Posted on 07/06/2008 11:03:33 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
Presidential candidates who seem to change positions as they change audiences should avoid accusing others of flip-flopping. It makes them look silly.
That's the lesson for John McCain, who has criticized Barack Obama for reversing his views on campaign finance and easing off his keep-up-with-
Hillary-Clinton opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Obama also flip-flopped on building hundreds of miles of fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border; the Illinois Democrat voted for the fence before he was against it.
“This election is about trust and trusting people's word,” McCain recently told supporters in Louisville, Ky. “And unfortunately, apparently on several items, Senator Obama's word cannot be trusted.”
Obama may be the candidate of change, but he deserves to be hammered for changing course on some issues. Yet McCain isn't one to talk. When it comes to consistency, the Arizona senator has a soft spot of his own – immigration, once a signature issue.
And during a recent speech, Obama went right for it.
“One place where Senator McCain used to offer change was on immigration,” Obama said last month at the annual conference of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. “He was a champion of comprehensive reform, and I admired him for it. But when he was running for his party's nomination, he walked away from that commitment, and he's said he wouldn't even support his own legislation if it came up for a vote.”
I'm glad to hear that Obama admired McCain for championing immigration reform, since the presumptive Democratic nominee kept mum on the issue in the Senate and for much of the 16-month-long primary battle with Hillary Clinton. Besides, for those of us who support comprehensive immigration reform and worry that the debate has been poisoned by racism, quick fixes and scapegoating, there are many reasons to admire McCain.
Among them is the fact that McCain wasn't afraid to stand up to members of his party, as when – during a debate – he dismissed Rep. Tom Tancredo's nativist take on what it means to be an American as “beyond my realm of thinking.” Or when, according to former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., McCain scolded GOP colleagues for attempting to declare English the national language and warned them that Hispanics would see it as a divisive and racist loyalty oath.
It's true that McCain said during a debate in January that he would not vote for the bill that he twice introduced with Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. But I interpreted that to mean that Congress had made its views on the legislation clear by killing it, and that McCain realized that he would have to propose different legislation to achieve his reform goals.
After all, in recent weeks McCain has broadcast his intention, if elected, to press for comprehensive immigration reform. Still, he also tells Republican groups that he “got the message” that we must secure the borders first before we decide what to do with the 12 million illegal immigrants already here.
No wonder a lot of people think McCain is talking out of both sides of his mouth on immigration. He isn't. Anyone who says that this is a departure from McCain-Kennedy needs to go back and read that legislation as amended last year. As the proponents of comprehensive reform said at the time – including some of the same people now painting McCain as a flip-flopper – the bill had enforcement “triggers” that had to be met before any legalization kicked in.
So Obama is wrong. This isn't a flip-flop. McCain is basically in the same place he was a year ago. If you want to fault McCain, fault him for failing to communicate that and making a mess of his own position. He should have one speech on the subject, and he should deliver it to groups on both the right and the left.
McCain can finally set the record straight in a couple of weeks when he addresses the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza here in San Diego. When he gets before that audience, he needs to say – clearly and unequivocally – what he would do as president to fix the immigration system, and in exactly what order.
Then John McCain won't have to worry about being misunderstood.
But I trust you Johnny.
Think you'll get a kick out if this.
I trust that McCain will give illegals amnesty (regardless of what HE calls it) as soon as he takes office. It seems to be #1 on his priority list. That tells me is representing foreigners more than American citizens.
pfffffffffftttttttt on McCain!
Navarette acting as McCain-apologist trumps Deroy Murdock’s drooling over Rudy, LOL.
“Securing The Borders First” is a face saving slogan that has allowed McCain and Conservatives to temporarily put immigration on the back burner.
I must have missed that news cycle.
How is speaking English "divisive and racist" and what the heck is wrong with a loyalty oath, anyway?
McCain finally got something 100% correct. It is also the reason I will vote for neither man.
I can hardly wait. /s
Totally agree.
“When he gets before that audience, he needs to say – clearly and unequivocally – what he would do as president to fix the immigration system, and in exactly what order.”
Hey, Navarette, there’s really nothing wrong with the immigration system. The problems are foreigners who have no regard for US law, and the American presidents and legislators and executive branch officials charged with formulating and enforcing laws concerning immigration, who are deliberately negligent in performing that duty of enforcement.
And, no, non-citizen Hispanics have no right whatsoever to break into the US illegally and squat here and demand “rights” which they don’t have. Hispanics have created two or three dozen nations, starting at the Rio Grande and going to the tip of South America. Those are the Hispanic nations, and that’s where they have rights, not here in the US, a nation that was NOT created by Hispanics .
Yeah——the two must have suckup contests-—to see who can last the longest.
John McCain has been going across the country having “PRIVATE” meetings with Hispanics (read "SECRET" meetings). John McCain’s favorite words at these meetings is Comprehensive Immigration Reform .......saying if he is gonna win the Presidential election he will need the support of the Latino community.
He likes to say: ” My state has been enriched by the Hispanic culture in Arizona. I bet some did not know that Spanish was spoken in Arizona before English” with loud cheers from the audience.
AZTLAN IS HERE Watch for an October Surprise---Juan holds a SIGNING CEREMONY IN TIJUANA TO GIVEBACK THE SW AS A SIGN OF HIS TOTAL ALLEGIANCE TO MEXICO.
Juan tells latinos: “I want to have some straight talk about our relationship with Mexico, our closest neighbor and dearest friend” and fighting drug cartels. “I was proud to work for Comprehensive Immigration Reform and if I am elected President I assure you that in 2009 I will ask Congress to pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform.” (Picture latinos going wild)
“It is a Federal Responsibility” Juan says. ” We also need a temporary guest worker program. We have no Federal Policy, we cannot allow this to happen, he said." He repeated: "I assure you that I will work for Comprehensive Immigration Reform."
============================================
Tipster Edgar M. sends an English translation of an article from Diario Libre touting McCain’s promise to renew his shamnesty push for the “undocumented:”
New York - The Republican candidate for the White House, Senator John McCain, promised that if he wins, a day after he is sworn in as a new president of the United States, he will pressure Congress to enact a law immediately in favor of immigration reform.
The candidate that appears today eight points behind his Democrat rival Barack Obama, did the pronouncement in an interview that he granted to the Hispanic newspaper La Opinion in Los Angeles…
McCain said that it is completely false that [he] has abandoned his original commitment to fight for reform for the more than 12 million undocumented immigrants that reside in the United States and that includes the failed proposal of President Bush, to secure the borders first.
“This reform will be a priority in my administration because it is a convincing federal responsibility”, added the contender of the Republican Party. “We will undertake immigration reform and on the day after my inauguration, I will ask Congress to reconsider it, although I believe that first we have to secure our borders, set in motion a plan for guest workers that works and to focus on the issue of the undocumented in a humane and compassionate way.”
Unfortunately, this is not the problem. If it were, it would be solved very quickly.
If I could earn 5 to 10 times as much money for my family, and my government explicitly encouraged me to do it, and the host country's government implicitly encouraged me to to do it, would I go to Canada or Mexico or even Burma to work? You're damn right I would. This is not the fault of the illegals.
This is the fault of American employers who are using illegal aliens as taxpayer subsidized low-wage labor. If we started enforcing existing law against employers who have made this problem what it is, these people would go home very quickly. No jobs, no illegals. Unfortunately, these employers -- many of them "Republicans" are not only guilty of violating the law in hiring them, they turn around and grease the palms of politicians to keep the system intact, or even worse call for "comprehensive immigration reform."
There will at least be some justice when that happens. The employers calling for this reform will lose the subsidized illegal labor they've been forcing the rest of us to pay for, and will have literally thousands of job actions organized against them when the unions come in to organize the newly minted Democrat workforce.
Unfortunately, at that point, the rest of us will have even bigger problems...
“If I could earn 5 to 10 times as much money for my family, and my government explicitly encouraged me to do it, and the host country’s government implicitly encouraged me to to do it, would I go to Canada or Mexico or even Burma to work? You’re damn right I would. This is not the fault of the illegals.”
Of course it’s the fault of the illegals, as well as the government of Mexico, the US and employers in the US. And then, once they’ve broken our immigration laws, many or most break more laws by using false documents, or false identities.
Do you think that every foreigner who would like to come here has come here illegally, or soon will? There are millions who are not breaking our laws to come here illegally, who just stay home, or perhaps are able to eventually immigrate legally.
By excusing so much so easily, you are among the enablers.
“McCain is unclear on immigration (He IS? That’s news to the rest of us.)”
He is very clear. The only problem is that the message changes depending upon the audience.
I live for that thread. That is going to be like dropping a ton of chum into shark infested waters.
Nope. Can't fault McCain for that either: has has deliberately made of mess of his own position in order to disguise it. McCain has been in bed with the drive-by's so long he thinks conservatives are as brain dead as the erstwhile Perotistas, moderates, middle-of-the-roaders and other morons who vote for President on the basis of name recognition in the primaries (if they bother to show up) or the last yard sign they see on the way into the firehall in the general election. Unfortunately him for him, conservatives are too well informed to fall for it. The only votes he'll be getting from us will be "no" votes against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Middle-Named. And he will lose yet more of us if he shows up in front of La Raza or any other Hispanic interest group and delivers the speech this author is calling for: it's one thing to pull the lever for the lesser of two evils, quite another to do it when Mr. Lesser keeps poking a stick in your eye.
"Amnesty today, Amnesty tomorrow, Amnesty forever," is McCain's credo. Apparently only the author of this piece is confused about that. What McCain should not be confused about is this: Hispanics are breaking two-to-one against him. Those numbers will not change and will only get worse for Republicans over time -- unless the party is willing to make increasingly immoral and racist choices as the Democrats have done since Lyndon Johnson.
Members of his party? Something like 70%-80% of the American people opposed "comprehensive immigration reform." That means a huge chunk of Democrat voters too. This author is drinking and selling Kool-Aid.
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