The (Sort of) New Mitt
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: June 22, 2012
Today: Mitt Romney and immigration.
Related News
Obama Draws Contrast With Romney in His Turn Before Hispanics(June 23, 2012)
Romney Exhibits a Change in Tone on Immigration(June 22, 2012)
As you know, American Hispanics are an important and fast-growing voting bloc. Romney has long had a strategy for winning them over. The key, he explained last year, is to tell them “what they know in their heart, which is they or their ancestors did not come here for a handout.”
Hard to get more appealing than that.
This was Primary Mitt, who had a long history of whacking his Republican opponents with soft-on-illegal-immigrants charges. In the 2008 campaign, he accused Rudy Giuliani of making New York a “sanctuary city” and Mike Huckabee of supporting “in-state benefits for illegal immigrants.” One of his ads called John McCain a champion of “amnesty for illegals.” The Romney news release that accompanied the ad’s debut mentioned “amnesty” 17 times.
It didn’t work. McCain won the nomination anyway. That was the earlier version of John McCain, before he lost the presidential race and was abducted by space aliens who took him off to a distant planet and substituted a cranky android with an obsession about border fences.
Last year, Romney tried the same tactics on Rick Perry. “I got to be honest with you. I don’t see how it is that a state like Texas — you go to the University of Texas, if you’re an illegal alien, you get an in-state tuition discount,” he complained during one of the debates.
Perry suggested that when it came to undocumented students who had been brought to the country as children, Romney had no heart. Also, he tried to get some mileage out of the fact that Mitt had once employed illegal immigrants to tend his yard. But it was, you know, Rick Perry, so, of course, nothing worked.
Now Romney is the inevitable Republican nominee, and this week there he was, speaking to a large group of prominent Hispanics. It was his first chance to try out his strategy, but astonishingly, Romney did not tell the audience what they knew in their hearts about in-state tuition and other handouts.
In fact, the word “handout” never came up. Romney did tell the inspiring story of his father’s emigration from Mexico at the age of 5, although not the part about how the family had gone down there in the first place to avoid American laws against polygamy.
And there was quite a bit about the economy. You certainly can’t blame Romney for mentioning it every chance he gets. But not everybody would choose to follow “liberty’s torch can burn just as brightly for future generations of immigrants” with a call to lower the corporate tax rate.
Plus, standard Mittspeak. We are going to have a lot of this in the coming months, people. Let’s pause for a minute while you test your ability to be a Mitt Romney speechwriter:
“Though each of us walks a different path in life, we are united by one great, overwhelming passion. We love ...
A) heavily sugared soft drinks.”
B) attractive young women who marry into the British royal family.”
C) cat videos.”
D) America.”
“This isn’t an election about two people. This isn’t an election about being a Republican, Democrat or an independent. This is an election about ...
A) lowering the corporate tax rate.”
B) lowering the individual marginal tax rates.”
C) keeping dogs off the car roof.”
D) the future of America.”
O.K., the D's. And not the most stirring speech in the history of the world. Obama, who followed up on Friday, got a warmer reception. But let’s try to figure out what Romney actually said. Except when it came to certain lawn-mowing episodes, he’s always talked very tough on illegal immigration. Now that he’s sniffing around for Hispanic voters, is he going to change his tune?
Answer: Romney vowed to address the problem “in a civil and resolute manner.”
That was a surprise. I really thought he’d go for “impolite yet wishy-washy.”
Like many of our big policy debates, immigration reform has dwindled away to an argument about something less than sweeping. In this case, it’s the Dream Act, the popular plan to let people who were brought here illegally as kids become citizens if they get a college degree or serve in the military.
Primary Mitt was going to veto it.
General Election Mitt will take the military service part, “and if you get an advanced degree here, we want you to stay here.” (Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses bearing Ph.D.’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering or computer science. ...)
As for the mere college graduates, whom Obama has now announced he will protect from deportation under an executive order, Romney was, um, vague. But whatever he does will be “long-term.”
Also, he seems to have banished “self-deportation” and “amnesty” from his vocabulary. Unless it looks as if they’ll come in handy somewhere down the line.
No comments:
Post a Comment