Given the way the president’s speech to the National Association of Latino Elected Officials today was set up by his executive action to implement a DREAM Lite suspension of prosecutions, and the confused GOP reaction, it was pretty easy for him to spike the ball emphatically. After all, he could tout his support of the full DREAM Act, the GOP abandonment of it, and then his own preemption of their efforts to find a fallback position. Benjy Sarlin of TPM has the money quote:
“Just six years ago, an unlikely trio, John McCain, Ted Kennedy, and President Bush, came together to champion immigration reform,” Obama said. “I, along with a lot of Democrats were proud to join 23 Senate Republicans in voting for it. Today they have been driven from the table by a small faction of their own party. It’s created the same kind of stalemate on immigration we form that we are seeing on a whole range of other economic issues and given rise to patch work of state laws that cause more problems than they solve and are often doing more harm than good.”
The bad day for Mitt Romney was compounded by Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s defiance earlier in the day at the same conference of Team Mitt’s requests that he please stop stepping on their message that the economy in that key battleground state is really, really bad. It’s doing “extremely well,” quoth Scott.
