McCain Lashes Out

John McCain has been busy - he's been out there criticizing Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson for their stances on immigration.

Now, I'm more apt to agree with Romney or Thompson than with McCain, because both are more conservative. And for McCain to be out there bashing anyone for opposing his immigration bill is, in my opinion, just absurd.

This new bill looks good on the surface, but it's nothing that hasn't been tried before, and it has failed each and ever time it's been tried. One definition of stupidity: trying the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.

McCain has accused Romney of flip-flopping, trying to characterize Romney's earlier-stated positions as being in-line with the current proposed immigration legislation. The truth, however, is that McCain (and the article) twists Romney's previous position to make it seem contradictory. Previously, Romney said that we should be getting rid of illegal aliens who came to America and further broke the law, and we should allow illegal aliens who otherwise follow the law to stay and apply for citizenship. That position does not work with the kind of amnesty that McCain's bill offers, so Romney's condemnation of the bill is, in fact, consistent.

The article also tries to imply that Fred Thompson has flip-flopped, because he opposed the current bill, saying that we need to secure the border first, then we can deal with what to do about the millions of illegal immigrants. He is supposedly a flip-flopper because he previously stated that we need "comprehensive immigration reform." To say that this is a contradictory position is stupidity, plain and simple. I happen to agree with Thompson, that the first thing that we need in any comprehensive immigration reform is to secure the border, because without a secure border, there is no way to solve the problem.

The truth is that this new immigration bill looks good on paper, but the American people have seen immigration bills that look good on paper before. The question is not, "does the bill look good?" but is instead, "will the bill be enforced effectively?"

This has been the problem with past immigration reform bills: they look good, but they are never enforced effectively.

To Senator McCain, I would say this: trust has to be earned. You can introduce all of the sweeping immigration bills that you want, but until some action is taken to secure the border, no thinking person will ever take you seriously.