Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) wants Congress to pass the Gang of Eight’s comprehensive amnesty bill when he returns to the Senate after getting treatments for brain cancer.
According to The Arizona Republic, McCain, before leaving Washington to get cancer treatments in Arizona, reportedly spoke to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) about joining forces again to pass the “Gang of Eight” bill. After joining Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) to defeat the GOP’s “skinny repeal” of Obamacare, McCain, who has always wanted to be known as a straight-talking independent, was lionized by Democrats and the legacy media, with CNN paying homage to his “maverick moment.”
Referring to the “Gang of Eight” bill, McCain told the Republic on Thursday that he wanted “to reintroduce the same package that was passed through the United States Senate and never taken up in the House.”
“Immigration reform is one of the issues I’d like to see resolved,” McCain reportedly added. “I’ve got to talk to him (Schumer) about when would be the best time. I think there are all kinds of deals to be made out there. I really do.”
McCain worked with Schumer, along with Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Michael Bennet (D-CO), on the “Gang of Eight” bill, which was introduced in 2013. The Senate passed the bill but the House never took it up due to the massive amount of public pressure Representatives faced against the bill.
The bill would have given a path to citizenship to most illegal immigrants, greatly increased the number of H-1B visas to allow companies to displace American workers–U.S.-born and legal immigrants–with foreigners who are not more qualified, and greatly increased the number of legal immigrants who would be eligible to enter the country over the next 30 years to put more downward pressure on wages on blue-collar and white-collar workers of all backgrounds already in the United States.
“I think you have to consider that we do want high-tech people, but we also need low-skilled people who will do work that Americans won’t do,” McCain reportedly said. “I wouldn’t do it. Even in my misspent youth, I wouldn’t do it.”
After Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election, the Republican National Committee (RNC) produced its disastrous “autopsy” report. The only policy solution the terribly-named “autopsy” report advocated was amnesty for illegal immigrants. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and his gang of establishment inside-the-box consultants tethered to the tired views of the permanent political class bought the malarkey in the “autopsy” report, and Rubio became arguably the most prominent face of the “Gang of Eight” bill.
Breitbart News, on the other hand, sided with American workers who read its pages and called into Breitbart radio programs on Sirius XM Patriot and rejected the RNC’s nonsense. Former Breitbart News executive and current White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon did not care what the permanent political establishment thought and encouraged Breitbart News reporters like Matt Boyle to expose all of the Gang of Eight’s shenanigans and behind-the-scenes machinations. Since Fox News essentially supported the Gang of Eight bill, Breitbart News was oftentimes the lone outlet in the media universe that was critical of the bill and, in so doing, gained the trust of American workers who had been for too long accustomed to having all of the media outlets ignore their voices and concerns.
As Breitbart News previously noted, Breitbart News “was undersized, outmanned, and taking on the ‘professional conservative’ establishment, the GOP establishment, the establishment media and their liberal allies, the international establishment, and the left. All too often, all five of these camps tried to swarm Breitbart News. But Breitbart News prevailed and got even stronger because, like the honey badger, Bannon and Breitbart News didn’t give a sh*t.”
During the amnesty debate, then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) became a champion of American workers in the Senate, as he denounced the “Masters of Universe” who viewed American workers simply as commodities. Ann Coulter, to the relief of many, found her groove again. Mickey Kaus became an indispensable follow on Twitter and an unheralded source of information about the bill. Breitbart Texas’ groundbreaking scoop in June of 2014 about illegal immigrants being warehoused in Texas drove the national news cycle for weeks, and it led to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) shocking primary loss to Dave Brat, whom Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin supported.
Brat’s win was an upset for ages that essentially put the final nail in the coffin of the “Gang of Eight” bill. Breitbart News was one of the only outlets that covered Brat’s upstart candidacy and Ingraham’s final campaign event for Brat. The legacy media and the political establishment did not think Cantor’s race was worth covering and, in a bit of foreshadowing, never saw the forces that led to Cantor’s defeat.
The fierce opposition to the Gang of Eight bill may have convinced Donald Trump to firmly oppose illegal immigration when he entered the 2016 GOP presidential race. Trump won the GOP nomination by opposing illegal immigration, swatting away “Little Marco” and “Low-Energy Jeb” Bush. And proving how idiotic, insufferable, and out of touch GOP establishment lawmakers, “Republican” pundits, the legacy media, and Democrats like Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) were in claiming that Republicans could never win a general election without passing amnesty legislation, Trump did better among people of color in 2016 than Romney did in 2012 in the general election.
Unlike Trump, Rubio went against the interests of American workers in going all-in on the Gang of Eight bill, and GOP primary voters did not forgive him for breaking his campaign promises. White House special assistant and former Breitbart News writer Julia Hahn—whom Josh Green described in Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency as having a “cherubic visage and impeccably sweet manners” that “belied an intense commitment” to America-first nationalist policies and “a ferocious pen”—pointed out how devastating the Gang of Eight bill was for Rubio.
“Rubio entered the Republican primary race as the donor class favorite with seemingly limitless financial backing, media support, and institutional resources,” Hahn wrote then for Breitbart News. “Rubio was the handpicked successor to the legacy of Bush Republicanism: He was to be Paul Ryan’s partner in the White House to complete the immigration, trade and foreign policy legacy of George W. Bush.”
But Rubio failed to win a single primary in 2016 and, as Hahn noted, “to be so resoundingly electorally crushed given his incomparable advantage” was “likely a first in American history.”
While Rubio will most likely calculate how potentially teaming up with McCain again will impact his potential political future, McCain may want a comprehensive amnesty bill to be a lasting legacy not only for himself but for his late friend Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), with whom he introduced the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill.
That bill failed to pass in 2007 because the public revolted against President George W. Bush and the usual band of left-wing Democrats and establishment Republicans who always try to scheme together to pass amnesty bills that American workers have never supported.
Kennedy later passed away in 2009 from glioblastoma, which, as the Washington Post noted, is the same aggressive brain cancer that McCain is fiercely fighting.
According to the Republic, McCain, “who turns 81 on Aug. 29,” is “in a more reflective place in his long Senate career as he faces” his “serious health challenge and undergoes chemotherapy.”
“We’ll know in a few weeks,” McCain reportedly said of his brain cancer. “I hate the use the word ‘beat it,’ because it’s not a matter of beating. You either get cured or you don’t get cured.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.