Dude, Palin just believes in honoring our treaties with other nations. NATO means something, it’s not just 4 letters. Plus, that question was a hypothetical. If Georgia was part of NATO we would be treaty-bound to defend Georgia. It’s really a no-brainer and that’s what here response indicated. It wasn’t “casual”.
Eh? The likelihood is that the Dems will increase their majority in both houses.
I see. You are actually a traveller from an alternate dimension. Well, welcome to planet Earth. On this world Bush is a shitty president.
Since we know he’s a liar, and we know he has no integrity, there is plain simple no way of beginning to figure out whether he will be better or worse than Dubya.
Based on his lifestyle and history, nothing he has said so far in his campaign can be trusted. I believe his sole aim is to get to be President, who cares what happens after that. He’s 72, right. He’s got pretty much all he ever wanted except the Presidency.
He needs to be President. He could be more dangerous than Bush.
I’d believe that if McCain was actually aware of who the prime minister of Spain is, one of our NATO allies.
Or, to put the McCain advisor spin on it, he was fully aware of who he was talking about (Zapatero) but was happy to snub him.
Reaching much?
The question “under the NATO treaty, wouldn’t we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?”
The answer is of course “yes”. That’s the whole point of the NATO treaty.
Palin’s answer was certainly politically clumsy, but I think it’s disingenuous to claim that she’s itching to get at Russia.
Well…that’s one perspective. Another might be that Bush and his policies bear some responsibility for the “fairly rough patch” we’ve experienced.
You might find this column in the Philadelphia Inquirer interesting. I did. It dispels all that “McCain voted 90% of the time with Bush” folderol (which McCain advanced himself at one point to stoke up his conservative cred):
Interestingly, many of the points where he has diverged from his liberal tendencies in his presidential campaign are all changes I support: drilling in Alaska, lower taxes, etc. It also makes clear that McCain’s maverick mantra has a truth behind it that Obama can only dream of. McCain has taken stands against the Republican core constituency on issues that were politically risky for him, something Obama has never done in his own party.
Where is he simialr to Bush? Here’s another interesting column, this time in the Philly Daily News.
It depicts the sort of “dishonesty” from the Obama camp that many on this board suppose is the unique province of the Republicans. Additionally, it demonstrates yet another instance where McCain (this time, with Bush) took a political stance, risky in its opposition to his own party’s base.
Would your conclusion be changed if, hypothetically, McCain jettisoned his support for that immigration reform when it was politically convenient to do so?
I don’t really have a strong opinion on immigration reform, actually. If you think I’m unaware that his position has changed, your clever ploy has failed. 
I accept the fact that McCain has revised his position in recognition of the fact that his prior attempt has absolutely no possibility of success. From the same article I cited:
From McCain’s website:
In short, I’m okay with it.
Ok. No need for a hypothetical then.
Our evidence for this belief is simply McCain’s say-so. But why would a McCain presidency not be able to shepard a substantially similar policy through an even more Democratic Congress? And if political capital was the only problem, why change positions when discussing the ideal policy?
Here’s my alternative theory: the “gridlock” that stymied the original proposal is called the Republican base. The bill died in conference because of the largely (but not exclusively) conservative opposition to what they saw as amnesty. McCain discovered that he could not support such reform and still court the base necessary to run for President.
McCain said all along that border security cannot be separated from other reforms because without better regulation of the illegal job market, no fence can ever succeed. He now claims that we must secure the border first, and do everything else later. Until such time as he explains why his original position was wrong as a matter of policy, that is a shift based on what the right-wing wants, not what he thinks is best for the country.
Finally, I sleight McCain only very little for these events. Virtually any politician in his position would have done the same thing. But it certainly means he can’t hold it up as a demonstration of his integrity and willingness to buck his party.
Because it was a losing proposition even with a president in office who was also open to immigration reform–that’s was the environment McCain was in. It’s just a non-starter, with both Republicans and Democrats in the mainstream.
Well, my quick reaction is that immigration reform, without a foundation of strong border security was not just a Republican bugaboo. As noted in the prior cite:
This kind of reform didn’t have legs in a Dem-controlled Congress either. It’s just a non-starter, ISTM.
There’s something to what you say, but I’d argue he’s not reacting to the base–he’s reacting to the political reality that NOBODY wants the type of reform he envisioned without a secure border, not Dems, not Repubs.
I’ll disagree here as well. In the arena of immigration reform, McCain is the one candidate on either ticket who can point to having taken considerable political risk, counter to his base.
Then we are left with an empirical question: did the immigration reform bill fail because there was insufficient political support for a solution that didn’t put border security first?
This is not the kind of question we have to leave to speculation and punditry. There is a real answer. While eleven Democrats joined thirty-two Republicans to back the amendment to enhance border security before any other reform measures, the amendment failed. The sizable majority of the Senate opposed such a policy.
We can debate why the bill ultimately failed, but it is demonstrably not because of a lack of “fence first” provisions.
So responding to the bill’s failure by adopting the “fence first” position cannot be a response to the political requirements of the Senate. And, indeed, since support for that position was overwhelmingly Republican, a more Democratic Senate will be even more fertile terrain. Instead, it is more likely a response to the political requiremnts of running in a Republican Presidential primary.
Well, effectively it was, wasn’t? The have been billions approved for border security in other measures, and border security was the single biggest issue debated, not least of which was whether there would actually be funding for the amendment. I think you’re trying to reduce this to an overly simplistic syllogism. Border security is king in this debate, it just is. The fact that any particular immigration measure failed isn’t because of that aspect. Doesn’t matter what you, I, or McCain want.
Let me word it differently, maybe that will make my point clearer: A “border security first” measure isn’t guaranteed to get through that putrid stew of muck we all affectionately refer to as Congress, but any measure that lacks that attribute is doomed to fail, a non-starter, kaput. You want your reform to stick to the wall? Better put “secure borders” on page one. Won’t guarantee success, but neither will it invariably result in failure as the alternatives have.
You argue that the “fences first” provision is politically necessary but not sufficient. But this does not address my argument. When voting up or down on an amendment to put border security provisions first, the Senate overwhelmingly voted down. Regardless of whether the bill had other problems (and let’s not forget that much of the opposition was from conservatives claiming that guest workers means amnesty), this vote on the amendment isolates the question as to whether putting border security first improves or lessens the chance of passage. Definitively, it lessens it.
If your argument is that Senate wrangling cannot be taken at face value, so be it. Then what evidence do you offer for your view of the political constraints?
This is where we’ll continue to disagree, I guess. The bill had a multitude of problems from the perspective of many involved. It is fair to say that his reform, even if “fronted” by strong border security elements, doesn’t suddenly become a slam dunk, though the debate and compromise that followed twisted the reform into something different entirely. His original reform was unpalatable. So was the amended reform. Back to the drawing board.
But my point was that McCain revised his position in the face of overwhelming public disagreement, disagreement that crossed party lines, over the shortcomings of his reform with regard to border security (among other things). It was not in response to the conservative base. His revised position is an attempt to advance a more politically practical agenda that still leads to reform. Whether or not he will be successful is still an open question.
I don’t see how what you’ve said is responsive to my point: regardless of why the overall bill ultimately failed, we know from the Senate debate on a particular amendment that “fences first” wouldn’t have made it more likely to succeed.
I don’t buy that McCain changed his position due to broader political exigencies. He changed to the one position we can isolate as having been particularly unpopular in the Senate, but particularly popular among the base.
No, we only know for sure that it didn’t succeed. I’m not following the logic that leads to your conclusion.
I’m referring to a vote on a particular amendment in the overall bill. The amendment would have made border security the first priority. In other words, the amendment was a test of whether–all else being equal–the Senate preferred to put border security first. The Senate voted strongly against that amendment.
Therefore, the most direct, unbiased evidence we have of what could pass the Senate stands in direct contradiction to McCain’s position.
Now, I’m sympathetic to the argument that we cannot take what happens in the Senate at face value (i.e. maybe they rejected the amendment for reasons other than the content of the amendment). But I’d want to see some evidence as to why it wasn’t the most obvious explanation (the content).
As I said, this is not a pet issue of mine. Do you have a helpful cite that covers the progression of the debate (and failure) of this amendment?