Rubio Proposes DREAM Act To Realize Dream Of Mitt Romney Losing
H2 Note: This author nails it in terms of what Mitt Romney just did over the weekend by not speaking out against Obama's amnesty by saying he would reverse it, if elected. Unless Romney breaks free from his Rino handlers and 100% confirms he will rescind Obama's amnesty, it will probably cost him the White House. From April, 2012 ..
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Rubio Proposes DREAM Act To Realize Dream Of Mitt Romney Losing
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Meanwhile, if Romney appears as abandoning his conservative principles (ahem) to appeal to the Hispanic population over immigration, he may depress his base so much that they stay home on election day. It might be worth it for Romney to stick to his immigration guns, as he probably won't win many Hispanics anyway, and he needs a motivated base to get even close to beating Obama.
by Evan McMurry
Political Editor
On Apr 20, 2012
Florida Senator Marco Rubio is proposing a watered-down version of the DREAM Act as an attempt to gain at least a sliver of the Hispanic population currently abandoning the Republican Party in droves.
The old DREAM Act, a bipartisan bill that would allow undocumented immigrants who graduate from high school to seek a path to citizenship through college or the military, had its bipartisan balloon burst in 2010, the year when even across-the-aisle support was not enough to overcome a Republican filibuster.
Since then, however, the GOP has suddenly realized it has a massive Hispanic voter problem, so they're asking for the DREAM Act back, just without the "Dream" part. Rubio's proposal doesn't put immigrants on the path to citizenship but creates a third level of legal residency, greater than alien but less than citizen. In what world creating an unprecedented extra sub-tier of citizenship is considered "conservative" is beyond me, but the bill's not going to pass, so I'll let the GOP Patron Saint of Hypothetical Morality worry about that.
Natch, anti-immigration groups just look at this bill and see amnesty, because they look at anything that's not a twenty foot border wall and see amnesty, and hardline GOP legislators like Jim DeMint aren't biting. "A lot of us lean towards compassion, but my focus is still on getting a legal system that works," DeMint said. That's code for "no."
Until the bill fails, it's a huge thorn in the side of Mitt Romney. During the GOP primary, Romney staked out extreme positions on illegal immigration, calling Arizona's SB 1070 "a model," collecting an endorsement from professional mellow-harsher Joe Arpaio and decrying the DREAM Act. Having spent months alienating a Hispanic voters, Romney now needs to find a way to distance himself from his own primary positions, a process that began in earnest with the demotion of Kris Korbach, one of Romney's immigration advisors and the author of SB 1070.
But any change of policy by Romney on the DREAM Act is going to lead to reactions like this one. One could argue that the benefits of Romney playing to Hispanic voters greatly outweigh the costs of losing anti-immigration hardliners, especially as Hispanic voters matter in swing states like Colorado, where Obama is already making a huge push.
But this assumes he can win an appreciable portion of the Hispanic vote at all. The Hispanic community is not thrilled about Obama's first term, in which he failed to realize comprehensive immigration reform and increased deportions. But Obama pushed hard for the DREAM Act, and was only defeated by a stalwart Republican legislature; it's hard to imagine voters turning against him over the defeat of the DREAM Act only to go to the very side that caused that defeat.
Meanwhile, if Romney appears as abandoning his conservative principles (ahem) to appeal to the Hispanic population over immigration, he may depress his base so much that they stay home on election day. It might be worth it for Romney to stick to his immigration guns, as he probably won't win many Hispanics anyway, and he needs a motivated base to get even close to beating Obama.
By the by, don't expect all this immigration baggage to do much for Marco Rubio's vice presidential chances. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, a tea party hire, and a rising star in his party, is on everybody's Veep shortlist. But even his proposal of an attempt to square the GOP's circle over immigration looks primed to backfire; instead of helping Romney and the Republicans hop over their immigration policy problem, Rubio's bill steps right on its tail.
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source: Rubio Proposes DREAM Act To Realize Dream Of Mitt Romney Losing | Ology
