Richard Spencer

September 05, 2008

As I noted this morning, what was perhaps most significant about McCain’s acceptance speech last night was what he didn’t say. The senator kept reminding us how much of a “maverick” he is, but then didn’t much go into details about the ways he’s broken with the conservative base. He barely mentioned campaign finance reform and judges. And immigration—the issue that most alienates the senator from just about every delegate in the hall—McCain didn’t bring up at all.   

Or did he?

Peter Brimelow and Mickey Kaus have both pointed out that McCain’s praise of “bipartisanship” might mean that he’s gearing up for a big illegal-immigration amnesty with the liberals in Congress. 

Here’s Kaus: 

Am I crazy or are these passages a blazing arrow pointing toward … comprehensive immigration reform, one big bipartisan ‘solution’ that the Democratic Congress will be all too happy to work with President McCain to achieve? What else is he talking about? OK, maybe Social Security (where Congress will be far less helpful.) … Surprisingly, immigration reform—which McCain’s friend Lindsey Graham pledged he ‘will’ take up—wasn’t actually mentioned at all in the speech. I’d thought McCain would at least ‘flick’ at it as part of his pitch to the Latino swing vote. Maybe the convention really was all about the base (which doesn’t like the semi-amnesty parts of McCain’s reform). They can always be betrayed later.

Immigration has fallen off the radar in the past year. If McCain’s elected, we need to gear up for a fight.