The more "safe" and "electable" Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney, whose approval rating among Hispanic voters was roughly 23 percent the last time I checked, has just heartily embraced the endorsement of one Kris Kobach. The architect of Arizona's "Papers Please" anti-immigration law, SB1070.
On the same day Mitt Romney released an ad in Spanish as he tries to reach out to the Hispanic community, he also touted the endorsement of nativist, anti-immigration activist Kris Kobach. The Kansas Secretary of State, Kobach is better known as the legal architect of SB1070 in Arizona. He is also counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), listed as a nativist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
From Mitt Romney's press release...
“I’m so proud to earn Kris’s support,” said Mitt Romney. “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.”
Kris Kobach's SB1070 also served as the inspiration for Alabama's "Papers Please" anti-immigration law which, as we've shared extensively, has wrecked the agricultural industry, split families, shrunk the tax-base, and made children afraid of going to school.
One might get the impression the Republicans are actually planning to lose the southwest and are instead putting all of their eggs in the xenophobic, white suburbia basket.
That may be a winning strategy at the local level, but it's a sure loser at the national level in a nation that is becoming increasingly diverse.