Many of my readers and friends have questioned my decision to get behind the McCain bandwagon. After the initial humming and hawing, the root of the quandary seems to lie in the amnesty issue. And to that, I must admit, I am dumbfounded myself.
The election results speak for themselves. The base of the Republican party would rather vote for someone who has dropped out of the race than support McCain.
Whether its McCain-Feingold, amnesty or now supporting efforts to reduce global warming, McCain is frequently on the wrong side of the political aisle. And that just does not ruffle the feathers of many GOP members well.
At a recent Canyon County Republicans forum held here in Idaho about one third of the candidates indicated that they themselves would not be voting for John McCain in the upcoming Idaho primary on May 27th. This despite the fact that no one other than McCain has a snowball’s chance in hell of capturing the nomination.
McCain’s reputation as a ‘maverick’ has largely made him a darling of the liberal media. By and large, I believe, you will find that the newspapers and media outlets across the country would have been more receptive to McCain than say Romney or Huckabee. But that is neither here nor there. The problem is what do we do about it NOW?
Certainly when you look at the McCain 2008 issue page for border security you will, as a conservative, not be impressed. Apparently he has learned nothing in regards to how much the base of the Republican party loathes the talk of “fostering relationships with Mexico”. Yeah, in other words keeping our borders wide open to illegal immigration.
Look, as recent polling shows, this is McCain’s election to lose. But I predict that we will have a hard time convincing states ravaged by the illegal immigration problem, or the staunchest conservative states like Utah and Idaho, that amnesty is the way to go.
The way this blogger sees it McCain’s only option is to come out forcefully for strong and complete enforcement of our existing immigration laws. Our existing immigration laws that do not contain provisions for amnesty. Then, and only then, can you open up the debate on national security and immigration policy as separate issues. You can also separate the amnesty issue from the discussion of what to do about future illegal immigrants.
The bottom line: the base of the Republican party does not support amnesty at all. We know that most Republicans will not vote for B. Hussein, the presumptive Democratic nominee. But in order to stop Republican voters from withholding their vote McCain needs to quickly and decisively address this issue. Failure to act now will see a diluting of the polling results that currently have him leading over B. Hussein.
In other words, McCain cannot afford the base of the party drifting away in November. Already people are starting to identify themselves as “Conservatives” instead of “Republicans”. Being pro-amnesty, meaning giving citizenship in any fashion to some who broke our laws, no matter how many hoops they had to jump through to get it, will not cut it.
McCain needs to move right on the issue of illegal immigration… now.
