John McCain is a liar

John McCain saved his presidential ambitions last year by ditching his rhetoric about amnesty for illegal aliens. He started saying that he heard the American people, that they want border security first, and that he would work on that before he would push for amnesty as president.

I never actually believed this, but I was willing to at least believe him since despite his many flaws, he had a record of being a man of his word.

That's no longer true.

Here he is last night speaking to a business group:

He added: “I believe we have to secure our borders, and I think most Americans agree with that, because it’s a matter of national security. But we must enact comprehensive immigration reform. We must make it a top agenda item if we don’t do it before, and we probably won’t, a little straight talk, as of January 2009.”

Mr. McCain asked others on the panels for suggestions about how to “better mobilize American public opinion” behind the notion of comprehensive immigration reform.

John Hawkins reaches the following conclusion:

Put very simply: John McCain is a liar. He's a man without honor, without integrity, who could not have captured the Republican nomination had he run on making comprehensive immigration a top priority of his administration. Quite frankly, this is little different from George Bush, Sr. breaking his "Read my lips, no new taxes pledge," except that Bush's father was at least smart enough to wait until he got elected before letting all of his supporters know that he was lying to them.

Under these circumstances, I simply cannot continue to support a man like John McCain for the presidency. Since that is the case, I have already written the campaign and asked them to take me off of their mailing list and to no longer send me invitations to their teleconferences. I see no point in asking questions to a man who has no compunction about lying through his teeth on one of the most crucial election issues and then changing his position the first time he believes he can get away with it.

I agree completely. McCain WILL NOT have my vote in November, regardless of what happens from now until then. If we have amnesty (and we likely will, since Obama is also in favor of open borders), I'd rather it not have the support of a Republican president. Let the Democrats be blamed for its disastrous results.

Oh yeah, about that post the other day? Now Obama isn't the only one I'll be going after.

UPDATE: Ace is with me, and of course does a better job of saying it:

What surprises me is that John McCain fetishizes his own integrity and honor and yet apparently doesn't think a promise made to conservatives "counts" -- perhaps he imagines we're children, or perhaps legally incompetent lunatics, who cannot enter binding contracts, and thus the contract he made with us can be voided without consequence?

I don't know. For a man to whom integrity and honor is supposedly so important one would imagine he'd be slightly less cavalier about lying and breaking a promise, even if he didn't like that promise.

...and...

This is the nasty edge of McCain's conception of himself as impeccably righteous -- he believes he's so above the rest of us in terms of honesty and integrity he can also decide what constitutes a lie and what constitutes bad behavior and what represents a broken promise. As in, his mind, his presidency is absolutely indispensible to America, tiny deceptions like this are not merely excusable, but downright imperative, and thus justified.