President Romney?

My good friend Peter Porcupine has been after me to get my support for Mitt Romney. In response to my recent Tancredo post, Peter said:

Ogre - you may disagree with him about other things, but Mitt Romney is SOLID on immigration. He negotiated an agreement with ICE to let state police detain illegal immigrants for deportation when they were arrested (the new Governor broke the agreement, but hey, this IS Massachusetts). He halted the drive to allow in-state college tuition at public universites for illegals (the new Governor wants to bring it back to the Legislature again, but hey, this IS Massachusetts).

His answers in the debates - "ENFORCE EXISTING LAWS" speak for themselves.

He deserves your consideration - merely because he's from my home state is not enough to condemn him!

Now I will admit, being from Massachusetts is indeed a BIG strike in my book. Republicans from Massachusetts (sorry, but Peter P included) really don't see things as conservative as I do. So indeed, it will be rather difficult to support a Republican from Mass, but I am willing to consider other things.

I'll also say now, that in the primary process, I am simply not interested in "who can beat Hillary." Yes, I would rather have a conservative nominated and have them lose than nominate a liberal Republican and have them win. I actually think that ANY Republican who can really be conservative will win in a landslide. But back to Romney.

I checked out Romney's web site for information about his position on Immigration:

We need to make America more attractive for legal immigrants -- for citizens -- and less attractive for illegal immigrants. I want to see more immigration in our country, but more legal immigration and less illegal immigration.

Well, that's a lot of hot air about nothing. What does it mean to be "less attractive?" I think it means getting rid of all welfare benefits, education benefits, and medical benefits for ANY non-citizens of the United States. I don't see that position from Romney, I just see, "We'll fix it."

At the debates last night, I also watched Romney's answers on questions about immigration. He said that he wasn't opposed to the current Senate amnesty bill. He threw out some smoke and blather about he wanted to make it "better," but he would not oppose the current bill. That bill is likely the worst bill to ever appear in Congress, and he didn't oppose it last night -- despite having said this two days ago:

The immigration approach proposed by Senators McCain and Kennedy falls short of a workable solution to an important problem,

I went over to The Pew Forum and found this statement about Romney and Immigration:

Romney opposes amnesty for undocumented workers, favors securing the U.S.-Mexico border with a fence and wants to institute an employment verification system through high-tech identification cards. While Massachusetts governor, Romney vetoed a bill that called for lower tuition rates for the children of undocumented immigrants. He "reached an agreement with federal authorities" to give state troopers the power to arrest immigrants who are in the state illegally.

Now that sounds much better. Certainly it's great that he vetoed the free schooling for criminal alien invaders; and it's wonderful that he let his police force arrest criminal alien invaders. That's certainly great.

So what IS his position? It seems to me that he's not completely clear on the issue. I don't know, maybe he's already trying that "reaching out for the middle" thing that so many politicians do when they change positions on issues. Overall I'd say Romney is better than average on the immigration issue. There's some better, and there's a LOT worse. Right now, Tancredo is A LOT better.

Posted by: Ogre at 05:47 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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