Willard ‘Mittens’ Romney in Mesa today – time for tough questions

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Willard "Mittens" Romney will appear at a campaign rally at Mesa Amphitheatre in downtown Mesa on Monday. The event is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. AZ/DC Blog – Romney to rally supporters in Mesa on Monday.

As I posted awhile back, will political reporters ask "Mittens" the typical fluffer questions to merely take stenography for his campaign talking points? Or will they show some spine and ask him tough questions he does not want to answer about his family's Mexican roots and why he has taken the most extreme anti-immigrant position of any of the GOP presidential candidates? Mittens Romney runs from his Mexican roots (excerpt):

"Mittens" Romney proudly accepted the endorsement of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, one of the architects of Arizona's SB 1070, formerly with the anti-immigrant organization Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) that the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as a hate group. AZ/DC Blog – Kris Kobach, who helped write SB 1070, endorses Romney:

Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney on Wednesday announced the endorsement of Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who is better known in Arizona and in Latino communities for the legal assistance he gave former state Sen. Russell Pearce in writing Senate Bill 1070, Arizona's controversial 2010 immigration law.

The Romney news release on Kobach's support touts his work on Arizona's and Alabama's immigration laws.

“I’m so proud to earn Kris’s support,” Romney in a written statement. “Kris has been a true leader on securing our borders and stopping the flow of illegal immigration into this country. We need more conservative leaders like Kris willing to stand up for the rule of law. With Kris on the team, I look forward to working with him to take forceful steps to curtail illegal immigration and to support states like South Carolina and Arizona that are stepping forward to address this problem.”

Romney's announcement … came on the same day that the Republican National Committee is set to announce an expanded national Latino outreach effort. (Bwahahaha!) 

“With his campaign trumpeting Kris Kobach’s endorsement, Mitt Romney’s descent into the dark clutches of radical nativism is complete," said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a national organization that supports comprehensive immigration reform. "In Kris Kobach’s America, kids who want to serve in the military and attend college are criminals, states should have the right to nullify federal immigration enforcement priorities, and undocumented immigrants who are hardworking and well-established, who take care of our kids, our elders, our food and our houses, are a plague to be banished. Romney’s embrace of this endorsement is nothing less than disgusting, and will not be forgotten by those who have felt the consequences of the Kobach approach to immigration first-hand.”

Pema Levy writes at Talking Points Memo, The Perfect Storm That Could Sink Romney’s Hispanic Vote Hopes:

In the days leading up to the Iowa caucuses, Mitt Romney made what could prove a fatal error: as president, he said, he would veto the Dream Act. Designed to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, the Dream Act is so intensely popular that it’s hard to see Romney winning 40% of Latino voters, the crucial threshold Republican pollster Matthew Dowd said Bush had to hit in order to win crucial swing states in 2004. Bush, who pushed for immigration reform, barely hit 40% and won. McCain fell short.

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Indeed, you might say that Romney is facing a “perfect storm” of circumstances that could damage his outreach to Hispanic voters, the least of which is his own tone-deaf approach towards immigration.

Talking Points Memo updates its reporting today in Kris Kobach: I’m More Involved With Mitt Romney’s Campaign This Time Than In 2008:

Controversial Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach … best known as author of the Arizona immigration law and often referred to as the physical embodiment of why it will be hard for Romney to reach out to the Latino vote this fall — told me that his role with the Romney campaign is actually bigger this year than it was in 2008, when Kobach signed on to the Romney campaign as an immigration adviser.

“Comparing my involvement from 2008 to 2012, I’ve been much more involved,” Kobach told me and several other reporters in a press gaggle following his appearance on an immigration panel at CPAC. He said he interacts with Romney’s staff regularly.

You wouldn’t know that from the way the Romney campaign’s handled his role this time around. Kobach got a shout-out in a press release when he endorsed Romney, but the campaign didn’t pump out that he was again acting as an adviser. When reporters tried to talk to the Romney campaign about his role last month, they got radio silence for the most part.

* * *

[Kobach] said there was a simple explanation for why he was publicly touted by Team Romney as an adviser in the 2008 press release but not in the 2012 statement. Kobach suggested that labeling him an ‘advisor’ in 2008 and not in 2012 was more a testament to his relative anonymity back in 2008 than his controversial profile today.

“I think you’re right; I think there was a release calling me an adviser and here I’m an endorser,” Kobach told me. “Probably because I didn’t hold any office [back then] and being endorsed by a law professor in 2008 is probably not all that exciting.”

The Romney campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Kobach’s characterization of his role as adviser.

Political reporters should also check out Right Wing Watch which documented the CPAC convention over the weekend at which Bob Vandervoort, the executive director of Pro-English, who was previously the leader of the white nationalist group Chicagoland Friends of the American Renaissance, was scheduled to appear on a panel at CPAC, “The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American identity,” along with two Republican members of Congress and the Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, before Kobach distanced himself from Vandervoort and Pro-English. Rick Santorum Just Had Dinner with White Nationalist Bob Vandervoort | Right Wing Watch; see also, Steve King and White Nationalist CPAC Panel Warn that America's Greatest Threat is its Diversity | Right Wing Watch.

Political reporters should ask "Mittens" Romney why he would seek the endorsement of such an organization that so prominently featured a white nationalist on its agenda, and why he made no public statements condemning the presence or views of Bob Vandervoort and Pro-English.

In fact, Willard "Mittens" Romney wanted the CPAC endorsement so badly that Rick "man on dog" Santorum suggests Romney rigged the CPAC vote – POLITICO.com.