McCain: I don’t change my positions

In fairness to McCain, what change there is in his position on immigration is far less than what Allahpundit, some conservatives and many posters here think. It is more a matter of a wise adaptation over time to a political imperative of “law enforcement first” and a national security crisis in the development along this country’s southern border.

In 2007, John McCain did sponsor what Newt Gingrich has called a serious effort at comprehensive immigration reform that had tough law enforcement provisions in it, which McCain would point out when responding to claims that the proposed law’s effect would be amnesty. The reaction of a good portion of the American people, however, was that law enforcement must come first, as the last effort at comprehensive reform — which was during the Reagan Administration — did not work well stemming from the lack of law enforcement. McCain accepted that judgment, and in 2008, law enforcement first was the position of the GOP whose Presidential ticket McCain headed.

In 2009, McCain called for the deployment of troops along the southern border because of the drug cartels taking over northern Mexico and the resulting violence spilling over the border in the United States — a situation that has worsened in 2010. The fact that Phoenix became the kidnaping capital in the United States and the murder of the Arizona rancher made border security an imperative; that imperative is even greater given intelligence that the drug cartels are linking up with radical Islamists. The Taliban in Afghanistan is now billions of dollars into the drug trade. So don’t be surprised by reports of terrorist car bombings in northern Mexico. McCain, a military man who knows national security, is responding as a someone who does see and what all of us should see is a very serious national security issue.

Phil Byler on August 21, 2010 at 2:30 PM