The Nation : Ben Adler : Bret Baier of Fox News exposed that Romney has no actual plan for dealing with the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are already here. He says he hasn’t changed his position from 2006, when he said they can not really be all deported

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The Big Failure of Mitt Romney in a TV interview in which he was haughty, angry and irrational.

"Bret Baier is not Sean Hannity. Rather, he is a journalist, and he asked some tough but fair questions. It did not go well for Romney, who showed weakness on a substantive policy argument and displayed a gratingly patronizing side of his personality"

The Nation
Why Mitt Romney Avoids Interviews
By Ben Adler
December 1, 2011


Why Mitt Romney Avoids Interviews


Some excerpts :

Mitt Romney also sounds rather obnoxious when sighing at a question he thinks his interviewer should know the answer to, such as Baier’s inquiry as to whether Romney still maintains that his healthcare reform was right for Massachusetts: “I don’t how many hundred of times I’ve said this too, this is an unusual interview, all right, let’s do it again.” 

In fairness to Romney, he has in fact said he thinks he did the right thing repeatedly, and Baier ought to know that he has not repudiated his own legislation. But to the average voter, particularly the average anti-intellectual Republican primary voter, the tone of condescension is unappealing.

Romney’s best cudgel to attack opponents from the right, first Rick Perry and now Gingrich, has been immigration. But Baier exposed that Romney has no actual plan for dealing with the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are already here. He says he hasn’t changed his position from 2006, when he said they can not really be all deported. Romney says they need to apply for legal status “at the back of the line as opposed to jumping to the front because they’ve come here illegally.” 

But he refuses to specify whether they will have to go home or can apply from within America. How is that different than Gingrich’s proposal, which Romney attacks as “amnesty”? Isn’t any proposal to allow the undocumented immigrants currently on US soil to apply for residency amnesty? The only position that wouldn’t constitute amnesty would be to say, “you broke the law and you will never be allowed in the US unless you’re in jail for your crime.” 

That sounds nice to law and order types in practice, but no one running for president has actually proposed to imprison or deport 11 million people who came here to work and have broken no other laws. As Gingrich points out, to do so would be inhumane. As Romney pointed out a few years ago, it’s also impractical. Even Bachmann, who has also criticized Gingrich for his stance on immigration, has never actually said what she would do about the people already here. If Bachmann were a serious contender for the nomination, that might pose a problem for her. It certainly is a problem for Romney.

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