Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that some “high-profile Republicans are adopting a softer vocabulary on immigration” in an effort to woo alienated Latino voters. However, in his bid for reelection, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) hasn’t just toughened up his immigration platform, he’s also adopted a strategy which seems to consist of feigning ignorance of the troublesome civil rights issues that Latinos in his state are facing. In a weekend interview with a local Arizona news station, McCain presented himself as naively optimistic, at best:

HOST: Arizona is getting a national reputation as a latter-day Alabama or Mississippi when it comes to civil rights for Hispanics. Have J.D. Hayworth and his supports gone too far?

MCCAIN: Nah. Look, I don’t think Arizona has that reputation. I think Arizona has a reputation of being the one of the most wonderful places to live, work, and retire –

HOST: If you’re Hispanic?

MCCAIN: Yeah, I think if you’re in this country legally, you are happy to be here. We have a growing Hispanic citizen population here in Arizona. I just do not accept the premise.

Watch it:

McCain is understandably proud and defensive of his home state, however, his oblivious dismissal of the plight of Arizona Latinos demonstrates just how out of touch McCain is with a Latino electorate which used to constitute a large part of his base.

What McCain fails to recognize is that the immigration issue doesn’t draw a neat line between citizens and non-citizens — particularly in Arizona. To begin with, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio has admitted on national television that his officers use “speech, the clothes, the environment, the erratic behavior” to determine if an individual is an undocumented immigrant. That might explain why there are 2,700 lawsuits collecting dust on Arpaio’s desk — many, if not most, filed by Arizona Latino citizens who were mistakenly identified as undocumented immigrants by Arpaio’s deputies before being arrested and denied their most basic civil rights. Even former Arizona Police Chief George Gascon stated that Arpaio’s immigration policing program has brought the “police profession back to the 1950s and 60s.” Arpaio isn’t the only problem facing Latinos. Hate groups and hate crimes are on the rise in Arizona, with 19 hate groups that call the state home. A report by the Arizona Latino Research Enterprise entitled “The State of Latino Arizona” points out:

An increase in hate crimes against Latinos, legislative efforts by ultra-conservative politicians and other public officials, and stepped-up and sometimes abusive law enforcement activities targeting immigrants— including federal legislation that grants local police the authority to enforce immigration law—have added up to a widespread and increasingly institutionalized assault on the rights of Latinos…

“It’s more subtle than it used to be,” said Daniel Ortega, a leading civil rights attorney and community activist in Phoenix. “We find ourselves, as Latinos, whether documented or not, in a social situation in which our civil rights are not being respected.”

In his 2004 Senate re-election, McCain earned more than 70 percent of the Latino vote. However, during the 2008 presidential elections, McCain was unable to even carry the Latino vote of his own state. McCain is right that Arizona is home to a growing population of Latino voters. And if the former maverick doesn’t stand up to his state’s radical right to defend them, McCain runs the risk of being voted out of office and sent back home where he might end up learning firsthand how Latinos are really faring in his state.

Today, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is featuring two conflicting immigration panels in what seems like a blatantly duplicitous and opportunistic attempt to appeal to the nativist instincts of the anti-immigrant Right while simultaneously trying to grow the Republican base to include more Latinos.

One panel, entitled The Rise of Latino Conservatism, is sponsored by the American Principles Project’s (APP) Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles. “We represent a form of conservatism that is welcoming to people of all racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds,” explains Robert George, APP’s founder. According to George, his organization supports a “generous and welcoming immigration policy,” explaining that “a conservatism that is anti-Latino is not one that we want any part of.”

Perhaps unbeknownst to George, a screening of Border War: The Battle Over Illegal Immigration, a documentary from the self-described “conservative grass-roots advocacy organization” Citizens United is scheduled to take place just a few hours after his own CPAC panel. The movie has been panned by mainstream critics who claim that it leaves “little for a viewer to latch onto besides a transmitted sense of general anxiety and outrage.” The film, which calls for stricter policies and more enforcement, has also been described as a one-sided, offensive, negative portrayal of Mexicans.

Watch the trailer:

Former Arizona Congressman and U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Hayworth, who is featured in the documentary, will introduce the film at the screening. In a background briefing released today by America’s Voice, Hayworth is identified as a “practitioner in the strategy to drive Latinos away from the Republican Party.” In the past, Hayworth has referred to previous generations of American immigrants as “illegal invaders” and equated his hard-line immigration stance to “standing up for our culture.” However, Hayworth’s views didn’t bode well with Arizona citizens who voted him out of office after he opposed a harsh bill that that would have made undocumented immigrants and anyone who helps them into felons because it didn’t do enough to “turn back the massive invasion of our country by illegal aliens.”

CPAC’s two-faced agenda ultimately serves as a microcosm of the larger internal debate dividing the conservative movement. While some conservatives continue preaching a hardline and unrealistic immigration position to secure right-wing votes, shrewd Republican leaders have warned that an anti-immigrant platform could render the Party obsolete as Latino and immigrant voters will one day outnumber the wingnuts.

On Saturday, CPAC will also host a panel called “Saving Freedom from Obama’s Immigration Plan” with Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), Linda Chavez, Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, Dino Teppara of the Indian American Republican Council, and John Fund of the Wall Street Journal.

Local news outlets are reporting that last week, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio disseminated a stinging letter urging Republican primary voters to support right-wing shock jock and former Congressman J.D. Hayworth over Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in his bid for Arizona’s U.S. Senate seat. Arpaio wrote:

Senator McCain has served this country admirably but it’s time to replace his moderate or even liberal positions on taxes, the border, social causes and big bank bailouts with a consistent conservative like J.D...I just wish Senator McCain had run as hard against Barack Obama as he is against a conservative like J.D. That could have prevented the harmful, liberal agenda we are all now suffering through…[W]e must stop Senator McCain’s policies to open up our borders.

Ironically, when it comes to immigration, neither Hayworth nor Arpaio have been the “consistent conservatives” they like to portray themselves as. During the 2006 and 2007 immigration debates, Hayworth dedicated a lot of time to lambasting immigration reform, particularly proposals for a temporary worker program. However, the website of NumbersUSA — the sort of immigration restrictionist group Hayworth is pandering to — shows that he repeatedly voted in favor of expanding temporary worker programs throughout the 1990s. Republican columnist and commentator Linda Chavez points out that Hayworth’s anti-immigrant flip flop in the proceeding decade likely cost him his House seat. Chavez writes that Hayworth switched positions as soon as he “sensed bashing immigrants was a surer ticket to re-election.” However, voters “wanted no part” in Hayworth’s hardline policies and voted him out of office in 2006.

Arpaio also is no steadfast conservative either. In 2005, Arpaio held that “being illegal is not a serious crime. You can’t go to jail for being an illegal alien.” At the time, Arpaio told the Arizona Republic’s Michael Kiefer, “I want the authority to lock up smugglers, but I am not going to lock up illegals hanging around street corners.” These days, Arpaio brags about locking up 32,000 “diseased” immigrants for smuggling themselves across the border, even though it created a $1.3 million deficit in just three months. However, polls show that Arpaio’s popularity may be waning partly due to the controversies surrounding his harsh immigration enforcement tactics.

For the past several years, McCain has been a conservative voice of reason in the immigration debate. Many speculate that he actually lost the critical support of the Latino community when he backed away from his immigration position during the 2008 presidential election. With Latinos comprising 11.7% of Arizona voters, McCain would be wise to resist the temptation of getting pushed farther to the right by a right-wing has-been and a mud-slinging Sheriff mired in controversy.