John McCain's latest campaign ad features the senator talking to an Arizona sheriff about illegal immigration. "Complete the dang fence" is the key line, uttered slowly while McCain walks along wearing a baseball cap.

The problem: McCain used to be for immigration reform, and was distinctly opposed to this kind of rhetoric. As a result, both liberals and conservatives are bashing this about-face, which comes less than a month after McCain tried to wriggle out of his former "maverick" title.

• 'I'm Genuinely Speechless,' writes Allahpundit at conservative Hot Air.
  

Pandering is one thing, shameless careerist pandering is something else, and then there's John "Goddamned Fence" McCain marching along the border in a badass Navy baseball cap looking like he could choke out a coyote with his bare hands.

• The New McCain  The Moderate Voice's Joe Gandelman, once a "huge McCain supporter," is thoroughly disenchanted. "The bottom line: the old McCain had been considered by many to be a breath of fresh air. Now he's more like the fetid air in a cheap motel room previously rented by a cigar chain-smoker."
  

• 'Really Rather Pathetic,' decides Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. "In the face of a stronger-than-expected challenge from the right ... McCain has effectively abandoned any semblance of the politician he claimed to be in the past, even to the extent of denying that he had ever called himself a maverick." He also links to a comment on libertarian site Hit and Run; the commenter points out that the sheriff in the ad is from Pinal County, which isn't actually on the Mexican border.

• 'Freak'  Lonely Conservative lets loose:

Okay, maybe John McCain isn't so much a maverick as he is an eccentric freak. That, or he’s just a grossly opportunistic politician whose shameless pandering is something to behold. Or, as Stacy McCain calls him, he's a "lying two-faced backstabbing crap weasel." I'm kind of going with "all of the above."

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Heather Horn