That’s Drudge’s headline, not mine. According to the AP, Senator McCain has abandoned his support of an immigration reform package that would include a path to citizenship for undocumented workers, focusing instead on a “scaled-down” proposal that deals with little more than enforcement.
Considering the damage the issue has done to McCain so far, this seems like a pretty naked attempt to salvage his campaign by adopting a position more popular with the GOP’s angry white base. Outside the Beltway is more forgiving:
The YahooNews headline, “McCain changes course on immigration,” along with the insinuation that this is a radical policy change, strikes me as unfair. McCain led an incredibly unpopular effort that failed. Now, he’s trying to get a watered down version that takes out the most controversial elements passed. That’s the way the process is supposed to work.
Actually, the major provisions of the bill were broadly popular. According to a New York Times/CBS poll, for instance, two-thirds of Americans supported the bill’s outline for a path to citizenship — the very “amnesty” so vehemently opposed by the GOP fringe. The bill was “incredibly unpopular” with the small right-wing Republican base, though it was criticized for very different reasons by some immigrant advocates. The fact that McCain now supports a version of immigration “reform” that drops all the provisions opposed by the conservative base suggests pretty plainly that the move was not meant to help build consensus around a new and better version of the legislation, but to rid the candidate of the primary-election albatross around his neck. In other words, it was an opportunistic flip-flop.
2 Responses to ““McCain Flip-Flops on Immigration””
[...] been replaced by something of an eerie silence, which might not be much better. Will his rather tawdry flip-flop on immigration help McCain get things moving [...]
Something to say?
The immigration issue is so hot and current that I don’t think people are going to forget what he just did. Watch us here in his home state. We are NEVER going to forget what he did.
Left by MJ
August 3, 2007 at 4:35pm