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Sun Expanded Coverage
(The Sun has gone on the road to listen to voters and talk to political leaders around the West. Reporters will examine the economic, cultural and demographic forces re-shaping the region as they drive to Denver for the first of the two major party conventions the Sun will cover.)
TUCSON --Our trip is really showing the prescience of Thomas Schaller's book, "Whistling Past Dixie."
Published a couple years ago, the book makes the argument that Democrats were foolish to spend resources in the South, despite the oft-repeated nostrum that Democrats have only won with southerners since Kennedy. Schaller argued that the South is gone forever and urged the party to put resources into the rapidly changing intermountain West. He looked at changing demographics, the libertarianism of the region that made abortion a good issue for Dems; the lack of significant religious right (outside Utah and a few scattered other places); the Democrats' recent willingness to drop gun control as an issue (Sen. Harry Reid led the way on that one); the increasingly active environmental movements of these states, with newcomers wanting to protect wilderness areas.
Of course, Schaller also got lucky: He couldn't have predicted the extreme rhetoric about Hispanics and immigrants that would take over the Republican Party in many western states and drive away Hispanic voters, nor could he have known that Nevada's early Democratic caucus would drive up registration. To be sure, Sen. John McCain will win one of the big prizes of the intermountain West: Arizona. But the rest of the region, save Utah, is in play, and Schaller was pretty sharp to see this all playing out.
It's the same extreme rhetoric found in the comments here at the Sun's website by bigots and neocons who seem to constantly confuse "hispanic" with "illegal alien."
It's sweet schadenfreude that the Republican party, after years of demonizing hispanic voters and campaigning on irrational fears and hatred of illegal immigrants, ended up with John McCain, a presidential candidate who actually supports amnesty.
McCain tried to make a compromise and worked with the most liberal dem in the Senate except that new kid from Chicago. The problem was it promised amnesty first and a closed border second. McCain said he got the message and wants the border secured as soon as possible so he can get a type of amnesty through a divided Congress. With the governments failure on past promises it seems like a reasonable deal.Just don't beat on McCain for being the one that tried to find an agreement that both could accept. He seems to stand for principles not popular rhetoric.
McCain has principles, not popular rhetoric?
The offshore drilling moratorium
Windfall-profit tax
His own immigration legislation
His own campaign finance legislation
Warrantless wiretapping
Privatizing Social Security
Protecting abortion rights in cases of rape and incest
The estate tax
Indefinite detention of terror suspects Normalizing relations with Cuba
Diplomacy with Hamas
Diplomacy with Syria
Waterboarding
The DREAM act
Roe v. Wade
gay marriage
Bush's tax cuts
ethanol
The Confederate flag
Those are only a few of his positions on which McCain's done a complete 180.
Exactly how would you define that as principled?