ABC News’ Teddy Davis Reports: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told ABC’s David Muir Saturday that his support for driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants will not block his path to the White House because he and G.O.P. frontrunner John McCain share substantial overlap on immigration.
“I think they will pounce on any issue that has to do with immigration,” said Obama, referring to Republicans, “but my position has been very similar to John McCain’s, who’s may be the likely Republican nominee, and if he wants to try to parse out this one issue of driver’s licenses, an issue of public safety, my response is that we have to solve the overall problem and this driver’s license issue is a distraction.”
McCain does not support driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants but he shares Obama’s support for giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship without requiring them to leave the United States.
While digesting that piece of good news check out Mark Levin’s fantastic piece on the difference between Reagan and McCain:
Painting Reagan as a tax-and-spend Republican, who basically went along with Washington and appointed a bunch of moderates to the Supreme Court, in an apparent attempt to build up McCain’s conservative and leadership credentials and mollify his critics, has the opposite effect mostly because it is inaccurate. It reminds me of Bill Clinton’s supporters using Thomas Jefferson’s alleged adultery to explain the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Reagan challenged his party from the Right. He sought the Republican nomination in 1968 against Richard Nixon and lost. He sought the nomination against Gerald Ford in 1976 and lost. He fought the Republican establishment in 1980 as well, including Bob Dole, Howard Baker, and George H. W. Bush, and won. McCain has challenged his party from the Left. I don’t know how many more times I and others have to lay out his record to prove the point. To put a fine point on it, when he had to, Reagan sought compromise from a different set of beliefs and principles than McCain. It does a great disservice to historical accuracy and the current debate to continue to urge otherwise.
But we must rewrite history if we are to make the case that McCain is no different from Reagan, Reagan is no different from his predecessors, and Reagan’s speeches weren’t all that revolutionary. And if we object to such characterizations, then the argument shifts to — well, stop making comparisons to Reagan, Reagan wasn’t perfect, the Reagan era is dead, these are different times, etc. Then, if we criticize McCain’s record we are told the tone is troubling, we’re going to help elect Hillary Clinton if we don’t unite behind McCain now (at the beginning of the primaries, no less!), the surge is the only issue that matters, etc.
Look, I do not believe that McCain is a principled conservative. I believe he is a populist hawk in the tradition of a Scoop Jackson. This isn’t a perfect comparison, of course, but nothing is ever perfect, is it?
There is lots of information in between that snip so go read the whole piece.
Mark disagrees with the assertion that McCain would be a good leader in the War on Terror. I disagree with him on that but much of his other assertions are right on.
See author page
And this is a secret to who?
“I disagree with him on that…”
None of rest of the stuff is new. Levin’s a Limbaugh hatchet man who’ll be crawling back on his knees searching for the good graces of the McCain administration.
The tide’s turned. Folks are hopping on the Straight Talk Express, warts and all.
You must be joking? I was taking your arguments seriously before but after that line I’m gonna have to rethink that now.
Amazing.
In all these debates when the subject of immigration comes up the moderator rarely presses the candidates beyond their prepared talking points. In the case of McCain and Huckabee that’s border security first. But have we asked McCain, or Huckabee, whether they still support the remainder of the McCain-Kennedy Senate Immigration plan including the infamous “Z” visa which grants illegals immediate legal status and all they have to do is “promise” to learn English but can renew the visa indefinetly without doing so?
Romney isn’t McCain, but would someone explain to me how that makes him a conservative? I don’t see it. It’s true that Romney has a good business resume, but so did McNamara. Good in business isn’t the first thing I’m looking for.
Romney is the only candidate who gets the Islmaic Jihadist game; take some brass ball to reject PC ‘terrorist’ or ‘radical’ Islam.
Though he wasn’t my first choice, now with Fred out I understand Romney will use his good business sense to makes useful cuts to meaningless government jobs.
As for the social issues, as long as there are Methodist ministers endorsing politicans (ie Obama)who voted to continue partial-birth abortion practice, what difference does it make if a candidate is ‘pro-life’. What is the point of supporting and defending the social issues when the faithful inside the church do not? R v W is a bad law however it dosen’t help that decade after decade members of faith continue voting against their values in order to receive the government’s golden entitlement coins.
syn I wish things were as simple as you want them to be. But there were many Methodist Preachers (and Church Member – I am a Methodist) that Supported Bush and he launched an offensive war which is also against Church Principles (not to mention the Beatitudes – check Matthew). The world is not a single issue situation.
And frankly, I can not understand how any person alive could think that Romney is a good candidate for President. Were you fooled by the hunting varmits speech or the flip flop from promising to “out liberal” Ted Kennedy when he lost to Ted in a Senate election?
We already had a CEO president and he was dreadful (and continues to be). Further, Mitt has spent 8x more on getting his message out than McCain and he is 72 hours away from realizing that it is over. When you pay that much to get your word out and you are still getting spanked you must not have much of a message.
For all the McCain momentum, sure he’s winning but doing so with far fewer votes than in 2000 when he was running against George W. Bush. This seems to be very telling, and should be taken as a bit disturbing about how he would fare in the general election. Also, there was an article last week on the web in which McC’s mother says her son has very little support from the GOP base. Mike probably can speak to this better than any of us.
David: I really enjoyed meeting 95 year old Roberta McCain at the house party here in November:
http://mikesamerica.blogspot.com/2007/11/john-mccain-visits-mikes-america.html
If she was the candidate and not her son I would be right there helping her win. And in cases like this, she’s offering the “straight talk” while her son seems to be trying to ignore the problem he himself has created over years of proudly sticking it in the eye of conservatives.
McCain has garned a great deal of support from elected GOP leaders. But most of that only came about after he started winning.
The base who he has insulted these many years is not about to be taken in.
Forgive me if you’ve heard me say this already, but McCain made it very clear to me in that November meeting that if I disagreed with him on these issue that I should not vote for him. “I’m not your candidate” he said. Then he followed that up by saying “tell your blogging friends” too.
I’ll hold my nose and vote for him if he is the nominee. But let the moderates, libs and Independents who are the voting base for McCain go out and do the grass roots campaign grunt work.
The problem is that McCain may discover how totally unreliable those mushy middle voters are but it will be too late.
And now that Ah-nuld’s wifey has endorsed Obama after her DH endorsed McCain we know that there is little to no difference in the two. How’s that for a back door Kennedy endorsement?