McCain's Latest Lie: Spanish-Only Immigration Ad Blames Obama

-- by Dave

Is there anything the McCain campaign won’t lie about? It’s becoming pathological:

The McCain campaign has started airing a new Spanish-language television commercial in the battleground states of Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico that lays the failure of comprehensive immigration reform at the feet of Barack Obama and his Democratic colleagues -- despite the fact that Obama supported the bipartisan John McCain-Edward Kennedy efforts to enact such reforms and voted for their final proposal last year.

… "Obama and his Congressional allies say they are on the side of immigrants," the ad's announcer says in Spanish in the spot, released Friday. "But are they? The press reports that their efforts were 'poison pills' that made immigration reform fail. The result: No guest worker program. No path to citizenship. No secure borders. No reform. Is that being on our side? Obama and his Congressional allies: Ready to block immigration reform, but not ready to lead."

This is a complete reversal of the real picture: Republicans, not Democrats, killed immigration reform, and it had nothing to do with “poison pill” amendments. It had to do with right-wing Republicans who hated the “amnesty” portions of the bill that McCain himself supported.

As you can see in the above video, the nativist nutcases actually claim credit (with good reason) for killing immigration reform. And they will continue to be the largest obstacle. 

Even the Washington Times is calling bullshit on McCain's ad (with its own right-wing take, of course):

It's McCain's second attempt to try to tie Obama to unpopular congressional Democrats, and this one's a stretch. The immigration bill didn't die because of poison pill amendments; it died because it was unworkable from the start — a mishmash of ideas and policies that never quite worked together, that was always skewed too far toward amnesty to truly win much conservative support, and that never quite got the buy-in such a deal needed from both sides.

Remember, this is a bill that was so unpopular it was blocked by a bipartisan majority filibuster — usually the tool of the minority.

The McCain campaign, in its backup literature for the ad, points to "poison pill amendments" that Obama backed. But even there, their read on the situation is off. They argue Obama voted for the amendment to sunset the guest-worker program after five years. That amendment passed 49-48.

But the entire agreement was so fragile that without that amendment, sought by labor unions, even more Democrats would have voted against the final bill. In fact, the amendment was voted on twice — it failed the first time, but in order to keep Democrats from abandoning the bill they negotiated a second vote, which passed.

So it's arguable that amendment actually kept the bill alive longer than it otherwise would have lasted.

This is only the latest lie coming from these people, as we all know, and it has permanently changed the campaign narrative. McCain’s campaign has officially become the Fast Talk Express.