Wishful thinking but okay. Trump has, up until now, only been appealing to his base. Hopefully his recent "mea culpa" means he finally realizes that he can't win battleground states with just the base.
It had nothing to do with just playing to the base. The point of the "regrets" statement was to ADD a humanizing aspect to his past comments, not reverse them. He realized he can't keep letting the Hillary camp spin his every aside into demonizing him, so he has taken away their phony high ground:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/149174780261/trumps-regrets
The only reason Trump, who supported Hillary Clinton for longer than he opposed her and was asked by Bill Clinton in 2015 to "get involved with the Republican party" got away with his asinine comments in the primary is because he was so bombastic in his attacks on illegal immigrants that he got a pass on everything else. But there is a difference between not being one to "diefy" the military and being a jackass who insulted every POW ever just because they were a POW when Donald Trump himself was a draft dodger. Had Ron Paul said the $#@! Donald Trump had said he would have been crucified and you know it.
Directly brawling with the establishment's frameworks has been a successful strategy to overcome it, but does draw return fire, whether Trump does it or Paul does it. Trump took punches and delivered punches in this battle---the MSM did not cut him a pass on his comments on McCain,
they tried to push him out of the race over them, apart from the immigration comments, and you know it. In fact, Trump did not "insult every POW ever," and you know it. He questioned specifically whether McCain deserved hero status,
given the details of his case (just as people question whether Bergdahl deserves the status, given the details of his case). Not automatically deifying every veteran holding a POW title is
not the same thing as having "insulted every POW ever"---and you know it.
It's a strategy that took him from being ahead of Hillary Clinton in those same polls you now want to discount to being behind Hillary Clinton 2 to 8% nationally and even worse in the battleground states. The proof that the strategy wasn't working is shown by the fact that he is changing strategy!
Adding some humility to the strategy, is not changing the strategy. The dip Trump experienced was the expected drop he was supposed to have following the Democratic convention, plus biased polling that gave Hillary faux momentum. Both are petering out, as judged by the recent LA Times and Zogby etc polls showing Trump slightly ahead, or tied with her. As the polling becomes more focused on likely voters in the coming weeks the tilt to Trump will become more frequent.
As correctly stated before, touchback amnesty is a concept that predates Trump and was coined to describe Kay "bailout" Bailey Hutchinson's amnesty plan which Donald Trump has adopted. The fact that it is not in "current immigration law" is irrelevant. What you call "expedient amnesty" isn't in current immigration law either. It's still amnesty. Touchback amnesty is actually more expensive that other amnesty plans and it's still amnesty. And Trump wants his touchback amnesty plan to be "expedient" as he said himself that he wants to bring the "good immigrants" back in as "rapidly as possible." You can deny the truth all you want but guess what? It's still the truth.
The truth is you are still misreading the policy. To repeat myself: The only 'expedite' aspect of the reform as it stands is these immigrants (by filling out a form that identifies them as having been in the US unlawfully) would not be subject to the 10 year prohibition on illegal migrants from applying for naturalization, under current law. This would "reset" their standing so that they could immediately apply to get in line, but not allow them to cut in that line.
So you are calling Donald Trump a liar?
As before, I'm saying he is
adding a kinder gentler edge to the policy, not changing it. His quote at the end of the article you cited reiterates this:
"As far as immigration’s concerned, we need the wall. We want people to come in. I want people to come in. They have to be wonderful people, they have to come in legally."