Mickey Kaus asks

You also have to wonder: If even John McCain's lifelong (and only temporarily suspended) campaign for legalization doesn't get  him much support among Hispanics—who currently seem to prefer Obama 2-to-1—will Republicans in general finally give up on the cynical Rovian dream of using immigration liberalization to win over that growing ethnic group?

And   McCain isn't even trying to hide his immigration enthusiasm. Robert Stacy McCain points to a Human Events interview in which John McCain says:

Q: You were in the forefront of the comprehensive immigration package that died in the Senate in '06. Now you are saying 'border security' first...

A: That's the reality. The reason it was rejected by the Senate was we didn't give the American people the confidence that the borders would be secure. But, in all candor, you need to have a path to citizenship [for those] who come here illegally. And you need a temporary worker program.

Q: So will you send the Senate a "border security only" package?

A: I'm still open to a comprehensive package. But I understand we have to sit down on this. We must secure the borders, we have to have a temporary worker program, we must round up and deport 2 million people who are here illegally and have committed crimes. But people who have gotten here illegally, obeyed the laws, learned English, lived here all their lives and have lived decent lives — they have to go through the naturalization process. They are God’s children.

[HUMAN EVENTS EXCLUSIVE: McCain Promises No Compromise on Supreme Court, Will Visit ANWR, by John Gizzi 10/17/2008]

(Emphasis added by The Other McCain.) Whenever I   hear that illegals are "God's children," (perfectly true) I think of a story about Ulster's Ian Paisley, a Calvinist who represented the Protestant side in Northern Ireland. I first heard this story heard from John Derbyshire, in 2001. Asked by British Prime Minister James Callaghan ”Are we not all the children of God?” Paisley replied   ”No, Sir. We are the children of wrath.”

You'd think McCain, of all people, would know that. What this means theologically isn't important here—it's from Ephesians 2:3 and is a popular text with Calvinists like Paisley—in international politics means something very   simple: there are two kinds of "children of God"—our "children of God" and their "children of God." And the President ot the United States is supposed to know which is which.