John McCain has a love-hate relationship with immigration reform. Or rather, he loves immigration reform but the conservative base hates it. That becomes apparent whenever he talks about it.

McCain and his conservative critics learned different lessons from the ill-fated attempt in 2007 to create a comprehensive immigration reform scheme. Conservative opponents of immigration reform interpreted the defeat of the Bush immigration plan as proof certain that opposition to legalization for illegal immigrants was a winning argument and that the public had embraced a border-security-only plan.

But McCain saw it differently. He survived a near-political death experience and then came back from the political grave to win the nomination of the G.  read more »

John McCain has been steadily rising in the polls for many weeks. But today, it looks like he may be on the verge of losing California--even though just one week ago he led the state. Here are a few points that could help make sense out the Golden State Republican primary.

1) Immigration. A Field Poll, the gold standard for California polling, released two weeks ago found that 40 percent of G.O.P. primary voters pegged illegal immigration as the top issue -- perhaps not a surprise given that California, a border state, once embraced Proposition 187, which barred state spending on illegal immigrants and their children. Romney has courted these voters relentlessly in this campaign, consistently attacking McCain for his support of comprehensive immigration reform -- or "amnesty," in the rhetoric Romney has adopted.

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Earlier today, the Washington Examiner reported that Rudy Giuliani says in a new book that he would have deported New York's 400,000 illegal immigrants if given the chance.

The Caucus points out that Giuliani expressed the opposite opinion in 1994. Which is true.

But in a speech given much more recently, in April 2006 as he was preparing for his presidential run, that Giuliani gave no indication that he supported any sort of widespread deportation. At a Manhattan Institute dinner, he said that it was also worth considering the argument about many illegal immigrants that "they're not really doing damage to our society, might even be making vast contributions to it."

He said that a House bill at the time proposing punitive measures for illegal immigrants was too harsh and unenforceable. "So," Giuliani added, "we have to find a way and I think that the compromise the Senate was looking at something along those lines makes sense."

Giuliani also said nothing about deportation when he talked about his vision for dealing with the issue.

"Give people a way to earn citizenship, give them a way to earn citizenship in which they have to demonstrate facility with English and they have jobs and they're paying taxes and they've put themselves in an entirely legal status, recognize the economic forces that are realistic ones that require people to come into the United States or require people to have people come into the United States, and you identify them and you have them pay taxes and you find out who they are and then you concentrate on the people who are avoiding that and you'll be capable of doing that because it'll be a problem the dimensions of which you can touch and feel and measure and see and it'll be much harder for terrorists to hide in a situation like that."

The full remarks Giuliani made about immigration at the Manhattan Institute are after the jump.

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Football at presidential debate, shunned by Democrats, Governor Spitzer has become political pariah of party; Roger Stone gleeful, Anthony Weiner stressed out.  read more »

A local Queens newspaper, the Queens Courier, has a rather over-the-top editorial today opposing Eliot Spitzer’s plan to allow illegal immigrants to obtain a New York State driver’s license.

But they do raise one interesting point in their protest:

“The bad news here is that his change of policy does not require legislative approval! Our elected officials cannot even say no for us!”

Making this change by executive order does have the practical effect of letting legislators off the hook for voting for such a move. Strategically, it puts the burden on Spitzer to carry the message, which, as has been noted, he seems willing to do.

During Rudy Giuliani's campaign sweep through New Hampshire this week, he found generally receptive, if sedate, audiences as he talked about national security and the economy in town-hall-style meetings, or baked beans and baseball at a roadside grocery.   

But at one point, at least, I saw Giuliani show a side of his personality perhaps more familiar to New Yorkers who remember him from his days bashing ferrets. 

At a town hall-style meeting with about 100 voters at a technical college in Concord on Tuesday, Giuliani encountered a voter who asked why the former mayor made "New York City a sanctuary for illegal aliens."

"You must be talking about another candidate," said Giuliani, who went on to argue that his administration urged the federal government to deport as many illegal immigrants as possible.

"Here are the three areas that you have distorted into this view that I gave sanctuary to illegal immigrants," said Giuliani, turning his back on the voter and addressing the other voters, seated on couches and loveseats around him.

He said that, as mayor he had to make sure that all kids went to school, that everyone needed access to hospitals and that illegal immigrants needed to be able to inform the police about crimes without fear of deportation.

"That's why you are wrong," said Giuliani.

"As mayor of New York City," he said. "If I was nothing else, I was rational and sensible."

Giuliani's emphasis on immigration used to be different. He once told Meet the Press that, "There isn't a mayor or a public official in this country that's more strongly pro-immigrant than I am, including disagreeing with President Clinton when he signed an anti-immigration legislation about two or three years ago, which we got some amendments of to protect the rights of immigrants."

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Here's John Delgado, the business manager for Local 79 of the Construction and General Building Laborers, on the City Hall steps earlier today criticizing the immigration bill in Congress -- and the immigrant members of Congress who are supporting it.

“Shame on those people in Washington,” Delgado said. “And you know what, funny part is, some of them are immigrant themselves. They have forgotten where they came from. Shame on them. Wake up. Somebody should smack them on their head and wake them up.”

A representative of the United Federation of Teachers who was at the rally told me she supported everything Delgado said.