Via Ed Morrissey Jim Geraghty communicated with the McCain campaign over this comment:

I believe we have to secure our borders, and I think most Americans agree with that, because it’s a matter of national security. But we must enact comprehensive immigration reform. We must make it a top agenda item if we don’t do it before, and we probably won’t, a little straight talk, as of January 2009.

Legalistic parsing of his words suggest that he was intending to put comprehensive reform in front of border security.  Geraghty says:

Team McCain tells me the senator’s comments were poorly worded. There’s been no discussion within the campaign of altering their stance on illegal immigration, and as far as everyone on the campaign is concerned, the policy is still, ‘secure the border first.’

LIke others, I doubt this will mollify McCain’s more extreme critics (*cough* Whistler *cough*), however it does caution us that one shouldn’t get too rapped up in random ad lib comments made by candidates after long days on the campaign trail.

My position on it was it was unlikely that McCain would choose such a forum to announce a shift away from his stated position on border security first, then immigration policy reform second.  That’s probably a good principle in adopting interpretations that suggest revolutionary changes in a candidates political posture on a give topic.

That said, I am completely sympathetic to people who are in fact hypersensitive on this issue, given McCain’s long-term sympathy towards granting rights of citizenship to immigrants who came into this country illegally.

I would also say, and this is really my point, that this gaffe illustrations the potential unelectability of McCain.  He has enough skeletons in his closet of this sort,with little real social ability to mollify his critics and keep them mollified.  The use of the “debate is over” in context with global warming was probably more damning to him than his support of cap and trade socialism.  Yet the man remains blind to the impact of his word choices on his presidential bid.

And that in a nutshell is why I think his candidacy is doomed, short of a miracle from God Himself.