Associated Press
It's about three weeks since President Obama announced his administration would begin enforcing the goals of the DREAM Act. What does Mitt Romney think of Obama's policy? Oddly enough, we still don't know -- he and his campaign refuse to say.
What's more, it's been more than a week since the Supreme Court ruled on Arizona's anti-immigrant law, striking down nearly all of the odious SB1070. What does Romney think of the ruling? We don't know that, either -- Team Romney consider the candidate's opinion a secret.
Last week, when Romney chatted with a far-right website, he seemed to briefly take a position on immigration, but campaign aides quickly walked it back, saying he misspoke.
What on earth is going on here? The Republican reportedly told some Republican elites last week he's worried about vote totals, but he's also trying to avoid looking like a "flip-flopper."
Romney said the Hispanic vote is important, noting he has Sen. Marco Rubio on the trail for him and that one of his own sons speaks Spanish, but indicated he is not going to change positions from some of what he said in the primaries.
"I know I took some positions in the primary that are" hard to contend with in a general, Romney said, according to two sources.
"I am not going to be a flip-flopper," he added, according to one guest. He talked more about the various concerns that he has to balance in terms of competing constituencies who have different views -- and noted, two sources said, the precise percentage that Hispanic voters make up in the swing states, a figure that was less than 20 percent.
It would appear, then, that Romney is effectively giving up on the Latino vote.
As Rachel recently explained, during the GOP primaries, the former governor positioned himself as one of the most anti-immigrant competitive candidates in decades, vowing to veto the DREAM Act, endorsing "self-deportation," and palling around with Kris Kobach.
Going forward, that leaves Romney with a choice: abandon every position he took a few months ago in the hopes of winning some Latino votes in key swing states, or keep his primary positions while hoping his Spanish-speaking son and awful Floridian surrogate help mitigate the damage.
The Republican is apparently prepared to go with Door #2.
Even some of his allies are unimpressed.
A prominent Hispanic Republican and Miami power broker accused Mitt Romney of lacking leadership and compassion in his approach to immigration in an interview with BuzzFeed this week, and warned that elements of the Miami party machinery won't engage on election day without a more expansive Romney plan on immigration.
Rep. David Rivera, who represents the southwestern tip of the Sunshine State, is the only Latino Republican in the House who's not on Romney's Hispanic Steering Committee, kept at arm's length by the presidential candidate because of a set of investigations into his personal finances. He recently introduced legislation that would give amnesty to some immigrants who came to to the country as children. And he said he has yet to see a serious, satisfying proposal from Romney on the issue.
Don't worry, Republicans. Latino voters are only the fastest growing voting constituency in the country, and may well make the difference between winning and losing in states like Florida and Colorado. Mitt Romney deliberately alienating them with an unpopular agenda and evasive answers shouldn't cause any trouble on Election Day, right?
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Am I the only person who wishes you would use a darker type for your inserted quotes?
No, you are not alone.
The National Republican Party should look at what happened to the California Republican Party after they went whole-hog with Pete Wilson on Proposition 187 back in 1994. They never recovered from that. Before that, a significant chunk of the culturally-conservative Latino vote was up for grabs by the Republicans, and even those people were so alienated by the anti-Latino attitude of the lily-white Republicans that they turned away, registered Democratic, and haven't changed. As a result, the California Republican Party is becoming more and more irrelevant, and may lose what clout they have in the legislature when the Democrats win the 2/3 majority in the Assembly and Senate necessary to ignore them when it comes to budgets and fiscal matters.
Of course, living in an increasingly Republican-free state is so nice, I personally hope the national party and Mittens the Moron, er, I mean Mormon, keep this strategy, since it will have a similar result nationally over the next decade.
Voters need to understand that the coming election will set the tone for the future of America well beyond the four year term both Obama and Romney are running for. The Republican Party is setting up a distinct agenda and endorsing a distinct vision for this country, and it is not a pretty sight. Romney is a flip-flopper with a major problem connecting to the conservative base, but he has wholeheartedly embraced the radical agenda of the far-right and the modern GOP. The war on women, birtherism, more giveaways to the super-rich... Mitt backs it all.
http://www.sunstateactivist.org
And as the sunstateactivist and myself will attest . If you want to see what your future will look like with a Republican Super-majority just visit Florida . It is not pretty . Big business tax breaks , privatization of government, voter suppression , we got it all The will of the people..not so much
I love that it appears Romney thinking that just having one Hispanic dude on your side and having one of your sons able to speak the language will somehow mitigate the damage done to his poll numbers by his actual stance on the issues.
Honestly, if Romney ends up winning in November all it will prove is that there's a lot more stuffy white people in America than I thought there was.
Hey, nominating Palin was great for getting all those vagina-Americans to vote Republican, right? I mean, only straight white males actually think about who and what they're voting for; all those wimmin and minorities will come running if you just put up someone who looks like them.
More projection from your GOP!
Mitt Romney will attend a fundraiser here in Montana hosted by Charles Schwab in Hamilton, MT on July 11.
http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/romney-in-hamilton-for-fundraising-july/article_578ce1b9-c1d8-50c8-ad86-07ca02763c86.html
Hamilton in the Bitterroot Valley is one of the hotbeds rightwingnutism in the state and is just down the road from the home of the Obama Outhouse. will the outhouse pay a visit? Inquiring minds want to know:
http://billingsgazette.com/news/opinion/blogs/city-lights/city-lights-obama-outhouse-maker-should-be-sent-to-the/article_4ed7223e-9a63-5600-99ae-f51ebf36b378.html
Mr. Romney will also attend fundraisers in in July in Sun Valley, Idaho and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Both places are noit as far right as Hamilton, Montana, but are home to many wealthy individuals, such as Charles Schwab.
More on Charles Schwab and his front company Fair Oaks Finance LLC, and the Restore Our Future SuperPac from the Missoula Independent here:
http://missoulanews.bigskypress.com/missoula/politics/Content?oid=1600108
"Don't worry, Republicans. Latino voters are only the fastest growing voting constituency in the country, and may well make the difference between winning and losing in states like Florida and Colorado. Mitt Romney deliberately alienating them with an unpopular agenda and evasive answers shouldn't cause any trouble on Election Day, right?"
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....., don't tell them.
It appears that Romney's "plan" is to stay under the radar and sneak into the voting booth in November as the "Not Obama" candidate.
"Who ya votin' fer, Bubba?"
"I believe I'll go with the white one, Festis."
Isn't this the Romney tell for an upcoming flip-flop?
Romney seriously thinks the fact that one of his sons speaks Spanish means he is reaching out to Hispanics??
I understand one of his sons is also married, does that mean he's reaching out to women?
One of them probably has an African-American friend, does that mean he's reaching out to blacks?
This man is so ridiculously out of touch it's like he comes from a different planet.
(Not too loudly now, but he DOES come from a different planet.)
If the Romney campaign can simply ignore taking a stand on most key positions, and this strategy pays off in the general election, it is going to set an insane template for future campaigns.
The immigration issue is a smokescreen for the NRA and the gun runners to divert attention from what really is the behind the "Fast and Furious" controversy. The vote to find Attorney General Holder in contempt is also part of the smokescreen. The truth will out. It is already coming out with the disclosure that the Border Patrol informed the prosecutors about the gun walking and the prosecutors said that everythilng was legal and did nothing. Are these the same prosecutors who replaced the fired prosecutors during the Cheney administration? Why did the NRA say that it was watching who voted for the contempt vote? Why did the NRA take the government to court for restricting gun sales on the border? They lost that battle so they moved to the contempt citation. What role does the NRA have in condoning the gun running? 60,000 Mexicans have lost their lives in the drug wars? 60,000! And the NRA wants Eric Holder cited for contempt.
". . . the prosecutors said that everything was legal and did nothing." The prosecutors COULDN'T do anything; the sales WERE legal. Oh, you mean that exchange of cash and weapons in the parking lot? Well, gosh, somebody just changed his mind is all.
What could the prosecutors legally do? Although this is exactly what frustrated the agents in charge of the operation so. They had marked their straw-purchasers, but the agency couldn't touch them; they were doing nothing illegal.
It would appear, then, that Romney is effectively giving up on the Latino vote.
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I think the economics of Obama ran a lot of the Hispanic Voters off. From what I am hearing from the heavily Hispanic Areas I lived in, the Hispanics are going to vote for Mr. Romney because of his economics, and he does not support opening the borders to unlimited workers. What he did actually ..got.. the Hispanic Vote.
But whatever. The issues are jobs and economy.. not illegal aliens. You might run some numbers and find out what it is the American People like about Mr. Romney.
A pity "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer" flopped at the box office. Guess we’ll never see its even less realistic sequel "Mitt Romney: Robin Hood." As a much shorter substitute, we'll just need to get our laughs from this funny YouTube video called "3 Things I learned from Mitt Romney." Enjoy: http://tinyurl.com/7tojdme
"Please, Mr. Romney, don't throw us in the briar patch and pander to Latinos!"
Romney faces a choice of (1) turning off white voters including his base or (2) gaining a few percentage points of Hispanic voters, if any, by pandering to the immigration activists.
It sounds like he is making the rational choice, which is (1). Personally, I think it is better for the country.