Q&A Friday #87: McCain And Amnesty

04 Apr, 2008 by John Hawkins

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Question: John Hawkins, do you think conservatives will ever get a REAL commitment from McCain, that he’ll never give amnesty to illegals,…or that he won’t “reach across the aisle”, to his pal, Ted Kennedy to cram it through congress again? — Good_Ol_Boy

Answer: Short answer, “No.”

Longer answer: Even if McCain were inclined not to grant an amnesty, he probably wouldn’t confirm it because he’d think it might cut into the percentage of the Hispanic vote he’d collect.

However, the thing that gives me some hope is that McCain has said over and over again on the campaign trail that the voters sent Congress a message about the amnesty bill and that message was: we don’t trust Congress to secure the border, so we want that done first.

Now, given the glacial speed of the federal government, there is no way, absolutely no way, that the Feds are going to genuinely have the border secured by 2012.

So, the dream would be that McCain would get in, improve our border and internal security which would lead to attrition by enforcement, and then would step down after one term. It may or may not play out like that, but however you slice it, President John McCain, for all of his faults, looks more promising than President Obama or Clinton on immigration.