Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., spent Saturday attending town halls in Iowa, where he recently announced he was opting out of the Ames straw poll. The Arizona Republic reported that McCain got some negative feedback outside a town hall in Pella, where one protestor wore a yellow chicken suit and carried a sign that read, “You ‘Bawked at the Straw Poll.”
McCain spent the rest of the weekend campaigning in California. After hosting various political and finance events and meeting with local media in Modesto, Calif., on Monday, he planned to spend the rest of the week doing more of the same. He intends to campaign throughout California, Texas and Georgia. On June 16, McCain plans to travel to Arizona, where he aims to join the cosponsor of the stalled immigration bill Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., for a fund-raising breakfast in Scottsdale.
In a Sunday appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” McCain defended the Senate’s immigration legislation, saying, “It’s a national security issue, as I keep trying to say. The status quo is de facto amnesty. They’re all opposed to amnesty. Well, if you do nothing, then we have silent amnesty, if you don’t do anything about the 12 million people because they’re just going to stay here and do whatever they’re doing, which unfortunately we don’t know.”
Two recent op-eds complimented McCain’s stance on immigration: The Washington Post’s Sebastian Mallaby , praised his “sensible” approach to reform while the Salt Lake Tribune’s Ruben Navarrette Jr. called McCain “correct and courageous” for “confronting the nativist fringe of his own party, telling voters what they need to hear instead of what they want to hear, and challenging other candidates to either lead or get out of the way.”
In a Monday appearance on CBS’s ‘The Early Show,’ Cindy McCain said her husband’s positions “come from not only what he believes in but what’s in his heart. He does what’s right, not just what’s good for the polling numbers.”
She appeared on CNN’s “American Morning” the same day. When asked about criticism by some evangelicals of her husband’s faith, she responded, “I have not seen that. If they are questioning my husband’s faith, they do not know him. There is no stronger man of faith than my husband.”
The Baltimore Sun has a write-up of the campaign’s efforts to address problems such as McCain’s earlier perceived lackluster debate performances and poor fund-raising results.
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