Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Romney quizzed about alien order
BRUNSWICK, Ohio — Mitt Romney in an interview aired Sunday repeatedly refused to say that he would overturn President Barack Obama’s new policy allowing some young illegal aliens to stay in the United States. He claimed Obama’s decision was political, while senior White House adviser David Plouffe said the move wasn’t motivated by politics.
The Republican presidential candidate was asked three times in an interview on CBS’ Face the Nation whether he would overturn the executive order issued Friday if he’s elected in the fall. He refused to directly answer.
“It would be overtaken by events,” Romney said when pressed for the second time by moderator Bob Schieffer during the interview taped Saturday while the former Massachusetts governor’s bus tour stopped in Pennsylvania.
He explained the order would become irrelevant “by virtue of my putting in place a long- term solution, with legislation which creates law that relates to these individuals such that they know what their setting is going to be, not just for the term of a president but on a permanent basis.”
Romney’s Rust Belt tour swept Sunday through Ohio, where he appeared with House Speaker John Boehner in the city of Troy in the speaker’s home district. Protesters shouted throughout his abbreviated campaign speech there, yelling “Romney go home!” as campaign staff members moved speakers into the group of protesters in an attempt to drown them out.
The protest came just a few minutes after top Obama adviser David Axelrod posted on Twitter that he’s opposed to efforts to shout down Romney’s bus tour.
Obama’s Chicago campaign has been helping distribute information about protest events — former Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell held a protest outside a store on Saturday that prompted Romney to shift his tour to a different store than originally planned.
“I strongly condemn heckling along Mitt’s route,” Axelrod posted. “Let voters hear BOTH candidates and decide.”
Earlier in the day, Romney attended a Father’s Day pancake breakfast with two of his sons and five of his 18 grandchildren.
At a second event in Newark, near Columbus, Romney told a cheering crowd that the president’s slogan had changed.
“Last time when he was running for president his campaign theme was hope and change. This time he’s hoping to change the subject because the American people are not happy,” Romney said, speaking for about nine minutes as Occupy Wall Street protesters yelled from a nearby sidewalk.
In the TV interview, Romney suggested that Obama’s decision on immigration was motivated by politics.
“If he felt seriously about this he should have taken action when he had a Democrat House and Senate, but he didn’t. He saves these sort of things until 4 1 ⁄2 months before the general election,” he said.
Plouffe, the Obama adviser, sent by the White House to four Sunday talk shows, contended that Obama’s action, which appeals to Hispanic voters who are critical to the president’s re-election effort, was not “a political move.”
Still, Plouffe acknowledged that Obama’s team expects an extraordinarily close election.
“It’s going to come down to a few votes per precinct in a few states,” Plouffe said in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press. In such a case, a small number of extra votes from Hispanics could make the difference in some key states like Nevada and Colorado.
Obama’s order has put Romney in a difficult position, forcing him to decide between possibly alienating Hispanic voters with tough talk or stoking anger within the conservative GOP base.
Romney has softened his rhetoric on immigration since the GOP primary campaign ended.
For example, before the Iowa caucuses in January, when he faced the challenge of winning over GOP conservatives, he pledged to veto legislation backed by Democrats that would have created a path to citizenship for illegal aliens brought to the U.S. as children. Instead of emphasizing the plight of aliens, Romney focused on the consequences illegal immigration has for U.S. jobs.
The Obama administration said the policy change announced Friday will affect as many as 800,000 aliens who have lived in fear of deportation.
Under the plan, illegal aliens will be able to avoid deportation if they can prove they were brought to the United States before they turned 16 and are younger than 30, have been in the country for at least five continuous years, have no criminal history, graduated from a U.S. high school or earned a General Educational Development diploma or certificate, or served in the military.