McCain offered an olive branch to the Christian right in a speech about the kind of judges he would nominate planned for Tuesday at Wake Forest University. The far right has been deeply suspicious of McCain, the expected GOP presidential nominee, because he has clashed with its leaders and worked against them on issues like campaign finance reform.McCain promised to appoint judges who, in the mold of Roberts and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, are likely to limit the reach of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

“They would serve as the model for my own nominees if that responsibility falls to me,” McCain said in his prepared speech.

Asheville Citizen-Times

I love how the author refers to those who have had reservations about McCain as the “far right.”

In any case, judges were a big issue with many conservatives concerned about what kind of judges McCain would nominate. I’m not too worried about it. The “Gang of 14″ that he forged to get Bush’s stalled nominees through, in hindsight was actually a decent idea on his behalf. I was critical of it at the time, but it allowed Bush to get some excellent judges through, like Janice Rogers Brown, whom we wouldn’t have been able to get if that hadn’t happened.

So, I’m not too concerned with McCain when it comes to judges, but quite honestly, I don’t know if it will be possible for him to get a pro-life judge through without cloture. Even in the best case scenario for Republicans this year we won’t have enough Senators to break a filibuster, which will definitely happen if the Democrats don’t think they can win an up or down vote.

Remember how John McCain promised that he’d learned from the McCain-Kennedy-Bush immigration fiasco last summer, and that he would seek enforcement-first as President because he respected the message he had received from the American people?

Well, so much for that.

The Arizona senator also seemed to move past his usual “secure the borders first” mantra in favor of calling for, as he put it, “comprehensive immigration reform.”

Last summer, McCain and Sen. Edward Kennedy led the charge on an immigration reform package that aroused the ire of conservatives and ultimately threatened to undermine McCain’s then-frontrunning presidential bid. (McCain also supported immigration reform bills in 2005 and 2006.)

“Unless we enact comprehensive immigration reform I don’t think you can take it piecemeal,” he explained Monday, answering a question about providing visas for skilled workers.

Oh boy.