By this time I should be used to the dishonesty of presidential candidates, but I have just been amazed at John McCain, who certainly deserves the Clinton Trophy this time around. McCain is running ads on the radio in southern California trying to reinforce his conservative credentials on the subject of illegal immigration, and in these commercials he declares among other things that “the two million here who have already broken the law will be deported.”
Now, whatever your views on illegal immigration, nobody can possibly believe that McCain actually will do this if he is elected president, or that he can do it. Deport one out of every one hundred people in the United States? We don’t have the money or the physical infrastructure necessary to do such a thing, even if the political decision were made and were non-controversial. Deport two million people? He expects us to believe that this is a sincere campaign pledge on his part? It is the crassest lie I have ever witnessed in a political campaign, and that is saying a lot.
And the shenanigans with the Bob Dole letter to Rush Limbaugh are beneath contempt. McCain’s claim that Dole wrote the letter “on behalf of” McCain are absolutely disgusting. Romney was absolutely right to say that a Dole endorsement would not exactly be impressive, and that the McCain campaign is just what the Dole campaign was—a sense of dreary inevitability by party operatives who think it’s “McCain’s turn.” But not only does McCain claim that Dole’s letter is an endorsement, but replies to Romney’s point by claiming that Romney’s attacking Dole’s military record. It’s the worst sort of demagoguery—at least as bad as either Clinton.
And what about judicial appointments? The guys at Volokh and elsewhere have been talking about whether McCain would make good judicial nominations—but what evidence do we have of that? McCain’s contempt for the Constitution is clear from McCain-Feingold, if not from other things. Why should we believe that he would make good judicial appointments? He has Ted Olson’s endorsement? How exactly does that count in his favor? What did the Olson Solicitor General’s office give us? This is the solicitor general that almost filed a brief against the property owners in the Kelo case—and that failed to stand up for the integrity of American constitutionalism with regard to Guantanamo Bay.
(That’s not to say Romney deserves support. None of them do.)
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