Grassroots message not taken — We’re getting this one… one way or another!
The bogus McCain-Kennedy “comprehensive immigration reform” meme will simply not die it due death. When McCain-Kennedy first leaped upon the scene it was met with such a firestorm for resistance from the American people that the bill was effectively rendered DOA.
When John McCain was out on the stump fighting for our party’s nomination and eventually became our presumptive nominee, he had assuaged our (conservatives) fears by saying he got the message and was going for securing our boarders first. And that lasted for a while until…. yesterday!
Yesterday, at an event with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger McCain resurrected McCain-Kennedy saying:
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.
He went on to say:
they should be allowed to seek legal status in a “humane and comprehensive fashion” through a program “they can count on and trust.”
And Schwarzenegger chimed in:
“We need to change the system. All this is part of a comprehensive immigration reform. You can’t piecemeal this thing,” Schwarzenegger said.
Just great! I knew it… boy did I know this was going to come back - I just didn’t think it would be so soon!!! Never trust a crapweasel, Period!
McCain was quoted thusly in the NYT
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.”
Now I know we need immigration reform… I’m under no delusions here, but do we have to use the same language as was used in one of the most harmful bills ever to be drafted? Are we again going to work under the charade of “this is not amnesty”?
I hope McCain and his acolytes have learned from past mistakes and do the right thing here. Changing the goals and the language to first, help secure our boarders, then work on immigration reform that includes reforming the magnets that drew illegals here in the first place, we have to address welfare reform and hand out social programs with any immigration reform bills!
This is highly unlikely so I won’t hold my breath… Yet another thing conservatives have to be disappointed with our nominee.
Could McCain have waited until he was president to stick this too us?
H/T to Michelle Malkin
McQueeg never got the votes of a plurality of people who list "immigration" as one of their big issues - so he has precisely little reason to listen to us nativists now. Right?
So to answer - McKang learned everything he needed to learn from this experience. He learned that he can win the nomination of a nominally conservative political party without ever winning the votes of conservatives, that he can continue to ram a shiv in our necks and with impunity say, "Kiss it, jerks - it's me or The Obamessiah", and that he doesn't give a damn about a single office down ballot (as McAmnesty is sure to make an already bad situation down the ticket even worse) so long as He wins.
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Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.