Almost everyone agrees that John McCain will be this year’s Republican Presidential candidate. The one issue that could hurt him if he doesn’t tread carefully? You guessed it: Immigration. In an effort to appease the conservative base, he has to be careful not to alienate Hispanics. The good thing about McCain is that all he has been saying to appease the far right is that he will secure the borders first. Essentially this is what a version of CIR that failed last year would have done anyway. Whoever the next President is, he or she won’t stand in the way of CIR. Now we just need to elect a common-sense Congress who will resolve the immigration issue and take it off the table as such a hot political topic by 2010 or 2012.
According to an article on wsj.com analyzing this issue: “Republican presidential front-runner John McCain could help swing back to his party a crucial constituency considered lost to Democrats amid a rancorous immigration debate: the Hispanic vote. But Mr. McCain will have to tread carefully as he intensifies a push to win over his party’s right-wing base.”
