Consider the centerpiece of his I-got-tough-on-illegals boast: his move to use the State Police to enforce immigration laws.
He launched the initiative in the middle of 2006—with just months remaining on his term and well into a lame-duck period that had begun the year before—when it became clear how important the issue would be in the G.O.P. presidential primary. He finally received the necessary clearance from the federal government in December, in his administration’s final days, and then issued (and loudly trumpeted) an executive order—even though the Governor-elect, a Democrat whose landslide win was partly attributable to irate voters who felt Mr. Romney quit on his job in order to run for President, had made it clear that he would immediately rescind the order upon taking office.
On the State Police issue, Mr. Giuliani’s critique is squarely on point: Mr. Romney’s order, which would have required several months of training for a select few state troopers before it could be implemented, never went into effect.
It was, of course, all for show—for an audience in Iowa and South Carolina, and not in Massachusetts. What Mr. Romney sought to do was actually rather complicated, given the questions of which state troops would be selected to enforce immigration laws, how they would be trained (and at what cost), and how the program might effect existing relationships between the police and illegal immigrants who were willing to provide information that might prevent crimes. But he pursued it in a sloppy, last-minute fashion that made it only too easy for his successor to scrap the whole plan without paying a political price.
“he pursued it in a sloppy, last-minute fashion.”
Wait, this can’t be true. Mitt is a great manager. You can take his word for it. LOL