What McCain will—and won’t—fight against

Edward writes:

“Devastating” attack launched by McCain against his conservative Republican rival. Where were his devastating attacks against Obama in 2008?

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Paul K. writes:

McCain’s willingness to mount a hard-nosed campaign against his primary opponent, J. D. Hayworth, when he wasn’t willing to mount one against Obama when he was running for the presidency, reminds me of a private exchange we had in May 2007, when McCain was pushing his Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act. I wrote you asking why McCain would cling to this position when it was a clear political loser.

You responded:

Paul, think of the way you feel about immigration, that you want it reduced, that the country depends on it, that this is absolutely of the first order of everything America is and everything we are as Americans. Well, that’s the way McCain feels about opening the borders. To him making America diverse, getting rid of one culture (because a country without a culture is morally superior to a country with a culture) is the very meaning of America.

Then think of the way you feel toward the open borders proponents, how you see them as traitors to everything America is, that you would never compromise with them. Well, that’s the way McCain feels about us—and more so, because he really despises traditional Americans as representing a principle of smallness and meanness that must be wiped out.

That’s why he’s doing this.

[end of your e-mail]

And yet now, to win a primary, McCain is willing to make a dizzying reversal of his former “convictions.” Politico has an article about this, titled “McCain pays heavy reelection price,” in which Hayworth argues that McCain will revert to his old ways once the election returns are finalized Tuesday. “If he were to have retired, he would’ve been a respected statesman. Now we all view him as a desperate political shape-shifter,” said Hayworth.

I don’t know how to explain this, except to suggest that maybe it would bother McCain a lot more to be beaten by J.D. Hayworth, one of those right-wingers he despises, than it bothered him to be beaten by Obama.

LA replies:

Yes. McCain is so desperate and determined not to be beaten by one of us, that he has voluntarily undergone what is for him the ultimate debasement: he’s pretending to be one of us.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 23, 2010 10:47 AM | Send