Romney pounces on U.S. rival Perry on immigration

Reuters UK

September 23, 2011

By Steve Holland and Jane Sutton

ORLANDO, Florida | Fri Sep 23, 2011 7:01pm BST

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Friday pounced on rival Rick Perry's record on illegal immigration to try to raise doubts among conservatives about the front-runner for the party's 2012 nomination.

A day after a Republican U.S. presidential candidate debate on Orlando, Romney clearly believed he had found a weak spot in Perry's tenure as Texas governor -- a policy that allows the children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates at Texas colleges.

At the debate Perry had defended the policy as appropriate for a state with a long border with Mexico and said to those who oppose it, "I don't think you have a heart."

Romney, speaking to the Conservative Policy Action Conference of Florida, rejected that view with a shake of his head.

"I think if you're opposed to illegal immigration, it doesn't mean that you don't have a heart. It means that you have a heart and a brain," he said.

Legal immigration, he said, is good for the country but illegal immigration is "something I will stop if I'm president."

Perry, when he spoke to the conservatives, avoided the immigration issue but appeared to concede he did not have the best debate performance. A Fox News focus group of voters had declared former Massachusetts Governor Romney the winner.

"It's not who is the slickest candidate or who is the smoothest debater that we need to elect," said Perry. "We need to elect the candidate with the best record and the best vision for the country."

Perry again tried to raise doubts about Romney's healthcare program in Massachusetts, which President Barack Obama has said was a model for the overhaul he pushed through Congress and which Republicans want to repeal.

KEY ISSUE

Perry, a Tea Party favourite, is ahead in polls of Republicans but his lead is fragile over Romney, who is the choice of many mainstream Republicans. A USA Today/Gallup poll on Wednesday found Perry leading Romney 31 percent to 24 percent among likely Republican voters.

Immigration is a hot-button issue in the Republican Party, an area where Perry does not have a staunch conservative record.

Romney had a brush of controversy on the issue during his 2008 presidential campaign when it was discovered he had hired a company that employed illegal immigrants to work on his lawn. He fired the company.

ALIPAC, the political action committee for the group Americans for Legal Immigration, said 81 percent of Americans oppose in-state tuition for the children of illegal aliens, and that Perry had destroyed his chance of winning the Republican nomination by supporting it.

"Perry has assured his own defeat," the group's president, William Gheen, said in a statement.

The hard-line stance against illegal immigration risks alienating the increasingly potent Hispanic vote in the United States.

U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann, whose support has eroded as a result of Perry's rise since he joined the race in August, tried to raise doubts about both Perry and Romney and urged conservatives not to settle for a safe candidate.

Republicans increasingly see a good chance to oust Obama from the White House with the U.S. economy struggling to rebound from 9.1 percent unemployment and chronic debt and deficits.

Showing the crowd her back, Bachmann said she has a "titanium spine" and her rivals do not have the political backbone or will to eliminate Obama's healthcare overhaul, which Republicans want to repeal.

"If there was any election where we conservatives don't settle, it's this election," she said. "This is the election when we can have it all. Don't settle."

(Additional reporting by Kim Dixon; Editing by Bill Trott and Doina Chiacu)


http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/09/2 ... 8K20110923