McCain Campaign Continues Imploding

Senator John McCain’s campaign for the White House is short of money, relatively speaking. The shortage become public knowledge after the campaigns closed their books on June 30, and resignations/firings followed. Campaign manager Terry Nelson and chief strategist John Weaver were the first to walk the plank. Then, his national press team left. This week, he’s lost key aids in South Carolina and Iowa. This is an odd position for a man who came into the race as the putative front-runner, but when its epitaph is written in the coming weeks, it will read “Sacrificed over Immigration.”

Senator McCain has taken an extremely unpopular war to heart, but in the Republican primaries, where the dead-ender Busheviks hold sway, it actually helps him. He has sucked up to the president in most ways apparently forgiving the dirty, underhanded smear campaign of 2000. He has some credibility as a fiscal conservative, but in the GOP these days, there aren’t that many who are serious about balancing the books.

Where the senator has spiked his own guns is over immigration. For a man from Arizona, he has been incredibly naïve or highly principled, depending on one’s view of him. This journal largely supports his approach of open yet secure borders. He maintains a realistic assessment that the immigrants will come no matter what and that keeping them out is economically and socially counter-productive. And the legalization of those currently here illegally must be addressed either “yes” or “no,” not “on the one hand . . . .” Senator McCain is largely for a fairly low barrier to legalization.

To many in the GOP, this is a position of a Democrat, at least an anti-union one. They maintain, and with some validity to their argument, that the current wave of immigration from south of the border is different than previous waves. They argue, sometimes convincingly, that border security must come first. And they believe that the future character of the US will radically change if the flow is not stopped. The difference is that some see the benefits outweighing the costs, and the other side disagrees.

Most of those favoring amnesty for illegals are Democrats, most opposing are Republican primary voters. Immigration has replaced abortion and gun control as the hot-button issue for the GOP voter. Mr. McCain is on the wrong side of it as far as they are concerned. He may be able to resurrect his campaign as he is more comfortable as the maverick under-dog anyway, and he’s got 6 months or so before the voting starts. The odds, though, are against it, and like Teddy Kennedy, he has become yesterday’s man.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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