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Romney Fumbles Valid Questions about President Obama’s Immigration Order

Mitt Romney faced Bob Schieffer and the nation yesterday and struggled to give us a straight answer on President Barack Obama's deft political move to give immunity (though not citizenship) to good young illegal immigrants. Schieffer asked Romney if he would repeal that executive order and tried five times to redirect Romney to a straight answer. None forthcame (I'll bold the most relevant Romney lines):

BOB SCHIEFFER: The President said, Friday, the government will no longer seek to deport eight hundred thousand of these young illegal immigrants who were brought into this country by their parents. I think you said this is just a short-term solution to a long-term problem, but would you repeal this order if you became President?

MITT ROMNEY: Well, let's step back and-- and look at the issue. I mean, first of all, we have to secure the border. We need to have an employment verification system to make sure that those that are working here in this country are here legally and then with regards to these kids who were brought in by their parents through no fault of their own, there needs to be a long-term solution so they know what their status is. This is something Congress has been working on, and I thought we are about to see some proposals brought forward by Senator Marco Rubio and by Democrat senators, but the President jumped in and said I'm going to take this action. He called it a stopgap measure. I-- I don't know why he feels stopgap measures are the right way to go and he--

BOB SCHIEFFER (voice overlapping): Well, what would you do about it?

MITT ROMNEY: Well, as-- as you know, he was-- he was President for the last three and a half years, did nothing on immigration. Two years, he had a Democrats' House in Senate, did nothing of permanent or-- or long-term basis. What I would do is I'd make sure that by coming into office I would work with Congress to put in place a long-term solution for the-- for the children of those that-- that have come here illegally--

BOB SCHIEFFER (voice overlapping): Would you--

MITT ROMNEY: --and I've said, for instance, that-- that those who served in the military, I would give permanent residents, too.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Sure, but would you repeal this?

MITT ROMNEY: Well, it would be overtaken by events, if you will, by virtue of my putting in place a long-term solution with-- with legislation which creates law that relates to these individuals, such that they know what their-- their stat-- setting is going to be--

BOB SCHIEFFER (voice overlapping): But would--

MITT ROMNEY: --not just-- not-- not just for the term of the President, but on a permanent basis.

BOB SCHIEFFER: I-- I won't keep on about this but just to-- to make sure I understand, would you leave this in place while you worked out a long-term solution or would you just repeal it?

MITT ROMNEY: We'll-- we'll look at that-- we'll look at that setting as we-- as we reach that. But my anticipation is, I'd come into office and say we need to get this done on a long-term basis, not this kind of a stopgap measure. What-- what the President did, he-- he should have worked on this years ago. If he felt seriously about this, he should have taken action when he had a Democrat House and Senate, but he didn't. He saves these sort of things until four and a half months before the general election [transcript, Face the Nation, 2012.06.17].

The clearest answer we can parse from Romney's mudflow: I wouldn't repeal the order, and I would push legislation that makes President Obama's order permanent. But when the best answer Romney can muster is that President Obama should have enacted this good policy sooner, you know that Romney knows that he can't win on this issue.

If Mitt Romney wants to win in November, he should consider sounding less like Mitt Romney and more like our own Ken Blanchard:

So President Obama has issued an executive order that he himself considers blatantly unconstitutional. He thinks it is his job to enforce and implement laws passed by Congress, and that to ignore the "very clear" mandates in our immigration laws would not "conform with [his] appropriate role as president." That is what he said unambiguously fifteen months ago.

There are two reasonable possibilities here. One is that the President didn't really believe what he said in 2011. He just said whatever he needed to say to justify his inaction at that time. The other is that he did believe it but it doesn't matter to him. He is not one to let his constitutional scruples stand in the way of his reelection. Take your pick. Either way it means that one can put no trust in what the President says, no matter how solemnly he says it [Ken Blanchard, "Obama's Immigration Rule Is Unconstitutional According to Obama," South Dakota Politics, 2012.06.18].

Blanchard's critique tasks me. It casts the President's action on immigration in the same light as Secretary Jason Gant's arbitrary enforcement of notary laws, which is riling bigger political fish than me. Blanchard notes the parallel between the President's action and House Republican efforts to refuse to spend the money they are required by law to spend on various programs.

There is a fair debate to be had about the constitutionality and wisdom of President Obama's implementation of DREAM Act Lite by executive fiat. Alas, Mitt Romney is not the man to lead that debate.

Related Razz: The President is taking fire from both sides of the Aberdeen spectrum: David Newquist unloads with progressive reasons to kick President Obama out of office. Not included: reasons for progressives to put Mitt Romney into that office.

8 Comments

  1. Douglas Wiken 2012.06.18

    Romney and Obama torture us with the kind of phrasing and sentence structure used by John Kerry, but without any content that makes sense.

    If crappy candidates drop participation in elections, the coming presidential election should have one of the worst turnouts in history.

    We must choose between two unattractive options. Romney intent on finishing off conversion of the US into a plutocracy with economic royalty and the rest of us serfs thanks to the GOP SCOTUS majority that gave us Citizen's United decision. And on the other hand, a President so intent on getting re-elected that he is willing to destroy the US in the name of diversity and disregard for laws and our borders.

  2. Douglas Wiken 2012.06.18

    Oh, and thanks for using "kakistocracy". It so applies to GOP governance and is a word I had never seen before. I am sure we will see it more often in SD Blogs now that you have used it.

  3. Carter 2012.06.18

    The problem for Romney is that there's really nothing that he actually can say. He only has a tenuous hold on the super-conservatives who barely want him over Obama, so he can't say he agrees with it, but he knows he can't win with just the super-conservatives, so he can't risk losing any Latino or less conservative votes by saying he would repeal it. Obama backed him into a corner on this one.

    As much as I dislike Obama, he seems to be doing a splendid job backing Romney into corners on all kinds of issues. If it's intentional (I would guess that it is), it's a wonderfully subtle strategy.

    It's also giving me the tiniest bit of hope that Obama might swing to the left in November and start acting like the guy I thought he'd be when I voted for him back in '08. I wouldn't bet on it, though.

    Either way, the GOP's giant swing to the right is beginning to show massive problems already. I think they've helped Obama more than Obama has helped himself.

  4. larry kurtz 2012.06.18

    We don't need to trust them so much as herd them. C'mon, Stan: don't be so glum. No bowl of neutrinos today?

  5. larry kurtz 2012.06.25

    Visited over there lately? Ken is being flayed like a lizard on a stick.

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