RSS Feed MenuDespite a string of high-profile endorsements and a drift to the right on economic policy, Senator John McCain lost ground to JD Hayworth in the latest poll.
In a Rasmussen poll released on Wednesday, McCain leads Hayworth by only seven percentage points, down from his 22 percentage-point lead in January. Currently, forty-eight percent of likely Republican primary voters support McCain, forty-one support JD Hayworth, eight percent are undecided and three percent support another candidate.
The McCain-Hayworth race has been back-and-forth for months. In the fall, McCain and Hayworth were in a dead heat. Then, earlier this year, McCain had a wide lead over the former talk show host. Now, five months away from the primary, the race is competitive again.
McCain’s trouble continues to be Arizona’s conservative grassroots. Among self-described “conservatives,” Hayworth leads the former GOP presidential candidate by five percent. Among liberal and moderate Republicans, however, McCain has a wide lead. If the Arizona GOP primary is closed off from independent voters, as state party officials hope, the primary might be dominated by the anti-McCain conservative party base.
Carney // Mar 19, 2010 at 1:55 pm
McCain’s arrogant and stubborn push for amnesty for illegal aliens, and his infuriating dishonesty (coming from a man lauded for honor and candor) in denying that it was amnesty, not only nearly cost him the GOP nomination that he should have been able to roll up, it may have cost him the White House as many stayed home or skipped that race on their ballot, and it is even now threatening to derail what should have been an easy romp to re-election. And serves him right!
The 1986 amnesty (which at least was openly and properly referred to as such) was supposed to be the LAST one, and it was sold to us on the promise of stepped-up, vigorous border patrols and internal enforcement. Predictably, the liberal portion of the deal was irreversibly enacted, while the conservative portion was abandoned. (Shades of the Reagan and Bush 1 era budget deals where the tax increases get pushed through but the spending cuts never happen).
What sneering contempt for the American people must there be on the part of the men who thought they could fool us again!
mlindroo // Mar 19, 2010 at 2:22 pm
*Laugh*
I do think Maverick’s loss will be the Republican party’s as well, before long.
Hayworth is a controversial figure, and his views on e.g. immigration might not play well with the rapidly growing Hispanic block in Arizona. I hear the Dems have found a rather strong candidate too, but I assume McCain will win again if he survives the GOP primaries.
MARCU$
DFL // Mar 19, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Although I expect McCain to edge Hayworth by about five points, he needed a comeuppance and he’s getting it. I second everything Carney has posted.
M Pearle // Mar 22, 2010 at 4:16 am
***McCain’s arrogant and stubborn push for amnesty for illegal aliens, and his infuriating dishonesty (coming from a man lauded for honor and candor) in denying that it was amnesty,***
Indeed, and the long term costs will be immense as academic achievement lags. California’s demise is an interesting case study:
“In short, we are witnessing a highly advanced and prosperous state, long endowed with superior human capital, turning into the exact opposite in just one generation. What can be done to stop this race to the bottom? The answer is simple: California and Washington need to enforce existing immigration law. Unfortunately, it is difficult to convince the public that this is necessary, so deeply entrenched are myths about illegal immigration.
One myth is that because America is a country of immigrants and has successfully absorbed waves of immigration in the past, it can absorb this wave. But the argument neglects two key differences between past waves and the current influx. First, the immigrant population is more than double today what it was following the most massive previous immigration wave (that of the late 19th century). Second, and much more important, as scholars from the Manhattan Institute have shown, earlier immigrants were much more likely to bring with them useful skills. Some Hispanic immigrants certainly do integrate, but most do not. Research has shown that even after 20 years in the country, most illegal aliens (the overwhelming majority of whom are Hispanic) and their children remain poor, unskilled, and culturally isolated they constitute a new permanent underclass.
Perhaps the most disingenuous myth about illegal immigrants is that they do not impose any cost on society. The reality is that even those who work and half do not, according to the Pew Hispanic Center cannot subsist on the wages they receive and depend on public assistance to a large degree. Research on Los Angeles immigrants by Harvard University scholar George J. Borjas shows that 40.1 percent of immigrant families with non-citizen heads of household receive welfare, compared with 12.7 percent of households with native-born heads. Illegal immigrants also increase public expenditures on health care, education, and prisons. In California today, illegal immigrants’ cost to the taxpayer is estimated to be $13 billion half the state’s budget deficit.
The state should stop providing welfare and other social services to illegal aliens as existing statutes demand and severely punish employers who break the law by hiring illegal immigrants. This would immediately remove powerful economic incentives for illegal immigration, and millions of illegal aliens would return to their countries. Instead, with President Obama in the White House and the Democrats controlling Congress, an amnesty for the country’s 13 million illegal immigrants may be soon to come.
Milton Friedman once said that unrestrained immigration and the welfare state do not mix. Must we wait until California catches up with Mexico to realize how right he was? ”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112167023