"They’ve learned nothing. Nada. Zippo. How about you?"
Posted on 05/22/2008 11:46:28 PM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
First, my friends, a reminder of what was printed right here on January 23, 2008:
After spearheading a disastrous, security-undermining illegal alien amnesty bill last year with Teddy Kennedy, “straight-talking” GOP Sen. John McCain claims he has seen the light. In TV appearances, he vows to put immigration enforcement first. On the campaign trail, he offers a perfunctory promise to strengthen border security and emphasizes the need to restore Americans’ trust in their government’s ability to defend the homeland.
“I got the message,” he told voters in South Carolina. “We will secure the borders first.”
But how can McCain cure citizens’ distrust when his own credibility on the issue remains fatally damaged? He doesn’t believe his own election-year spin. And he knows we know it. This is cynicism on steroids with a speedball chaser.
Not all of us have forgotten how the short-fused Arizona senator cursed good-faith opponents in his own party (“F**k you!” and “Chickensh*t” were the choice words he had for Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn during a spat over enforcement provisions). Not all of us have forgotten that he voted against barring felons from receiving amnesty benefits under his plan. Not all of us have forgotten the underhanded, debate-sabotaging manner in which McCain/Kennedy/Graham/Harry Reid conspired to ram their package down voters’ throats.
His admission of the shamnesty failure is grudging and bitter. While he now tells conservative voters what they want to hear about the need to build the southern border fence, he takes a contemptuous tone toward physical barriers when talking to businessmen. “By the way, I think the fence is least effective,” he told executives in Milwaukee, according to a recent Vanity Fair profile. “But I’ll build the goddamned fence if they want it.” Straight talk? Try hate talk.
For all his supposed, newfound enlightenment about what most Americans want—protection against invasion, commitment to the rule of law, meaningful employer sanctions, an end to sanctuary cities, enforcement-by-attrition plus deportation reform, and an end to special illegal alien benefits that invite more law-breaking–The Maverick remains a Geraldo Rivera Republican. Like the ethnocentric cable TV host who can’t string a sentence about immigration together without drowning in emotional demagoguery, McCain naturally resorts to open-borders platitudes when pressed for enforcement specifics.
And, now, straight from the campaign trail with Arnold “Move Left” Schwarzenegger, McCain has shed every last pretense that he “got the message” from grass-roots immigration enforcement proponents and is back to his full, open-borders shamnesty push. No surprise to any of you. But his complete regression back to the “comprehensive immigration reform” euphemism is a notable milestone.
Also, you don’t need to guess anymore how he would have voted on the Feinstein/Craig illegal alien farmworker amnesty:
Republican presidential candidate John McCain joined Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in calling today for comprehensive immigration reform, including guest worker visas to bring employees to California’s Silicon Valley and the state’s vast agricultural fields.
The two men brought up the issue at McCain’s prompting during a global competitiveness roundtable featuring California technology executives and entrepreneurs.
Asked by Silicon Valley panelists on what he would do to grant more visa for skilled technology workers, McCain broadly advocated the comprehensive immigration reform plan he had backed with Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy in Congress.
The same issue brought McCain intense criticism during the Republican presidential primary from conservatives who assailed him as soft on illegal immigration and an advocate of amnesty.
But today McCain, the now presumptive GOP presidential nominee, said an immigration program is needed that protects America’s borders and national security. While he called for punishing employers who hire illegal immigrants, he also advocated a humane approach that treats illegal workers as “God’s children.”
McCain said they should be allowed to seek legal status in a “humane and comprehensive fashion” through a program “they can count on and trust.”
Responding to a question about so-called H1-B visas for Silicon Valley workers, McCain said: “We have to attract the best and brightest minds. It isn’t just H1-B visas. In our agricultural sector, they can’t find workers as well. We need a temporary agriculture (worker) program.”
Schwarzenegger echoed McCain’s remarks after the Arizona senator asked his opinion on the topic.
“We need to change the system. All this is part of a comprehensive immigration reform. You can’t piecemeal this thing,” Schwarzenegger said.
While the governor said, “securing the border is extremely important” to California he added: “You have to have the courage to do this kind of immigration reform so we can bring people into this country legally.”
Schwarzenegger said he supported a pathway to legal status so that more people can have “legal drivers licenses” and “everyone would have bank accounts…and there would be background checks so that there would be no criminal element in this country.”
Same old, same old about sham background checks.
They’ve learned nothing. Nada. Zippo. How about you?
***
More from the NYT:
“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.”
"They’ve learned nothing. Nada. Zippo. How about you?"
Ping!
“Shamnesty John McCain is back in full force: No, he never “got the message”
Just remember, this is as far to the “right” as Juan McCain will ever get. Once the GE kicks off in full force, he will make the inevitable leftward swing. Is it possible that if Hillary! were to win the Democrat nomination, SHE would be the right winger in the race?
Looks like California really wants to be a third world country.
Looks as if Juan McCain wants all the rest of us to be one, just as badly.
Reason Numero Uno that I WILL NOT VOTE FOR this stupid, lying POS of a pendejo. No sir, no way, no how. Having been a U.S. senator for umpteen years does not qualify one for the job for which Juan Numbnuts McCain has applied. In fact, it should go a long way toward DISqualifying all three of the wannabes now in the race. The congress, in general, and the senate in particular is comprised of 535 of the dumbest, lyingest, do-nothing egos in existence.
McCain is right: mojados are God’s children. But they are God’s children who should be returned to Mexico as quickly as possible.
I’m against illegal immigration, but there’s no need to machine-gun the poor bastards at the border (as a lot of countries would do). Instead, I think they should be humanely rounded up, humanely confined, and humanely deported as soon as humanly possible.
And, lest anyone call me a xenophobe, I like Mexicans, and I speak and read Spanish.
I will never vote for Juan McAmnesty.
I welcome every one of them here. Every one of them.
Then do so in your house -- on your dime, and yours alone -- by all means.
“I welcome every one of them here. Every one of them.”
Good. You take responsibility for the drunk bastardos killing Americans on the highways.
There are quite a few who have moved into my small central Wisconsin town. Give me your address and I'll send them to your house.
End Times Crusader, it that you?
Vote McCain—the candidate for new, improved slavery!
McCain in the membrane.
“I for one welcome our new alien overlords.”
OK It has been told again and again by Paulists,Obama’s trolls,angry conservatives....
Try to keep your head cool if you’re none of the above.
One fight at a time!
I’d say defeat OBAMA first and then try to handle McCAIN and rebuild a strong conservative movement.
BTW just red a recent article from Fred Thompson in the Wall Street Journal on conservatism
I never thought for one minute that he got the message. McCain is and always has been a contemptible lying little weasel that doesn’t care what anyone else wants. If he wants it he will do whatever it takes to get it no matter what tricks he has to play to get it.
lets thank FDT for woosing out or doing a half hearted campaign.
My head's plenty "cool," thanks. I'm simply neither delusional nor imbecilic enough to delude myself into believing that a permanent voting 'Rat majority -- the inevitable end result of another amnesty of the size desired by Juan McCain (30 to 40 million) -- would be in any way, shape or form something from which conservatism could "rebuild," in either our lifetime, or our children's.
One enemy is overseas; the other, pouring in across our borders, right now. Learn to prioritize worth a damn... or: learn to love being a resident alien within "Mexico II."
Pfft.
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