For a moment Wednesday afternoon in Miami, Mitt Romney seemed to have a solution to his Hispanic problem: Was he not, Univision?s Jorge Ramos asked, Mexican-American himself, as his father had been born south of the border?
Romney confessed his parents were American citizens who never spoke Spanish.
Continue Reading?I don?t think people would think I was being honest with them if I said I was Mexican-American,? Romney said, adding that he?d still be grateful if Ramos ?put the word out.?
Romney needs a better answer, and though he did his best in South Florida to project a soft line on illegal immigrants and a hard line on Fidel Castro ? who he suggested would go to hell ? he has dug himself a deep hole. Hispanic activists in both parties told POLITICO they are stunned by how far right Romney has moved in the past two months, and think he will have a hard time coming back.
?As for Romney, immigration and the Hispanic vote, put a fork in him. He?s done, cooked, burnt,? said Frank Sharry, the founder and executive director of the Democratic group America?s Voice. Sharry said Democrats would have had reason to fear an immigration moderate with strong Hispanic credentials like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who recently warned his party to moderate its ?tone? on immigration.
But the former Massachusetts governor, he argued, finds himself in an impossible position. ?What can Romney do? If he flip-flops in the general, he?ll piss off his new hard-liner friends on the right and underscore his flip-flopping reputation; he stays hard right and [angers] the fastest growing voter bloc in the country.?
Some Republicans have come around to the same opinion.
?Romney has done himself some real damage,? said Ana Navarro, a Florida Republican who has advised John McCain and Jeb Bush. ?Romney has now thrown Obama a lifesaver on the issue. It?s been stupid and unnecessary. He could have been more nuanced and left himself room to maneuver.
?Immigration is not most the important issue for Hispanics, but it definitely sets a tone,? she said.
The Hispanic community, indeed, is one place where Romney has failed to line up the support of the Republican establishment. Navarro backed Huntsman. Lionel Sosa, a former aide to George W. Bush and a leading figure for an older generation of Hispanic Republicans, works with Newt Gingrich.
The litany of complaints about Romney is long. Perhaps the sharpest is that he says he would veto the DREAM Act, a poll-tested corner of immigration reform that would legalize only the most virtuous of illegal immigrants: people who came as children and then enrolled in college or the military. A Univision poll released Tuesday found 54 percent of Hispanic voters saying they?d be less likely to choose a candidate who promises to veto the legislation, which has the support of more than 90 percent of Hispanic voters in other polls.
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