Missing The Point

I read an article yesterday about Senator John McCain spending Independence Day in Iraq with the troops. The article said that McCain's Presidential campaign was suffering due to his support of the President with regards to Iraq. What the author showed with that statement was a complete lack of understanding of the conservative base of the Republican Party (and the party as a whole) and the ongoing liberal bias of the media (hence not understanding Republicans). First, it was put in there as a dig at Bush, which the media will do any time it gets a chance, but there is a much broader point. McCain is not having problems with his campaign because of Iraq. If it were a democrat then yes, supporting the war in Iraq would be a death knell for the campaign, but while most Republicans do want out of Iraq, we want to win there even more. We want to bring our troops home, we just want them to be able to do a victory lap around Baghdad on their way out. So while supporting the Iraq operation might cost him a few points, it would hardly put him under. So what is McCain's problem? Well, first of all, he has failed miserably to resonate with the Republican base, so he was not in all that great of a position to begin with, but it was the immigration bill that sunk any hopes he might have had for pulling out a victory. He co-authored, and sponsored, and was a driving force behind that reprehensible bill that was thankfully shot down. And that is why he has suffered in the numbers, and it is why he is wasting his time trying to drum up support at this stage of the game. So, for all the clueless liberals in the media who are supposed to be analyzing why Republicans have walked away from John McCain... it's the immigration, stupid!
Now, on the subject of immigration, why do we keep hearing that since the ill conceived attempt at immigration reform was killed, nothing will be done until after the next Presidential election, still a year and a half away? It's because of this load of crap notion that in order to secure our borders, we must also give amnesty (regardless of what label they want to slap on it) to all the illegal immigrants that are here already. Any clear headed person knows that this is not true. We need to demand of our elected officials that they secure the border now, and admit that it is a separate issue from dealing with illegals already here. And you would think that they would realize that if the border were truly secured, it would be a lot easier to get conservatives to let some sort of limited amnesty slip through. Not that we would like it mind you, but we wouldn't be so inclined to fight if we knew that, at least, the borders were secured, and we weren't going to be going through all of this again in 10 or 20 years. So wake up Washington DC, it's time that all the bums up there started doing the job they were sent there to do, instead of pushing their own ideology.