First, let me be up front, I am presently supporting Ted Cruz for President. But on the other hand, if you are the Republican nominee, I am not going to have qualms about pulling the lever for you as opposed to the Democratic nominee. But as of this juncture, I still have some serious reservations about you as President. You came to the Senate as a Tea Party candidate, and I thought then that you had a bright future. But I have some problems with some of your stances, and the way you have handled yourself with respect to those positions. Today, I just want to address one of those.

Let’s face it. You changed your stance on immigration when you got to the Senate. Everyone in the room knows it; it’s time to admit it. Look, you got to the Senate as a new member of Congress. You were young, fresh and idealistic. And those in power recognized you as someone with potentially a bright future. Knowing that, they decided they had to get you under control. They whispered sweet nothings in your ear. They offered to bring you into their inner circle. They included you with seven powerful Senators to work on immigration reform. It had to be enticing. It must have made your head swim. You lost sight of what you had promised when you ran for that office.

Senator: I understand that. It would be mighty difficult not to succumb to the pressure and to the lure of that siren song. Who among us hasn’t fallen prey to that kind of temptation in our personal or professional lives? I am totally opposed to the Gang of Eight bill, but I can forgive you for putting it forward. Just admit you made a mistake. Tell us that you blew it and should have stood on your principles. Let us know that you are wiser now because you have learned from that mistake, and you won’t fall for it again. “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

But the problem is that you keep trying to explain it away as not being a mistake. Senator, that isn’t genuine. That is pure political malarkey. You are attempting to do a political two-step and dance around this issue. You say that it was the best bill that we could get out of the Senate so that the President wouldn’t do something on his own. You say that you were hoping that the House would change the bill when it got to them (Way to shift that responsibility to someone else to pull your behind out of the fire! Would you accept that type of rationale from one of your kids? “Well gee Dad, I know that I said that I would take out the garbage, but I figured that my brother would do it for me.”) Come on, Senator. We are tired of this kind of political double-speak. You sound like Hillary, or Bill, or Donald.

Listen, everyone makes mistakes. It takes a responsible adult, who can be a leader, to be able to take ownership of those mistakes. For whatever reason, whether based on your own ideas, or those of your campaign advisors, you have decided that the best response to this issue is to try to assert the argument that you didn’t really change your views, and that you took the best course of action. Senator, I am here to tell you that that approach is a loser. It’s not flying with anyone except your campaign staff, and I would bet that it makes some of them uncomfortable.

For those of us who are against immigration amnesty proposals, which makes up the great majority of not only the Republican electorate but the American electorate, your continued assertion of this argument is convincing us that we cannot trust you on this issue. We are afraid that if you get elected you will do exactly what was proposed in the Gang of Eight bill. And your continued assertion of that argument convinces us that we cannot trust you to be true to your promises.

Are you afraid to admit that you made a mistake? We aren’t electing a perfect person; we are electing a human. And as humans, we know we all make mistakes. We all fail. We all make bad decisions.

Let’s bring a lesson here from our shared faith. Do you think you are a better person than the apostle Peter? Forget the denying Jesus three times episode. That’s bad enough. But go back and read Galatians 2. Paul tells the story of when Peter was in Antioch and succumbed to peer pressure when “certain men came from James” (Gal. 2:12 NIV) and stopped eating with Gentiles in the presence of Jews because “he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group” (Gal 2:12 NIV). This was the man who was a strong leader of the early church. This was the man who, according to early church stories, asked to be crucified upside down because he didn’t deserve to die like his savior. And he made a bad mistake in judgment because of peer pressure. And those folks really weren’t even his equals.

Senator, please, just admit that you made a mistake. Let us know that you know it. And assure us that you have learned from that mistake. Tell us the truth.  We will respect you more for that. Donald has said that he has never asked for forgiveness, and from what I have heard and read, that is because he never sees himself as having made a mistake. Show us you are different than Donald. Until then you are just being a politician. Here’s hoping you are different.