Posted on 03/17/2008 4:22:32 PM PDT by jdm
Aside the most obvious case -- his own -- John McCain cited two recent examples of GOP candidates taking a hard-line on immigration to no avail (And note the elbow thrown at a certain former colleague who came after McCain in the primary).
My colleague Josh Kraushaar writes up McCain's comments:
On NPR’s “Morning Edition” today, John McCain suggested that strong anti-immigrant rhetoric contributed to two recent, high-profile GOP Congressional losses – of former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, who badly lost to Sen. Bob Casey in 2006, and Jim Oberweis, who lost the heavily Republican seat of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert this month in a special election.
"I know that there have been some races, like here in Pennsylvania, where Senator Santorum emphasized that issue [immigration] and lost by a large number,” McCain said on NPR.
“We just had a loss of Denny Hastert's seat out in Illinois. The Republican candidate out there, I am told, had very strong anti-immigrant rhetoric also, so I would hope that many of our Republican candidates would understand the political practicalities of this issue.”
McCain campaigned for Oberweis last month, helping the campaign raise about $257,000. Oberweis will be on the ballot again in November, against Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.)
During the campaign, Oberweis proposed his own plan to crack down on illegal immigration, and aired a television ad arguing that politicians in Washington "can't seem to fix" the problem.
McCain’s advice is going against the strategy of a handful of leading Republican Congressional candidates. Just today, one of the Republicans’ top Congressional recruits, Hazleton mayor Lou Barletta, invited all three presidential candidates “to come to our great city to discuss the issue of illegal immigration in the United States.”
Barletta, who is running against Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.), has built a national political following over his strident opposition to illegal immigration and the punitive measures that he took as mayor to curb it.
Here, let me help. John McCain is the Manchurian Candidate. There. Not so difficult.
Tolerance of what? People ILLEGALLY sneaking into our country? If we're now "tolerant" of that then this country's finished, so what the hell difference does it make who wins the election?
"Tolerance" is just a PC term for lower intellectual and ethical standards. Colleges are what they are today precisely because our leaders abdicated their responsibility on a large number of issues forty years ago, and the result is that today our leaders advocate even more irresponsible policies because the dumbed-down graduates desire even lower standards.
I'm sitting here right now with a copy of my college's student newspaper. Here are "highlights" from this issue:
**A column defending Eliot Spitzer on the grounds that cavorting with prostitutes is no big deal.
**An article praising a professor for her concern for "gay rights" and for her outspoken condemnation of the recent "noose hangings".
**A profile of a Filipina feminist and her ethno-centric art works.
**An article telling us what a genius Spike Lee is.
**A column asserting that the Patriot Act has turned America into a fascist police state. This is part of a weekly series called "War Watch" which presents (of course) only one side.
So excuse me if I'm not impressed that college educated Americans are increasingly idiotic. If McCain was a leader, he'd explain why opening the borders is dangerous, rather than throwing up his hands and conceding our national sovereignty. We're in this mess because we failed to fight the culture war forty years ago.
I’m amazed that the two Senators from freaking ARIZONA voted against that bill. Goldwater must be spinning.
BUMPED for The Truth!
Yes.
I think Kyl’s vote was a parlimentary maneuver. Since the amendment was going down to defeat, someone had to be on the winning side in order to reintroduce it later.
I hope that is the case.
Don’t be so hard on Kyl. See post #47.
Juanito, you should immediately come clean and state your heart-felt need for blanket amnesty witha path to citizenship.
Just so I can feel EVEN BETTER watching your sorry arse lose in November.
That was my first reaction. Jesu! The guy STILL doesn't have a clue! That solidifies my Third Party vote.
< crickets >
You can count many members here at FR among those for whom the victory is in the election. They don't really seem to care what happens to anything as long as there is not a democrat in the White House.
This article just enforces my disgust with McCain as a candidate.
You might have a point there, shrinkermd. But look at how you phrase your point-— you write about “anti-illegal rhetoric” whereas John McCain specifically accuses Rick Santorum along with other mainstream conservatives, of being “anti-immigrant” or at least of campaigning as such. That's equivalent to calling anyone to the right of him on the issue of illegal immigration a bigot. It should be obvious to Senator McCain that a person can be anti-illegal immigration, or even be for decreasing the amount of legal immigration, without being “anti-immigrant”. It should be, but apparently it isn't.
Senator McCain's self-righteous arrogance is similar to that of the sort of global warming radical who believes anyone who disagrees with Al Gore must at best care very little about the environment and more likely despise it; that self-righteous cynical arrogance about those to the right of him on issues like immigration, or global warming, or campaign finance reform actually bothers me more than his stances on those issues, particularly since I plan to vote for him.
Want to come up with an honest example?
McCain at CPAC:
And while I and other Republican supporters of the bill were genuine in our intention to restore control of our borders, we failed, for various and understandable reasons, to convince Americans that we were. I accept that, and have pledged that it would be among my highest priorities to secure our borders first, and only after we achieved widespread consensus that our borders are secure, would we address other aspects of the problem in a way that defends the rule of law and does not encourage another wave of illegal immigration.
But when he had a chance to show good faith that he would keep his promise by voting for the Chambliss "zero tolerance" amendment last week, he skipped town. He knew that La Raza was watching, and he (foolishly IMO) will do his damndest to compete with the Dems to get their votes.
I was really hoping that he would keep his word so I could vote for him.
I can’t remember specifically about Martinez, but I know he never spoke in favor of amnesty before being elected. A lot of us in Florida were fooled by Mel because he talked tough on a lot of things, and because President Bush came down here and specifically asked us to support him. It was quite a bait and switch. I voted for Martinez because the Commander in Chief in wartime asked me to, and I’ve felt like the world’s biggest schmuck about it ever since.
That’s one of the many reasons I’m not voting for McCain. I’ve already voted for my quota of backstabbing RINOs, and I’m tired of being the Republican Party’s useful idiot.
Still waiting for someone who won on running against illegal immigration. No answer yet.
>>Still waiting for someone who won on running against illegal immigration. No answer yet.<<
John Carter (TX-31), Ted Poe(TX-02), John Culberson(TX-07), Brian Bilbray (CA-50), Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46). You didn’t notice that someone else posted Heath Schuler (NC-11). Lou Barletta of Hazleton, PA, won both the D and R primaries.
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