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Posted on 01/27/2012 12:51:27 PM PST by Biblebelter
Romney Plays His Immigrant Card, but Was It Really a Joker?
Massachusetts politicians are such hypocrites that they just can't help themselves when it comes to having it both ways. Contrary to Democrat Party elite mythology John Kerry's most serious political wound did not come about by Swiftboating, but was self-inflicted.
The poster boy for political hypocrisy will be forever remembered for saying," I voted for it before I voted against it."
Mitt Romney is as slick as they come and he is well programmed by his handlers. He did not directly say that his father was an immigrant in Thursday's debate. To have done so would have brought into question the birther issue as it applied to his father's presidential candidacy. He said, "I'm not anti-immigrant. My father was born in Mexico. My wife's father was born in Wales. They came to this country."
Mitt's words which have been tediously programmed by Dream Team Romney must be deconstructed with the utmost precision, such as I never voted for a Democrat if there was a Republican on the ballot which sounds like something John Kerry or Bill Clinton might say.
One thing that can be said about Mitt's statement on immigration is that evidently his grandfather left the country. This much has been reported on the public record by Mike Taibbi, Michelle Balani, and Mario Garcia of NBC's Rock Center, "In one oft-repeated quote he said his family left the U.S. for Mexico to escape persecution for their religious beliefs. In fact, Romney's great grandfather, Miles Park Romney, led that first expedition to escape not persecution but prosecution for polygamy, or what Mormons called ‘plural marriage.’"
Now whether all this matters much or even whether it is fair game to bring up in a Republican Party presidential primary can be debated, but everyone knows that if it is not brought up by fellow Republicans it will be brought up by Democrats in the fall should Romney get the nomination.
The most intriguing question goes back to Romney's most curious remark about self-deportation in Monday's debate. Does that reveal what Romney really thought about his grandfather's decision to leave this country?
When they start rounding up polygamists or rounding up illegal immigrants, you just flee the country.
Newt Gingrich's argument about immigrant grandparents which always was a bit unclear starts to make a lot more sense if that was the motivation for Romney's self-deportation claim.
Newt was making the real world argument that most immigrants do not have the financial means to go on the run when the authorities come calling. Mitt was making the true elitist argument which is those of property and privilege always have the means to go on the run when the authorities are about to catch up with you, after all in Mitt's world that is the reason why you have bank accounts in the Cayman Islands as well as Switzerland.
So can Mitt use the word immigrant to describe his father?
Someone will have to ask Mitt that, but you can rest assured that Dream Team Romney has been parsing and programming the answer to that question for quite some time.
So can Mitt use the word immigrant to describe his father?
Not in my opinion, maybe it’s semantics but I can’t see how an American living in another country who returns to the US can be called an “immigrant”.
I choked on this when I heard Willard say it last night in the debate and was surprised Newt didn’t call him on it.
I love the way Romney is trying to portray himself as a Mexican all of a sudden!
The fact that Grampa Romney fled to Mexico one step ahead of the law because of his polygamist cult and that he then brought his children (and, presumably, his 3 wives) back to the US because he didn’t want his children to grow up in Mexico seems to be forgotten.
His father was brought back to the US as a small child by his grandfather, who had fled to Mexico to carry on his polygamist Mormonism. The grandfather was a US citizen, not a Mexican, and there is no way they were “immigrants.”
That was not only pandering, in was putrid outright lying. But Romney is good at that.
Romney can claim that, if elected, he would be America’s first Hispanic president. If you have an ancestor born in Mexico you qualify.
No, you don’t qualify as Hispanic just because you happen to have an ancestor born (to American parents fleeing US law) in Mexico.
He’s pandering to the nth degree, and he thinks that everybody is going to be too dumb to sort out his statements.
If Romney’s father was not born in America does that not bring into question Mitt not being a “Natural Born Citizen”? He may have dual loyalties...Isn’t this the meat of the Obama birther question?
Romneys father was born in Mexico. It was his Grandfather that escaped to Mexico because of marriage plurality.
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