McCain can't talk straight!

I have blogged about McCain's efforts to court Latino voters, and the difficulty that his campaign will face as a result of McCain betraying Hispanic immigrants to appease conservative voters during his presidential campaign in the Republican primary. Read here and here for background. This weekend the Andres Oppenheimer comments in his weekly column, The Oppenheimer Report, of the Miami Herald on McCain's ever changing position on immigration as he prepares for a general election.

Hmmm. I smelled a significant shift in McCain's position. From what I recalled, McCain's 2005 immigration reform bill, which he sponsored alongside Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., called for simultaneous measures to secure the border with Mexico and an earned path to legalization for millions of undocumented workers who are already in the United States.

Later, when he was running for the Republican nomination and faced an outcry from the anti-immigration wing of his party, he backpedalled to a two-step immigration approach: He said we must first secure the border, and only then deal with undocumented workers.

Now, it seems, he has retreated even further from his original stand and is proposing a three-step process, in which providing for a path to legalization of millions of undocumented workers would come at the very end.

McCain has enjoyed much appeal and cross-over support in previous elections because of his reputation as a "straight talker" and his commitment to fight for the right causes. It seems that McCain is now willing to do/say whatever it takes to be elected to the nation's highest office. As I have said before, the McCain of today is not the McCain of yesteryear. It is difficult to understand how McCain would choose to deviate from a strategy that has worked so well for him in previous elections to adopt a strategy that has consistently failed the Republican Party. Anti-immigrant rhetoric has not worked for them in the past, did not work for them in this primary season, and will not work for them in the general election.  McCain cannot have it both ways on this issue.  He will need to clearly articulate a position, and eventually lose supporters one way or the other.