McCain Plays Both Sides of the Fence

Were you one of those people looking for a conservative candidate late last year? I certainly was, and I was pretty certain that John McCain was not a conservative. To say that he got slammed in October could be an understatement.

McCain spent most of the fall preaching “comprehensive immigration reform” which included a border security program, guest worker program and of course, a path to citizenship for illegal aliens. Almost everyone called this amnesty even though he proposed that illegal aliens would have to pay “hefty fines” upwards of $1,000.

Like they would actually have to pay a dime. [eyes rolling]

Conservatives slammed him at every turn for his amnesty program. He relented; with his fingers crossed.

“I understand why you would call it a, quote, shift,” McCain told us in early November. “I say it is a lesson learned about what the American people’s priorities are. And their priority is to secure the borders.”

Senator, all we want is for current laws to be enforced. We have laws on the books, drafted by the legislature and signed into law. We want the current laws that are on the books enforced, period.

When you’re a Republican in a tight race with a Democrat – that might have a half-billion dollars to spend on promotion – you need to get votes where you can. When you are in front of different audiences, you just need to change the tone of your speech to give it a different meaning.

But McCain needs more. He’s moving around the country speaking in private – without the media present – to Hispanic groups to give them the wink-wink, nod-nod speech. He knows what he said in November, and knows that it won’t go over big with the open borders crowd.

Malkin provides us with some information about a recent private, invitation-only meeting with Hispanics, and here is a link to the original post at FreeRepublic by Rosanna Pulido, who attended the event. It was touted as a “Hispanic Voices Reception” with McCain.

Although the inviation (sic) said we would be able to ask questions, that “question ” time with John Mc Cain never happened. That was ok with me, I never had the intention of asking a question, I knew exactly the kind of open borders crowd I was with.

John Mc Cain’s favorite words of the evening were Comprehensive Immigration Reform. But he started out first of all saying if he is gonna win the Presidential election he will need the support of the Latino community.

He said ” My state has been enriched by the Hispanic culture in Arizona.”

Then John MC Cain asked a question “Did you know this? I bet some of you did not know that Spanish was spoken in Arizona before English” …Loud cheers from the audience. (Ok John Mc Cain What is your AZATLAN POINT?)

Then he said ” I want to have some straight talk about our relationship with Mexico,our closest neighbor and dearest friend” He talked about the Mexican President fighting the drug cartels.

Then John Mc Cain aid the exact thing I came to hear, he said “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.” (The crowd goes wild)”It is a Federal Responsibility” he said and continued ” we also need a temporary guest worker program”

He then told a story about a day laborer who got picked up this morning, worked all day and then never got paid…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.

John McCain talked about a debate he was in about enforcing the law and he says that the “other side had a lot of “Rhetoric” “you know what I am talking about!” he said.

I emphasized the above line that really ticks me off. Senator, we do have a federal policy – it’s the current law, and it’s not being enforced.

Jonathan Martin at Politico.com has more. The base is not happy.