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  1. #1
    Senior Member HAPPY2BME's Avatar
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    Kris Kobach: I’m More Involved With Mitt Romney’s Campaign This Time Than In 2008

    Kris Kobach: I’m More Involved With Mitt Romney’s Campaign This Time Than In 2008

    TPM
    Elizabeth Warren



    CPAC — Controversial Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach told me Saturday that rumors of the Mitt Romney campaign trying to put his public role with the campaign on the back burner are total hooey.

    Kobach — best known as author of the Arizona immigration law and often referred to as the physical embodiment of why it will be hard for Romney to reach out to the Latino vote this fall — told me that his role with the Romney campaign is actually bigger this year than it was in 2008, when Kobach signed on to the Romney campaign as an immigration adviser.

    “Comparing my involvement from 2008 to 2012, I’ve been much more involved,” Kobach told me and several other reporters in a press gaggle following his appearance on an immigration panel at CPAC. He said he interacts with Romney’s staff regularly.

    You wouldn’t know that from the way the Romney campaign’s handled his role this time around. Kobach got a shout-out in a press release when he endorsed Romney, but the campaign didn’t pump out that he was again acting as an adviser. When reporters tried to talk to the Romney campaign about his role last month, they got radio silence for the most part.

    Kobach said the fact that the campaign didn’t want to talk about him doesn’t mean a thing.

    “I think you’ll find that most presidential campaigns are kind of hard for reporters to get to comment on all of their various endorsers,” Kobach said. “So the notion that a reporter doesn’t get a phone call returned, shouldn’t be taken as an implication of much of anything, really.”

    He said there was a simple explanation for why he was publicly touted by Team Romney as an adviser in the 2008 press release but not in the 2012 statement.
    “I think you’re right; I think there was a release calling me an adviser and here I’m an endorser,” Kobach told me. “Probably because I didn’t hold any office [back then] and being endorsed by a law professor in 2008 is probably not all that exciting.”

    The Romney campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Kobach’s characterization of his role as adviser.

    Source: Kris Kobach: I’m More Involved With Mitt Romney’s Campaign This Time Than In 2008 | TPM2012
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  2. #2
    Senior Member HAPPY2BME's Avatar
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    RELATED ALIPAC MITT ROMNEY BALANCING ACT News ..

    Romney’s Delicate Balancing Act With Controversial Immigration Law Author


    Just how closely do you hug a controversial supporter? Especially a supporter who could be of a lot more help now than in the general election?
    It seems this is a problem Mitt Romney has been pondering ever since he was embraced by the Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach.

    Kobach is perhaps best known as the lead architect of the divisive new immigration laws in Arizona and Alabama. This leaves Romney in a delicate situation: hugging him back now could help wrap up the GOP primary especially since the next hurdle is with the traditionally hardcore conservative base in South Carolina. However, if he doesn’t make some efforts to wriggle out of it before he has to start courting Hispanic votes, then it could become a bear hug.

    It seems we just had a preview of how one goes about squaring that circle.

    On Monday, ThinkProgress picked up on a Friday Hill report that Kobach would be appearing with Romney at a campaign stop.


    The story went wide for a holiday (it was Martin Luther King Day Monday), and that led to some rejoicing/pre-condemning from Latino groups who say Romney’s close connection with Kobach seals his fate with the Latino voter in November.


    Kris Kobach


    On a conference call Monday hosted by immigration reform advocacy group America’s Voice, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) said that Romney was making a big mistake in embracing Kris Kobach’s endorsement because Latino voters would not forget Romney’s association with the “dark lord of the anti-immigration movement,” no matter how many Cuban Republicans in Florida Romney surrounds himself with. America’s Voice president Frank Sharry noted that there were several reports that Kobach would appear with Romney in South Carolina, and that they would “wait and see if they’ve decided to go through with that or not.”

    Turns out the answer was “not.” A subsequent Hill report quoted Kobach clarifying that Romney hadn’t asked him to appear at campaign event with him, but rather in the debate spin room Tuesday night in Myrtle Beach. As The Hill’s Cameron Joseph reported,



    He said he will be joined [in the spin room] by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who has said all illegal immigrants should be deported and won his seat by hammering then-Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) for supporting amnesty for undocumented immigrants, and Bay Buchanan, a longtime conservative activist who was a senior adviser on former Rep. Tom Tancredo’s (R-Colo.) 2008 presidential campaign. All three have endorsed Romney.
    Both stories — first the announcement of an event and then the clarification that there wasn’t going to be an event — came from Kobach himself, not the Romney campaign. The campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Hill nor did they respond to a couple of requests about Kobach from me today. Not even Fox News could get a straight answer from Romney about his plans with Kobach.


    The Fox News Latino website reported Monday that “Romney’s campaign would neither confirm or deny that Monday the candidate was going to be with Kobach on the campaign trail in South Carolina,” though the site noted that Fox’s own Neil Cavuto mentioned a joint Romney-Kobach appearance on his show last week and asked Kobach about it.


    Kobach did apparently hit the post-debate Spin Room to stump for his chosen candidate, though the Romney campaign did not respond to TPM’s request for further details.

    It’s no secret that Kobach is a Romney supporter — Romney has touted his endorsement as a sign that he’s the get-tough guy on immigration — but it’s clear that a joint appearance featuring the two men may have created a headache for Romney in terms of negative press. Did the campaign plan an event with Kobach that was canceled? They’re not talking so we don’t know. But Kobach’s language on Friday certainly makes it seem like that was the plan. Instead, the Romney campaign kept the controversial figure close, putting him front and center for the campaign after the debate. But not close enough that he’d be pictured standing next to Romney.


    Pema Levy contributed.

    Romney’s Delicate Balancing Act With Controversial Immigration Law Author | TPM2012
    Last edited by HAPPY2BME; 02-11-2012 at 02:48 PM.
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  3. #3
    Senior Member HAPPY2BME's Avatar
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    RELATED ALIPCA AZ SB1070 IS WORKING News ..

    Co-author of Arizona immigration law says 'self-deportation' working

    Immigration crackdowns in Arizona and Alabama are succeeding in persuading illegal immigrants to voluntarily leave the country, the co-author of tough immigration laws in both of those states said Saturday.

    Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an ardent opponent of illegal immigration who has taken that fight beyond Kansas, said jobs are opening up for Americans and school budgets flourishing thanks to tough new policies.

    "If you want to create a job for a U.S. citizen tomorrow, deport an illegal alien today," Kobach said to boisterous applause at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
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