From a conservative primary voter perspective, Fred Thompson came off the best out of this exchange. Rudy and McCain both defended their positions well, but their support of legalization with penalties will be viewed as tantamount to amnesty by imigration hawks. Romney just isn’t credible on this issue. He says his description of McCain-Kennedy as “reasonable” was made while he was still evaluating competing plans. Fine. But how would that affect his definitional judgement that the bill was “quite different” from amnesty.
