunk” by aggressively alienating the GOP base, which would also hand Obama the election.

I still say what I call the Relentless Stupidity of Republican voters gave McCain the nomination. While Democratic crossovers helped him, McCain got a lot of “conservatives” to vote for him. Polls showed that most of his voters were unaware of his amnesty position. All they knew was that McCain was a “war hero.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 23, 2008 11:55 AM | Send