McCain Backpedals On Border Enforcement?

Remember when he said “The lesson is they want the borders secured first.”

That was then. This is now.

Turns out McCain may have learned another lesson from last summer’s immigration debate. The same old lesson.

“Unless we enact comprehensive immigration reform I don’t think you can take it piecemeal,” he explained Monday, answering a question about providing visas for skilled workers.

“In other words,” he said, “because as soon you and I start to talk about the highly skilled workers, our agricultural interest people are going to say, ‘Look we need ag workers, too.’ And then somebody’s going say, 'We need the DREAM Act,' and then somebody’s going to say, 'We’ve got to enforce our border.'”

“We get in this kind of a circular firing squad on immigration reform in the Congress of the United States," McCain said, "and the lesson I learned from it is we’ve got to have comprehensive immigration reform.”

(h/t V the K)

Allow me to take this opportunity to officially endorse Hillary Clinton for President.

I’ve been thinking about this and here’s my reasons why…

The reality is there’s going to be a Democratic President someday. Hillary with all her faults is also ruthlessly practical and may in fact be the best we can hope for in a modern Democrat. Don’t think so? Who else do you have in mind? JFK and Truman aren’t coming back and if they did, they wouldn’t be Democrats.

Don’t forget, the Nutroots and Andrew Sullivan hate her. That’s got to count for something.

I know this is a calculated gamble in a couple of areas.

I am betting (hoping) that the appointments she gets to the Court, if elected, will be to replace Stevens, Ginsburg and maybe Souter. I am gambling that none of the conservatives, and for purposes of discussion that includes Justice Kennedy, quit or die.

I am also gambling (and this admittedly is the bigger one) that President Hillary will be the Hillary of last summer on Iraq when she was talking much tougher and willing to see things through.

An addendum...one thing about Hillary is she isn't stupid. Now that things are better in Iraq and there's some hope, is she going to walk away or try and gab the credit for the improvements on her watch? If she wins she won't owe a damn thing to the Surrender Now! monkeys. She hates them and they hate her. She'll rearrange the furniture and claim the credit for W's work.

On domestic policy, yeah, she’ll be liberal but I think 8 years in the Senate may have tempered some of her crazier shit. On healthcare Chuck Schumer says they won’t try old style HillaryCare because it’s too complicated. I think that’s pre-election BS, they will try it as soon as they can but the fact he wants it off the table means it’s unpopular and won’t be easy to do.

As we learned from Democrats, if you have 40+ votes in the Senate, it's not that hard to gum up the works on a lot of things. There's something liberating about being the loyal opposition as opposed to carrying water for a President of your party.

Tax cuts? Unless I am wrong they are sunset so it will take positive legislative action to keep them. Guess what? No matter who is President a Democratic Congress isn’t going to do that. I think a tax hike is inevitable, the only question is how big? Anyone want to bet their life on President McCain holding the line against Ted Kennedy and company the way George W. Bush has?

On the upside…Republicans are likely to pick up seats in Congress in 2010 under Hillary (not so under Maverick). More importantly, as a conservative I don’t want the Republican party to get the idea that the way to win is with a guy like McCain. 4 years totally in the wilderness will do wonders to concentrate the mind of the movement.

Don't get me wrong, in a lot of ways Hillary would be a lousy President but I don’t think she’d be that much worse or a bigger gamble for conservatives than McCain.

In the long run, the country will be fine and conservatives will be better off after a Clinton term or two (though to be honest, the idea of two terms scares me but this is based on some assumptions and gambles).

I say we take our medicine will Hills and regroup from there.

Now if Obama is the Democrat nominee, all best are off.

posted by DrewM. at 06:39 PM

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