The biggest drawback to the Democrats not officially settled on a candidate is that John McCain gets to fly beneath the press radar, flip-flopping his legacy away, out of view of the folks who nod their heads when they head “moderate” and “McCain” in the same sentence.
So now he has flip-flopped — again — on immigration amnesty policy. If you remember, McCain was a strong supporter of the Bush effort for paths to citizenship and for a guest worker program (collectively called amnesty by people on the right) and that strong support almost gave movement conservatives enough leverage to derail his candidacy for President. He went down to the CPAC meeting in February and told those folks what they wanted to hear — he would work to secure the borders first, then they’d talk about accommodating plans for controlled immigration.
Well now he’s thrown his movement conservatives back under the immigration bus and gone back to his comprehensive reform position. The Raw Story article I linked to has some of the right wing reaction to this, but these guys probably ought to throw away their sunscreen and get used to the smell of rubber and diesel because they’ll be spending a good portion of the summer underneath the Double Talk Express bus.
So how does this square with the “character” and “moderate” narratives again?