-- by Hans Nichols, Bloomberg News:

Two years ago, Tommy Espinoza stood on the stage of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, to vouch for John McCain’s compassion for immigrants. Today, Espinoza has a dimmer view of the senator.

McCain’s campaign for re-election in Arizona “concluded that if they didn’t take an extreme position on immigration, he was at risk of losing,” said Espinoza, president of Raza Development Fund in Phoenix. “Well, he’s not going to lose, but it’s been heart-wrenching for me. It’s such a radical departure from where he was just a couple of years ago.”

High in the Huachuca Mountains, a hundred paces from the steel-slatted border fence with Mexico, state Senator Russell Pearce, who wrote Arizona’s tough new immigration law, finds himself in rare agreement with Espinoza on McCain’s prospects.

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