This is almost sad. I would also say it’s disappointing, but in fact it’s oh-so-predictable. John McCain has decided that the best way to sell his vision of immigration reform to the Republican electorate is to criticize his critics. The Boston Globe reports:

In a major speech on immigration Monday in South Florida, McCain will have tough words for critics such as Romney who haven't proposed anything of their own, according to advisers.

We’ll momentarily bypass the fact that the Boston Globe is apparently continuing its policy of willingly serving as hand-maiden to whomever happens to be Mitt Romney’s biggest foe on a given day. This comes as no shock.

The real issue here is McCain’s contemplated response. And lest you think the Globe has gotten its facts wrong, an email from the McCain campaign is whipping around the internet that excoriates Mitt Romney on immigration while not deigning to defend McCain/Kennedy. The title of that email? “WHAT THEY'RE SAYING: MITT ROMNEY ON IMMIGRATION.”

Speaking honestly here, and straight from the heart, I can’t believe the McCain campaign is so blind. Republican voters detest McCain/Kennedy. They hate the way the bill’s proponents have “sold” the bill even more so. The primary selling method, from the White House on down, has been to attack the bill’s critics.

Here’s what the misguided salesmen don’t get, and I’m including the president in this assessment. Only 26% of the public supports the bill. Democrats hate it almost as much as conservatives. Even if we assume for the sake of argument that the bill is wonderful and people just oppose it because they don’t understand its particulars (a tough case to make since the only people who seem to have read the bill are people who don’t like it like me and Hugh), why do the bill’s proponents think it’s a successful tool of persuasion to insult the people with whom they differ?

Fortunately for George Bush, he won’t have to endure the Republican electorate’s wrath over the immigration compromise. But if he did, he would find out that sending out his lackeys to call members of his own party Nazis would not be a winner. (I can’t win. Andrew Sullivan implies I’m a Nazi; the administration implies I’m a Nazi. Is there anyone out there who doesn’t think I’m a Nazi?)

Unlike Bush, McCain is seeking the approval of the Republican electorate. I know the McCain campaign doesn’t generally care for my advice, but I’ll offer it anyway: The only way to set things right between your candidate and the Republican base is to convince the base that McCain/Kennedy is a good bill. I happen to think that’s impossible since it’s so dreadful, but obviously Senator McCain disagrees regarding the merits of the bill or else he wouldn’t be pushing it so hard. It would be unimaginable that the Senator would put his name on a piece of legislation just to get himself before the klieg-lights where he could soak up the adulation of his friends in the media. Right?

McCain has responded to this crisis with the kind of petulance we’ve all gotten used to over the past several years. He has attacked using emotion, rather than defend using logic. In a perfect world, we could assume that if McCain were to give a major address on immigration on Monday, he would devote his energies to defending the bill he’s crafted.

But as we all know by now, that’s not how John McCain rolls.

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