U.S. Sen. John McCain on Wednesday called on all Georgia veterans to help send David Perdue to Washington to fight President Barack Obama.
McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, said fellow Republican Perdue will help the party claim a majority in the Senate to counter Obama’s failed policies on the economy and national security.
“My veteran friends, I’m asking you, go on one more mission,” said McCain, a former Navy pilot and prisoner of war in Vietnam. “Get out the vote. Call every veteran. Call every veteran’s family.”
McCain said Perdue “can bring to Washington an outsider’s way of looking at the problems and challenges we face.”
With a Republican majority, McCain said U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., who joined his colleague in Marietta, would become chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee.
With dozens of veterans in the VFW Post 2681 meeting hall, Perdue criticized cuts to military spending.
“They take our national security for granted because they think they can save a few cheap bucks by cutting our military, and that’s just dead wrong,” Perdue said.
McCain and Perdue are not in lockstep on every issue, however. Perdue has slammed his Democratic opponent, Michelle Nunn, for supporting an immigration bill that McCain helped sponsor.
Asked about those remarks afterward, McCain said new concerns over undocumented children crossing the border and the concern over terrorists sneaking into the country mean the bill needs revision.
But in a brief interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, McCain said “of course not” when asked if his bill amounted to “amnesty” for illegal immigrants as Perdue has claimed.
“Of course not,” McCain said. “If you call a 10-year path, thousands of dollars in fees, paying back taxes, learning English, all those things, that does not fit the definition of amnesty in my view.
“But I understand now, especially in my home state of Arizona, that these children coming, and now with the threat of ISIS … that we have to have a secure border.”
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