This morning I noted and e-mail from John Hawkins pointing to a post entiteld: Why I Will No Longer Support John McCain For President.
The reason? McCain’s position on immigration, and specifically Hawkins’ view that McCain promised one thing, and then changed his mind (i.e., that McCain had supposedly recanted on his position of comprehensive immigration reform in lieu of a “security first” approach). This allegedly flip-flop led Hawkins to write (amongst other things):
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.
Now, a few things immediately come to mind upon reading all of this. The first was that McCain has not changed his position on this issue, but I wasn’t willing to go through the trouble of walking through this fact. However, since James Joyner has already done the work, I can point my readers to his run-down and steal cite his conclusion:
McCain is not feeling his way around on this one. He’s represented a border state in the Senate for 31 years and has been a passionate leader on this issue. Why would anyone think he’d turned 180 degrees in the middle of a presidential run? For that matter, why would they want to trust the leadership of their country to someone who had?
Instead, he took his beating on the issue like a man, announced that he’d learned that he’s not going to get his way without addressing the security issue first, but reiterated that he thinks we need a comprehensive, humanitarian approach to the problem.
Exactly. Indeed, I still think that this view is far more prevalent within Republican ranks than the anti-immigration faction act is the case. Indeed, if it was the issue they think that it is, McCain would never have been nominated and Tom Tancredo would have done a bit better than he did (i.e., the low single digits).
Beyond all of that, I continue to find it remarkable that so many people think that immigration is the most important issue on the table at the moment. Forget the economy, energy or wars and stuff, the most important problem is the ongoing infiltration of gardeners, roofers, fast food workers, nannies and the like across the southern border.
Further, I have to ask people like Hawkins, Malkin and company if they think that they will be closer to their policy goals if Obama is president. I mean if it really is the Paramount Issue of Our DayTM, then surely they will get closer to what they want with a Democratic Congress + McCain than they will with Obama in the White House, yes?
Of course, the real truth of the matter is that regardless of who gets elected, the likelihood of a radical change of the status quo vis-a-vis immigration and the border is unlikely to occur in any significant way, meaning that the issue shouldn’t, logically, be a deciding one for a voter (given all those other issues out there to choose from that might actually be affected by the election). But, then again, most discussions of immigration and border security can’t be considered logic-ridden these days…
If anything, the post is attracting a lot of attention (via Memeorandum): The Daily Dish, The Caucus, The Campaign Spot, Sister Toldjah, Outside The Beltway, American Power, Hot Air, PrestoPundit, Riehl World View, Donklephant, The Strata-Sphere, Jules Crittenden, Political Byline, No More Mister Nice Blog, The Sundries Shack, QandO, The Politico, Stop The ACLU, Macsmind and American Spectator
Update: John Cole rightly takes Hawkins to task on his remembrances of Bush 41.
Sphere: Related ContentThe views expressed in the comments are the sole responsibility of the person leaving those comments. They do not reflect the opinion of the author of PoliBlog, nor have they been vetted by the author.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:44 pm
[...] Andrew Sullivan, Sister Toldjah, Captain Ed, OTB, Steven Taylor all look at things from a different [...]
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:00 pm
I think the most alarming part of the Hawkins rant is “I see no point in asking questions.”
But that seems to be what people do these days - get attached emotionally to an idea, then someone seems to betray it, and we shut down and stop talking.
Asking questions becomes MORE important when you get something you don’t expect from a politician, not less so. Perhaps if we spoke to our political rivals more instead of calling them names and fortifying ourselves within our own polar faction, we might have some solutions to the problems we face as a nation.
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Who is John Hawkins, and why does anyone care whether he’ll support McCain?
May 26th, 2008 at 8:51 am
[...] tact that partisans often take when unhappy with their party (a recent example of that would be John Hawkins). Others, like Andrew Sullivan, stung by the failure that is Iraq (amongst a variety of other [...]