Saying Never
John Hawkins gets exercised over what we always knew about John McCain. He’s soft as an egg on illegal border crossing.
Put very simply: John McCain is a liar. He’s a man without honor, without integrity, who could not have captured the Republican nomination had he run on making comprehensive immigration a top priority of his administration. Quite frankly, this is little different from George Bush, Sr. breaking his “Read my lips, no new taxes pledge,” except that Bush’s father was at least smart enough to wait until he got elected before letting all of his supporters know that he was lying to them.
Under these circumstances, I simply cannot continue to support a man like John McCain for the presidency. Since that is the case, I have already written the campaign and asked them to take me off of their mailing list and to no longer send me invitations to their teleconferences. I see no point in asking questions to a man who has no compunction about lying through his teeth on one of the most crucial election issues and then changing his position the first time he believes he can get away with it.
Moreover, I genuinely regret having to do this because I do still believe the country would be better off with John McCain as President as opposed to Obama or Clinton. However, I just cannot in good conscience cast a vote for a man who has told this big of a lie, for this long, about this important of an issue.
That’s too bad, because a withheld vote for McCain is a vote for Obama or Clinton. That’s a vote for a lot of other unpleasantness and lies, not to mention the abandonment of allies and a return to the wretched foreign policies of the Clinton and Carter administrations.
I’m trying to see where, in Hawkins’ excerpts, McCain previously repudiated his support for “comprehensive immigration reform” and where, in the last-straw remarks, he says he’s dumping border security. He addresses both in each of the quotes. The objection appears to be to McCain’s “but” that the “reform” part is a top priority as of Jan. 9, 2009. There is an apparent shift of emphasis in there. It’s debatable whether it rises to the level of lying, and an honor/integrity dump, but Hawkins apparently feels like he’s been personally lied to. Spend any significant amount of time in close proximity to a pol, it’s going to happen. It’s the kind of thing that drives news reporters around the bend, puts them in attack mode, and leads to confrontations like AP scribbler Glen Johnson’s spat with Mitt Romney, seen here PO’d about lobbyist influence. (That clip’s like old home week, by the way. Good fun watching former local gov Mitt get snippy over semantics with former Lowell Sun co-worker Glen, who gets indignant in a familiar if factually deficient way, and Mitt’s flack, former Herald co-worker Eric Fehrnstrom, getting worked up about Glen’s badgering of a pol.)
Maybe McCain wants his first 100 days to be marked by a repeat of the Kennedy-McCain-Bush immigration crash-and-burn. That’s what will happen if the next “comprehensive reform” isn’t significantly different from the last one, mutually despised on both sides of the aisle, and doesn’t include border security. Maybe he plans to kick it all off by alienating large blocks of the people who backed him, people he’ll need on many other issues. Could happen. He is a notoriously cranky maverick, after all.
Expect to be infuriated by McCain. It is going to happen. This has been, from the start, a hold-your-nose election. It is also, no matter who wins, very likely to be a one-term presidency, with the incumbent facing challenges from within his or her own party in 2012. The electorate, the candidates and the parties are too divided in too many directions, and none of the candidates look likely to manage a good patchup any time soon.
But I predict by the fall, we’ll see some people explaining why they’ve decided to vote for the people they swore they wouldn’t in the spring. Like this Boggfellow, who promises he’d vote for McCain before he’d vote for his treacherous erstwhile sweetheart Hill.
Malkin: Shamnesty John McCain is back in full force. No, he never “got the message.”
Riehl: ”What’s the point in slamming him when there’s no alternative?” Buck up, Dan. Slamming pols is healthy for all involved! Riehl has a weird Bill Clinton feel about McCain, which is an interesting way of putting it. Could be.
Ed at Hotair with a cooling observation: “The consequences of an Obama presidency go far beyond immigration.”
Moderate Voice: McCain must be feeling awfully good about that conservative base.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:31 am on Friday, May 23, 2008
10 Responses to “Saying Never”
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May 23rd, 2008 at 11:29 am
I don’t get it. McCain has never said that he has changed his mind about the need for reform, only that he realizes that the American people want to see enforcement first. He’s made it clear that he prefers reform over border control, but has pledged himself to border control first because that’s what the voters want. I don’t see any indications that he intends to renege on that promise. What do these people expect, for him to be forced to do what they want, and also be happy about it?
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:57 am
It may be that if McCain is elected, the American people will have to fight him over the amnesty issue. But that’s the way our government works. We never get everything we want, and we usually have to fight for what we get. That’s why God invented strong-arming our elected representatives in Congress.
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:24 pm
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May 23rd, 2008 at 12:50 pm
[...] on the question of border security is maddening. Indeed, for some, it has proven to be the straw that has broken the camel’s back. How can many conservatives, deal with the maddening apostasy of John McCain on so many substantive [...]
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:21 pm
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May 23rd, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Welcome To The Club, Mr. Hawkins
John Hawkins has seen the light in regards to McCain:
Put very simply: John McCain is a liar. …
Popularity: unranked [?]…
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:55 pm
I agree with your reading of McCain’s statement, Jules. I don’t see what’s got people so set off.
Further, I would simply ask Mr. Hawkins, and “Liberty Pundit,” and all the others who are all worked up over McCain’s immigration stance: do you really think Obama or Hillary will be any better on your pet issue?
That’s not a trick question, BTW. The answer is “no.”
A protest vote for Ron Paul or Tom Tancredo or Pat Buchanan or some other loser is, operationally, a vote for the Democrat. Whichever Democrat it is, you’ll get “amnesty”–and surrender to the terrorists in Iraq, and an American president groveling before Ahmadinejad, and in general terms a return to the wildly successful foreign policies of the Carter administration. (And then there’s domestic and fiscal policy!) There’s a non-trivial possibility that this could lead to another 9/11 or worse.
You really sure you want to vote for HilBama?
May 23rd, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Hawkins needs to get over it. Reagan did amnesty. The Cap’n at Hot Air nailed it
May 24th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
“Expect to be infuriated by McCain. It is going to happen. This has been, from the start, a hold-your-nose election.”
You got that right, and mouth-breathing from here to November won’t be fun.
May 24th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
The bottom line is is that McCain is a far better choice than any Democrat, and that’s the only choice…so it’s MCCain.
End of story.