…[McCain] noted that he was personally censured by Arizona Republicans in January of 2014 and has been fighting to push out the extremists in the state G.O.P. ever since. “We did to some degree regain control of the Party.” But McCain fears that Trump may be reversing those gains.
Senator John McCain, speaking about candidate Donald Trump’s visit to Phoenix last weekend, claims Trump has “Fired up the Crazies” in Arizona. Senator McCain is furious that Donald Trump is undermining the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbying efforts to achieve comprehensive immigration reform.
McCain promises to unleash the full fury of the establishment Republican machine against Donald Trump to insure his defeat. Trump will never be accepted by McCain’s coalition of Republicans in the Senate….
(Via New Yorker) Over the weekend, Donald Trump held a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, that attracted several thousand people. He shared the stage with the father of a man who was killed by an undocumented immigrant—and Trump continued his rant against illegal immigration that began when he launched his campaign and started to surge in the polls. Not every Republican in Arizona was pleased with Trump’s visit. Senator John McCain, the Party’s Presidential nominee in 2008, reacted to the event with dismay.
“It’s very bad,” McCain, who was eager to talk about Trump, told me on Monday when I stopped by his Senate office. The Senator is up for reëlection in 2016, and he pays close attention to how the issue of immigration is playing in his state. He was particularly rankled by Trump’s rally. “This performance with our friend out in Phoenix is very hurtful to me,” McCain said. “Because what he did was he fired up the crazies.”
McCain, who has long supported comprehensive immigration reform and was a member of the so-called Gang of Eight that successfully pushed immigration legislation through the Senate in 2013, has been at war with the far right in Arizona for years. “We have a very extreme element within our Republican Party,” McCain said.
He then noted that he was personally censured by Arizona Republicans in January of 2014 and has been fighting to push out the extremists in the state G.O.P. ever since. “We did to some degree regain control of the Party.”
But McCain fears that Trump may be reversing those gains. “Now he galvanized them,” McCain said. “He’s really got them activated.”
McCain probably has more experience navigating the issue of immigration than any other national Republican politician. He has fought off right-wing challengers in Arizona primaries and run twice in G.O.P. Presidential primaries. He has occasionally reined in his enthusiasm for an immigration-reform plan that would include a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants—he hedged a bit during the 2008 campaign—but he has never abandoned the policy.
Many Republicans assume that Trump’s current position at the top of national polls won’t last, and McCain, who said that he last met Trump many years ago, pointed out that conservatives are starting to learn more about Trump’s liberal past. “He was a big Democratic supporter,” he said. “Some of this stuff is going to come out: he gave more money to Democrats than Republicans; he had Hillary Clinton at his wedding. You know, he’s attacking Hillary Clinton after she was in the front row of his—I don’t know which wedding it was.” (Trump has been married three* times.) (read more)
