The Republican National Committee hosted a teleconference call with reporters this morning, and Bettina Inclan, the RNC’s director of Hispanic outreach, inadvertently made Mitt Romney’s Latino troubles worse.
Yes, Mitt Romney has been seeking various public offices for 18 years; he was a governor for four years; and he’s been running for president pretty much non-stop for six years, but he’s “still deciding what his position on immigration is.” This, from one of his allies, hoping to make him look better.
Oh my.
It’s also worth appreciating the fact that it’s far too late for the presumptive Republican nominee to “decide his position on immigration” — that decision was already made quite a while ago. Romney has already said he’s an opponent of the DREAM Act; he’s palling around with Pete Wilson and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach; he endorses a “self-deportation” agenda; he’s critical of bilingualism; and his casual dismissals of “amnesty” and “illegals” are a staple of his campaign rhetoric.
He’s not “still deciding”; he’s already decided to be the most anti-immigrant major-party nominee in at least a generation.
It’s why Romney has successfully alienated Latino voters to such a remarkable degree. There’s just not much left for the candidate to “decide.”
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