On McCain’s sincerity about border security

Do you think I’m exaggerating about the dishonesty of the “new” John McCain? As an example of how tough McCain now sounds on illegal immigration, read this, from the AP’s account of the Republican/Obama luncheon today which I posted below:

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Obama’s 2008 presidential opponent, said he pressed the president on immigration issues. McCain said he told Obama “we need to secure the border first” before taking other steps. “The president didn’t agree,” he said.

McCain said he defended his state’s pending immigration law, which Obama says could lead to discrimination. It directs police, when questioning people about possible law violations, to ask about their immigration status if there is “reasonable suspicion” they’re in the country illegally.

At the luncheon, McCain said, “I pointed out that members of his administration who have not read the law have mischaracterized the law—a very egregious act on their part.”

Now ask yourself this: If McCain had won the 2008 election, do you think that as president he would have demanded (as he is demanding today) border security as a precondition of comprehensive immigration reform? Of course not. He said during the 2008 campaign—making a total lie of his constantly repeated pledge during the GOP primaries that he had “got the message” from the failure of the 2007 immigration bill and would require secure borders before comprehensive reform—that comprehensive immigration reform would be his first priority if he became president. So if McCain had been elected, 2009 would have been consumed with a replay of the battles of 2006 and 2007, with McCain once again at the forefront, only now as president, of pushing for the legalization of all illegals, a huge “temporary” guest worker program, and a vast increase in the number of legal immigrants, and border security be damned, while labeling all opponents as racists and xenophobes who fail to understand America’s true heritage and destiny. He’s only become pro-border security because he lost the presidential race and has to win re-election to the U.S. Senate from Arizona.

So, frankly, I don’t care if McCain at this moment is talking a good talk on stopping illegal immigration and defending the Arizona law. I don’t care if J.D. Hayworth is not the brightest bulb or the most sophisticated individual in America. I want McCain to get what he deserves. At the same time, based on his big lead in the polls, I recognize that that is probably not going to happen.

And by the way, guess who endorsed McCain today in the U.S. Senate race? National Review.

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I want to qualify an earlier statement. I have said that as soon as the primary is over, McCain will almost inevitably return to his true position of supporting comprehensive reform. But maybe he won’t. Maybe the fact that he got only 31 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2008—he, the man who gave his all, the man who sold his soul for the Hispanicization of America!—had a lasting effect on his feelings about the issue. The man doesn’t give a damn about the real America as distinct from America the global idea, but he does have a lot of amour-propre, and the Hispanic voters wounded it to the quick, and maybe the experience has permanently altered, to some degree, his views of immigration.

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Roger G. writes:

McCain is a whore of a whore of a whore. As you once pointed out, he takes these liberal positions to work out personal problems, and he doesn’t give a damn about America. He’ll go back to open borders and amnesty.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 25, 2010 10:13 PM | Send