The Washington Post today joins a chorus of pundits singing the demise of Sen. John McCain:
"Iowa being quite conservative, very conservative, I think there are some who just want to get rid of [illegal immigrants], send them back, put up a double wall," said Nelson P. Crabb, the mayor of Clear Lake and a McCain supporter. "That's impractical. But I think the general feeling of people here in Iowa is 'Gee, they shouldn't be here.' "
In three recent Mason-Dixon polls in Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada, McCain was mired in fourth place with less than 10 percent of the vote among likely Republican voters. Brad Coker, who runs Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, said McCain's position on immigration is a key to his slump.
"With the grass-roots party voters, the people who participate in primaries and caucuses, they are not really thrilled with any kind of amnesty," Coker said, referring to the conservatives' favored description of the reform bill. Coker said 40 percent of GOP voters ranked immigration as their No. 1 or No. 2 issue.
"Among those voters, McCain was running very poor -- 5 percent or less," Coker said. McCain's top advisers dispute the poll results, noting that no other survey has shown the senator with support that low.
McCain cannot recover from this. In an earlier post, I mentioned that I disputed the whole notion that he could ever win the Republican nomination, and this exemplifies why he can't. The people who blocked the immigration bill in the Senate are just the people who vote in Republican primary elections. These people have always been hostile to McCain; not only recently on this issue, like Trent Lott. McCain's finished. I agree with the prediction I heard that he'll withdraw before primary voting even gets started.
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