Strange Hill to Die On
John Hawkins has a pair of confused posts in which he claims he can no longer support John McCain’s candidacy because McCain “lied” about his newfound respect for the need to secure the border before introducing any de facto amnesty programs for those already here. This would be interesting if McCain had actually come out and said “screw border security, amnesty away!” What he actually said was a bit more … um … subtle than that:
He added: “I believe we have to secure our borders, and I think most Americans agree with that, because it’s a matter of national security. But we must enact comprehensive immigration reform. We must make it a top agenda item if we don’t do it before, and we probably won’t, a little straight talk, as of January 2009.”
Mr. McCain asked others on the panels for suggestions about how to “better mobilize American public opinion” behind the notion of comprehensive immigration reform.
In other words, candidate McCain has flipped alll the way from “Yes, I favor comprehensive immigration reform but we need to secure the border first” to “Yes, we need to secure the border first, but I favor comprehensive immigration reform.” Lest his readers mistake this for a distinction sans difference, Hawkins non-explains:
The problem with this is that John McCain has spent more than six months drawing a distinction between his old comprehensive immigration position and his new position, security first. Moreover, these concepts are polar opposites. Comprehensive immigration reform means doing amnesty and security at the same time, while security first means making sure the border is secure and our enforcement provisions are done BEFORE the amnesty.
[Emphasis added.]
Apparently, Hawkins’s dictionary defines the word “comprehensive” in a most unusual fashion. Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines it as “of large scope; covering or involving much; inclusive.” It says nothing about whether all elements happen at once, or in any particular order. For all the negative press “comprehensive” immigration reform has gotten, to the extent that the items included are (1) securing the border and (2) normalizing/amnestying illegals already here, any of the following three proposals would be equally “comprehensive”:
- Secure the border first, then amnesty some/all of the illegals who are already here.
- Secure the border and amnesty those already here at exactly the same time.
- Amnesty some/all of the illegals who are already here first, and then secure the border.
The third option would be the dumbest of all, so no one but the true open border nuts would advocate anything like that. The second was where Kennedy, McCain and President Bush seemed to be going a couple years back, justifiably provoking widespread outrage. But nothing in McCain’s recent statement - aside from his inartful use of the much maligned c-word - indicates he’s flipped from #1 back to #2, or that he was lying all along when he claimed to support #1.
In both posts, Hawkins (unlike his wannabees over at Patterico’s) basically admits that his “principled” opposition to McCain will only serve to make him feel better about himself, and will not serve the good of the country as a whole. In the original “take my ball” post Hawkins wrote:
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.
In the follow-up post, he reiterates:
Additionally, some people have pointed out that refusing to vote for McCain actually helps the Democratic nominee and that whether it’s Obama or Clinton, the country would be better off with McCain.
That’s very true.
But personally, I think that there has got to be some kind of line in the sand that these politicians cannot be allowed to cross. In McCain’s case, he lied about the single most important issue in determining many people’s votes, is the Republican Party’s nominee only because he told that lie, and now he has publicly shifted positions in a way that reveals he was lying the whole time — and he did so before the election.
Therefore, rather than giving the benefit of the doubt to the guy who may be lying if he subscribes to the same highly strained definition of “comprehensive” as Hawkins does, or who may simply have chosen poor words to tell the truth, we should instead reward the woman who lied about sniper fire or the guy who lies about his uncle liberating Auschwitz. ‘Cuz ya know, there has got to be some kind of line in the sand that these politicians cannot be allowed to cross.
Lordy.
May 28th, 2008 at 2:18 am
Come on, we all know what “comprehensive immigration reform” means to John McCain and the rest of the open-borders crowd, it means giving permanent visas to all illegal aliens. And if McCain intends to have that be his top priority in his first half-month of office, then he can’t be serious about security first.
As to your snide comments about Hawkins, I suspect that the shoe would be on the other foot if the Republican candidate were a social conservative and a fiscal liberal who made only token gestures to your side and then seemed to back down even from that. Someone who always votes for their own party, no matter how bad they get shafted, just because it is better than the other party has no power in their own party. You have to take a stand some time or you are just the party’s bitch. Hawkins has found the time when he has to make his.
May 28th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Comprehensive means comprehensive; it doesn’t mean amnesty only, and to hell with security, nor does it mean amnesty now, security whenever. Hawkins simply made that up. McCain has made it clear he now supports security first, and nothing in the statement Hawkins construes as a “lie” suggests otherwise.
As for the shoe being on the other foot, hello? It is. Go ahead and search my archives for references to “amnesty” or, in President Bush’s case, “non-amnesty amnesty.” You won’t find anything in there to suggest I was a fan of either President Bush or Senator McCain’s past positions on the issue. I’m OK with the current version, as Hawkins also appears to have been. The only question is why he’s so eager to find a “lie” where any objective reader finds nothing more than slightly inartful wording (and that only because the word “comprehensive” has been so badly misused in the past ,not because there’s anything inherently wrong with the word).
Anyone who chooses not to vote for the candidate he believes would better serve the country is worse than a party’s bitch; he’s a petty jerk who put his own bruised ego ahead of the interests of his country. There is a time and place for everything, and it’s called the primaries. Refusing to vote for the Republican candidate who won the primary fair and square doesn’t just make you “not the party’s bitch,” it makes you a petty jerk who considers loyalty a one-way street. Surely if the primary had gone the other way, Hawkins would expect all Republicans, including the ones who originally backed McCain, to set aside their differences and get behind the party nominee. He would rightly excoriate any former McCainiacs who took the ball and went home just because “their” candidate hadn’t won the primary. In fact, he’d probably cite this behavior as proof they (and, by extension, McCain himself) weren’t real Republicans at all!
May 29th, 2008 at 2:08 am
I know you don’t like McCain on immigration, but isn’t he pretty much in your sweet spot on everything else? Strong on the war, fiscal conservative, social liberal?
I don’t know about Hawkins, but I also refuse to vote for John McCain, and I can tell you that if the winner of the primary had been an aggressive social conservative and you had refused to vote for him, I would think that you were perfectly justified because the party had refused to compromise with the social liberal part of the coalition.
The McCain situation is even more egregious because the biggest supporters in his victory was not Republicans, but Democrats –the national media. This is the second Republican presidential nominee in a row that was picked by the media with the silent approval of the party elite because they thought it helped their chance to win even if it didn’t help to advance the Republican agenda. How well do you think Bush worked out?
May 29th, 2008 at 6:59 am
You’ll have to elaborate on what you mean by “social liberal.” I wouldn’t use that phrase to describe myself, and certainly wouldn’t apply it a solid pro-lifer / anti-gay-marriage-er like McCain. I’m with McCain on the war and judicial nominations (without whom social conservatives are dead in the water) and fiscal conservatism, but McCain-Feingold is about as far from my sweet spot as it gets. If it were, I’d seriously consider voting for Obama on that issue alone despite strongly disagreeing with him on anything else. Fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t face that dilemma since Obama is wrong on that issue too. Given the choice between a guy who is wrong on a lot of issues and a guy who is completely full of crap on all of them, the rational choice is clear.
“Justified” or no, I wouldn’t have done it unless the nominee were so bad that I actually thought his Democrat opponent would be better for the country, as would be the case if the Republicans had nominated Ron Paul. I loathe Huckabee, but still would have held my nose and voted for him over either Clinton or Obama. And no, I don’t see my coalition losing a primary as anyone “refusing to compromise.” The compromise is that both sides implicitly agreed that if the other wins the primary, we’d all support him in November. If you and Hawkins were planning to welch on that deal all along, you shouldn’t have been in the party to begin with.
Dude, you seriously need to brush up on your history. The last Republican presidential nominee was chosen by party insiders over …. who was that, again?
Better than President Gore, and a hell of a lot better than President Kerry. I shudder to think what today’s Supreme Court (and next year’s, and the year after that, ad almost-infinitum) would look like if either Kerry or Gore had been in office in 2005. Even if Bush had been in office, but McCain had not done his Gang of 14 deal (which at the time infuriated me to no end), the Supreme Court still wouldn’t look as good as it does, as Roberts would likely be on it but Alito would not. Of course you don’t care, since to you, Roberts, Alito and the “clones” McCain promises to appoint in his term are just “social liberals,” right?
That’s domestically. Internationally, an Obama win would leave Iraq where Afghanistan was at the end of Clinton’s term. The “let’s win by losing” crowd loves to cite Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan as though this were some kind of overall success story for the right. It wasn’t. Eight years of Reagan weren’t nearly enough to undo all the damage caused by four years of Carter. As of January 1989 (and, for that matter, May 2006), we still have a Department of Education, the Ninth Circuit is still hard-left loopy (due almost entirely to a slew of Carter appointees), Iran is still the number one state sponsor of terror, and we didn’t get the friggin’ Panama Canal back.
May 29th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Well, I guess you do have a point about being loyal to the one who wins the primary. I left the Republican party after they passed the prescription drug program (I’m independent now), so I didn’t implicitly agree to go along with their selection.
May 30th, 2008 at 6:45 am
I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “if you don’t vote, you have nothing to complain about.” That rule applies to primaries and generals alike. On February 5, the Republican primary was still competitive. The most conservative candidate, Fred Thompson (I don’t count Hunter because he was never a credible contender) was out, but Romney and … spit …. Huckabee were still in. Either of those two would have been far more to your liking, I presume, but neither got any help from you, and McCain carried California handily. Now you’re upset because a primary you chose not to participate in resulted in the election of a candidate you don’t support? Color me unsympathetic.
As to your “party bitch” bogeyman, I’m not sure why you think it’s even possible to be “your party’s bitch” if you’re not formally aligned with any political party. My chief loyalty, and presumably your only one, is to the United States of America, not to any particular political party, and certainly not to any idealizations of what any particular party ought to look like. The choice is now between McCain and Obama. I never had an option to help make the choice better, because the McCain nomination was a fait accompli by the time that North Carolina’s primary rolled around. You had an option to make it better, but you chose not to exercise that option. Neither of us has that option now. The only question is who will govern the United States for the next four years, McCain or Obama. If you think the country would be better off governed by Obama, then by all means, vote for Obama. If you think it would be better off governed by McCain, “the least repulsive Democrat running,” then you should vote for McCain. The Pilate option, which got us eight years of President Clinton in the 1990s, and four too many of President Carter in the 1970s (resulting in serious damage to the country that eight years of Reagan, four of Bush 41 and eight more of Bush 43 have still not been able to reverse), is not a viable strategy.
June 4th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
If McCain can fool enough Republicans or scare enough of them into voting for him is anyone willing to bet me that we will see an amnesty during his presidency?
I can’t support this troll under any circumstances because of his actions toward MIA familiesand his repeated pandering towards the worst elements of the dhimmierats while dissing the rank and file of the GOP.
Anyone who supports McCain should be prepared for a really, really awful periof during which the GOP is reduced to a dhimmierat lite party.