New York Times Editorial: Come Back, John McCain

New York Times Editorial: Come Back, John McCain
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 22, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23fri2.html?th&emc=th


There goes Senator John McCain, battling mightily for re-election in Arizona, buzzing off into the desert heat to another rally, another news conference, another television sound bite. Wait, you forgot your principles!

He’s telling the world he’ll never support immigration reform until the border is sealed. Now he’s praising Arizona’s Legislature for passing a bill that makes every Latino — citizen or not — a potential criminal defendant. It obligates the police to stop people who look like illegal immigrants and arrest them if they don’t have papers on them. And here he is warning Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly that drivers of cars full of “illegals” are “intentionally causing accidents on the freeway.”

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Mr. McCain did his share of contortions to win over a right-wing base that never trusted him. Now he is fighting for survival against a radio host endorsed by border vigilantes.

But this pandering is tragic for a man who was one of the architects of the humane, comprehensive approach to immigration he has now disowned — threatening a filibuster to prevent its even coming to a vote.

Mr. McCain has long said border control must be a prelude to larger reforms. But he always insisted on realistic solutions, on respecting immigrants’ humanity and giving them the chance to become legal. He never played the rancid, dangerous game of portraying Latinos as criminals, as Arizona’s new immigration bill does.

Mr. McCain used to be the anti-demagogue. Here he is defending his bill in the Senate on May 25, 2007, one of many times he said the same thing:

“We need to come up with a humane, moral way to deal with those people who are here, most of whom are not going anywhere. No matter how much we improve border security, no matter the penalties we impose on their employers, no matter how seriously they are threatened with punishment, we will not find most of them, and we will not find most of their employers.”

That was true then. It is true now. It is also true that no election is worth winning if you have to abandon what you believe.