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.”
One would have to be insane to think that John McCain is anything other than an amnesty loving moron. I know what he is. Everyone on this board knows what he is. I also know that nothing will stop Obama from doing amnesty ten minutes after he’s in office. The only difference is that McCain /is/ a sucker for opinion polls. Which means we gotta keep the fire lit and raging under him the entire time he’ll be in office.
We can’t let up over judges, or amnesty, or a zillion other ideas he has. But you know the difference between him and Obama? One, McCain listens to opinion polls. Two, the /rest/ of the time, we don’t have to sit on him, because he does generally stay on the conservative side of the fence.
So, yeah, folks are more than able to hop on over to Barr, or just not vote, but be aware what you’ll get. I knew what I was getting with Schwarzenegger. I also knew what the alternative would be. Do I pretend like others do in my state that had Bustamante won or Gray Davis not been voted out that magically some conservative would rise up to defeat the liberal machine? No, I don’t. I know how screwed up our state party is. We ran yet another empty suit for the senate. That same empty suit would have been run for governor, and lost.
So yeah, McCain’s dead wrong on a hell of a lot of issues, and I’m going to be lighting up his campaign office, just as much as I’ll light up the White House switchboard once he’s in office. Because the alternative is someone who’s /never/ going to listen to us, who is going to constantly go the other way, and no, no magic horse is going to ride in to the White House in four years to ‘save’ our party. We’ve put magic makeup on Huckabee, and Romney, and a host of others to try to make them look like a conservative. It doesn’t work. We’re stuck with the idiots we got, and we’ve got to convert /them/ back to the conservative party, not sit around waiting for them to ‘come around to our thinking.’ It’s not going to happen.
We’ve played not having a national agenda for over ten years now - let’s get some set, let’s make real achievable goals. That, to me, means undoing a lot of the damage to the judiciary, through hammering McCain on appointments. To kill shamnesty, we gotta be outrageously loud, or it’s /always/ going to be in the wings, and is there a single person on the board who remembers it was Reagan who brought it to us the first time around?
I learned a lot. I learned I can’t ignore my party, I have to be proactive in it. I hope others learned more than sitting it out.
And there are conservatives here who will vote for him because he is the lesser of two evils ...I say stay home and send a message . If Obama wins maybe THEN what’s left of the Republican party will get the message .
seems too many are too comfortable to do what needs to be done, I agree with you completely. We have to have a little hardship to make things right.I'd kinda like to see obama or hillary win with the lowest voter turnout ever.
Enjoy your victory then.
Pfft. Typical Team Juan rotespeak. My "victory" will be watching Republicans actually vigorously opposing the more lunatic liberal proposals from (say) a President Obama, rather than meekly rubber stamping the more lunatic liberal proposals from a President McCain. Presumably, any genuine conservative worth a damn would infinitely prefer the former to the latter, as well.
Or perhaps I simply expect too much in the way of conservative principle, from some pantingly eager accomodationists hereabouts.
Malkin makes Obama look like a Rhodes scholar. Did she just get off the boat?
My Tagline says all I want to say at this time! !
My tagline nods and smiles approvingly at your own. ;)
This proves it. I'm a friggin' psychic.
For my next prediction: November voting stations will be overrun by bad smelling Obama acolytes and *crickets*.
I said it before- I can tell when somones lying. Its easy here cause McCain isn’t a good lier. He can barely get enough energy to talk as if he actually wants fence, but you know its just because he lost the fight, and as soon as he gets the means (a Democratic congress) he will. And he will in a way that Democrat president couldn’t. Just like it took Nixon to go to China; it’ll take a no-borders wussie like McCain to make this go over with people.
Hardly, if an amnesty bill made it to either of these bozos desks it would be signed within the minute. The only hope is to keep that bill from ever getting to that point in the first place.
Let's ask Supreme Court Justice Harriet Meirs for her opinion on this, or ask one of the millions in line to apply for their new 'temporary' guest worker card that are standing in line right now.
Oh, right, I keep forgetting, it's /so/ much easier to say that everyone sits on the sidelines and doesn't fight. So, your victory is an empty one to me, it's the easy way out, because you know as well as I do that Nancy Pelosi who will hold Obama by the short hairs every day of his time in office will shove tax hikes, liberal policies, global warming, pandering agenda with every media outlet cheering her on while silencing opposition except for the token replies by people put up as racist xenophobes who want to cram their religious ideas down everyone's throat.
I didn't vote for McCain in the primaries, I don't /want/ him as our candidate. I wanted Fred Thompson. I still want Fred Thompson. I didn't get what I wanted, and sure, I could sit on my hands, until Obama's elected and we could have yet another Jimmy Carter drive the economy and our nation into the gutter. So, yes, this is Juan McAmnesty, the one who wants to silence free speech, who is against tax breaks, and would likely attend a gay marriage. And I'll light a fire under him every time he does that crap. Certainly isn't as creative as looking smug and everything.
My party is a disaster, mostly because we've given it over to a bunch of far too comfortable morons who are more eager to protect their position than maintaining the conservative ideals they're supposed to.
A admirably succinct and unflinching of Juan McCain, down to the very last liberal iota. Many thanks for taking the time and effort to lend support to my point; presumably, you'll be supporting some genuinely conservative third party candidate now, after all.
That's all based on the baseline assumption, of course, that you actually do prefer candidates who (in your own words) "maintain the conservative ideals they're supposed to." If not... well: both major parties are running morons potentially more to your liking.
John McCain is Lucy, McCainiacs are Charlie Brown, and the football is a secure border.
A natural born tagline, if ever I've seen one! ;)
After eight years of BJ Clinton, no, I won't be. Voted for Perot twice, both times not just lost, but lost hugely. Which oddly enough changed virtually nothing. Congress, when faced with unprecedented tax income, decided to expand social programs like no tomorrow. When 'conservatives' retook congress, sure, they gave token resistance, then went along with Clinton program after program. The peace of mind of my vote meant nothing.
Strangely enough, there's just a bit more respect when you call a politicians office and say 'I voted for you, and I'm pissed' vs 'I never voted for you, will never vote for you, and I think you're wrong.'
no, I won't be.
Eschew supporting any genuinely conservative candidate in favor of one demonstrably less so, and you lose any conceivable right to complain afterward, once the latter (inevitably) reverts to type. Nor need any conservative voter take suggestions or admonishments from such a quarter seriously. Once you've voluntarily abandoned the field of play in question, yours is nothing more than the nose-pressed-to-the-window opinion of an outside observer.
Vote for any liberal, leftist or socialist as best pleases you, of course. No need to primp the decision up with decorative bunting or gardyloo, either, by way of public justification. You are, evidently, comfortable (or at least comfortably resigned) to a permanent 'Rat voting majority, should Juan actually win; your reasons for said accommodation are, blessedly, yours and yours alone.
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