NDN sources confirm that Senator McCain will be meeting with Spanish Language marketing guru Lionel Sosa this week to help his campaign court Latino voters.  Lionel Sosa has been credited with successfully helping President Bush garner a significant percentage of the Latino vote in 2000 and 2004.  This is a very interesting development on several fronts.  One, it notes that McCain understands he is not as popular among Latinos as many assume, and needs to bring in the "big guns" to help him with Latinos. Two, it signals that the battle for Latinos will be very competitive and that Democrats cannot take for granted any gains made among Latinos this cycle.  More importantly though, is what this development means to the immigration debate and McCain's ever evolving position on this issue. 

Travis posted earlier that Senate Republicans are pushing for the most extreme immigration measures this week.  Read the post here.  If these measures happen to be scheduled for a vote, it will force McCain to take a stand on the issue.  Lionel Sosa, is an ardent opponent of these anti-immigrant proposals, and recently started a new organization, MATT, to help promote a solution to the immigration issue that will provide citizenship to the undocumented immigrants here in the US.  MATT plans on funding an aggressive media campaign to encourage support for this philosophy.

I posted earlier, Luring Latinos #4, that McCain has painted himself in a corner.  He has betrayed the Latino community by turning his back on them when they needed him most and walking away from the immigration battle.  He has acknowledged to conservatives that he needs to change his position on immigration in order to appease them.  So the question continues, does McCain grab a hold of the life line that Sosa has provided him to win back Latinos, or does he sacrifice Sosa and embrace the conservatives?  Either way, McCain is going to have to pick sides, and I can't wait to find out his decision.

So much excitement and it is only March.  I usually only get this excited over March Madness.  Stay tuned.