Did Romney Really Embrace Arizona’s Harsh Immigration Laws?
Mitt Romney pulled off a strong debate performance Wednesday night, but one comment may haunt him all the way to November. When asked about immigration, the former governor said, “You know, I think you see a model here in Arizona.”
In the hours since the debate, many Hispanic media outlets interpreted his words to mean a full-fledged endorsement of Arizona’s controversial immigration law SB1070. Democrats pounced on the former governor’s words to label him “the GOP’s most extreme candidate.” They created a video centered around the line, and said Romney had embraced “fully and wholeheartedly the most controversial, divisive and extreme anti-immigrant law in the U.S.”
But Romney didn’t exactly embrace SB1070. The line is ambiguous, but it appears to be a wink at the conservative base before pivoting away from the toxic law. Instead of SB1070, which gives police great leeway in detaining people on suspicion of having entered the country illegally and makes not carrying immigration papers a crime,