McCain blasts Romney for immigration stance change
And you thought last week's Republican debate was testy?
The frosty relationship between Mitt Romney and Arizona Senator John McCain, exposed during the debate last Tuesday in South Carolina, added a few more icicles yesterday when McCain chided the former Massachusetts governor for changing positions on immigration. For good measure, McCain also poked fun at Romney for describing himself as a hunter and for relying on illegal immigrants to trim his hedges.
Last week, Romney took aim at a new federal immigration bill that McCain helped craft. The bipartisan legislation envisions a path to legal residency for immigrants living in the United States illegally and a temporary guest worker program, two proposals loathed by some conservatives.
Romney called it "the wrong approach" and said it amounted to "amnesty." His campaign then threw an unvarnished television ad on the air in Iowa and New Hampshire over the weekend to hammer home his hard line against illegal immigration.
McCain has endured a backlash from many in the GOP for championing comprehensive immigration reform, and he's grown frustrated watching Romney try to capitalize on it. As recently as 2005, Romney was describing similar immigration proposals as "quite different" than amnesty. He has also previously referred to immigration proposals by McCain and others as "reasonable."
Romney's political foes say his tougher talk on immigration now is little more than political opportunism. McCain said as much yesterday on a conference call with bloggers, highlighting not just Romney's shift on immigration but also his questionable claim earlier this year to have been a hunter all his life, and the fact that a landscaping company that had long worked at Romney's Belmont home employed illegal immigrants.
"Maybe I should wait a couple weeks and see if it changes," McCain said of Romney's immigration position, according to McCain's campaign. "And maybe his solution will be to get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his yard."
The New York Sun's politics blog reported McCain's comments yesterday.
Romney spokesman Kevin Madden retorted yesterday that McCain was "lashing out" because he fears his involvement in the immigration bill will hurt him in the Republican primary.
"Why would an author or a major proponent of such an agreement resort to flailing about at a rival candidate rather than making the case for the agreement on its merits?" Madden said, adding that McCain is "feeling the pressure from the political fallout."
Immigration has emerged as one of the dominant issues of the 2008 presidential race, though it's playing a far more prominent role in the Republican primary than in the Democratic race. It's an especially volatile issue in Iowa, which is expected to hold the first vote for Republicans early next year.
Romney has been buoyed by strong poll showings there recently, including a new Des Moines Register poll of likely caucus-goers on Sunday showing him with a commanding lead -- 30 percent of respondents said they preferred Romney, compared with 18 percent for McCain and 17 percent for Rudolph Giuliani, former New York mayor. 