Although Senator John McCain blasts Mitt Romney - and everybody else - when he says that McCain supported amnesty for illegal aliens (at one time or another), and is quite self-righteous about it at that, it has to be said that the only one lying about this issue is the Senator from Arizona himself. Via the Corner:

There are jobs that American workers simply won’t do,’ McCain said. ‘As long as there’s a demand for workers, workers are going to come across.’ An amnesty program is vital to any immigration legislation that includes a guest-worker program, he said. ‘Amnesty has to be an important part because there are people who have lived in this country for 20, 30 or 40 years, who have raised children here and pay taxes here and are not citizens. That has to be a component of it,’ he said. ‘How can we have a temporary worker program if we’re not allowing people who have been here for 30 years to hold jobs here?’” (C. T. Revere, “McCain Pushes Amnesty, Guest-Worker Program,” Tucson Citizen, 5/29/03)

As Ramesh Ponnuru points out, McCain repeats - everywhere he goes - that he never supported amnesty, but that’s a lie, and quite a big one at that. Sadly, however, “it won’t help Romney, if McCain’s friends in the press just ignore it.”

And they’ll do their very best to do just that, I am sure.

The bad news for McCain is, however, that conservatives do know about it and read about it. This is why it’ll be difficult for him to get them to support him. If he becomes the nominee it will be despite the preferences of the conservative base, not because of it.