controversial program in Massachusetts requiring individuals to buy health insurance, nor that he was an opportunistic centrist with shape-shifting views on abortion and gay rights. The conservative movement, and the loudest voices on talk radio—Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Ingraham herself—had fallen for the former governor.
Everything about Romney screamed presidential: his elegant wife, his five strapping sons, his vintage jawline, his flawless coif of black with flecks of silver distinguishing his temples. He was a wealthy business guru who had created tens of thousands of jobs. He was a technocrat and a turnaround specialist, having rescued the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics from financial ruin. He was a fiscal messiah who preached the gospel of free markets and low taxes and deregulation.
And for whatever his faults, Romney was strong when it came to McCain’s greatest weakness: immigration.
McCain had long been viewed warily by the right wing of the Republican Party. While celebrated for his Vietnam heroism—he spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton, refusing the early release offered due to his father’s rank as a four-star admiral1—the Arizona senator reveled in deviating from party orthodoxy. He opposed his onetime rival George W. Bush’s tax cuts after losing to him in the GOP primary of 2000. He decried the administration’s use of torture and advocated for closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. He teamed with Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold to rewrite the nation’s campaign finance laws, undermining the GOP’s structural cash advantages. On a personal level, McCain could be gruff and churlish, prone to angry outbursts that left colleagues questioning his steadiness. “The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine,” Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, a Republican, told the Boston Globe in 2008. “He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper, and he worries me.”2
But McCain’s unforgivable sin came in 2007. Along with the “Liberal Lion,” Ted Kennedy, he led the charge in Congress to pass Bush’s comprehensive immigration reform plan—including a path to citizenship for millions of illegal residents. The fallout was devastating. McCain took a beating from the right, which, combined with the early mismanagement of his 2008 campaign, nearly ended his second bid for the White House before it began.
Even as his pirate ship of a campaign steadied, and McCain climbed back into contention, his vulnerability was all the more exposed. Republican candidates had expected the 2008 primary fight to revolve around two issues: the domestic economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was no shortage of discussion and debate on these topics. Yet more visceral for GOP voters, especially those in the lily-white early-nominating states of Iowa and New Hampshire, was immigration. The fear was that by offering “amnesty” to millions of foreign-born intruders, Republicans threatened to destabilize the economy while staining the American social fabric.
During a town hall meeting in New Hampshire in the late summer of 2007, McCain grew exasperated upon hearing yet another voter raise concerns about Mexican immigrants endangering her community. “Ma’am, you live in New Hampshire. We’re two thousand miles from the southern border,” the senator said. “What are you worried about, a bunch of angry French Canadians?”
McCain’s traveling staff, which due to financial troubles had been pared back to campaign manager Rick Davis and a few local organizers, howled at the remark. But as they spoke afterward, McCain warned Davis that the issue could derail his candidacy. “If we’re going to get this in New Hampshire,” McCain said, “we’re going to get this everywhere.”
The rival campaigns reached a similar conclusion and began to recalibrate, seeking tougher tones to channel the ire of their electorate. Fortunately for McCain, many of his opponents were ill equipped to attack him on the issue: Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, was a longtime friend and an immigration dove himself; former Arkansas governor and onetime Baptist minister Mike Huckabee had a similarly soft record; Texas congressman Ron Paul’s libertarian worldview called for a free flow of goods and people; and former senator Fred Thompson, like the rest of the field, lacked the viability to inflict damage on McCain.
The exception was Romney. He methodically chiseled away at McCain’s immigration record, painting him as a career politician oblivious to the plight of working Americans. The irony, in retrospect, is that Romney now realizes that the churning resentment among voters had far less to do with people coming in than it did with jobs going out—something he