According to a recent item in the Washington Post's Election 2012 Blog, recalled state Senate President Russell Pearce has endorsed Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential primary, more than a month after Romney won Sand Land's GOP contest.
As a result, Romney immediately called a press conference and conceded the general election to President Obama.
Okay, Romney didn't concede the general. Why, he hasn't even whupped Rick Santorum yet.
But he might as well concede that he'll lose the national Latino vote by a massive margin, with a neo-Nazi-hugging pol like Pearce declaring that Romney's immigration policy "is identical to mine."
Indeed, though I've exposed Pearce time and time again as a serial liar with no affinity for the truth, in this case, I must agree with him when he calls Romney's position on immigration a duplicate of his.
That is 100 percent true, and it just happens to be a point I made in a recent feature on the GOP hopeful: "Bad Mormon: Mitt Romney's Anti-Immigrant Stance Doesn't Jibe with LDS Teachings."
Romney's immigration adviser is Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the architect of Pearce's breathing-while-brown legislation Senate Bill 1070, which has in its preamble, this sentence:
"The legislature declares that the intent of this act is to make attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state and local government agencies in Arizona."
And "attrition through enforcement" is identical to Romney's suggestion that if America makes life hard on the 12 million undocumented in our midst (as if life wasn't hard for them already), they will "self-deport."Pearce and Romney, both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, are "bad Mormons" on this issue, considering the LDS church's enlightened stance and its support of the Utah Compact, a declaration calling for a humane immigration policy. But there is a crucial difference.
See, when it comes to hating brown folks and passing laws to terrorize them, Pearce is a true believer. Romney's embrace of nativism, however, is blatantly self-serving, a product of political expedience.
Self-serving only in the GOP primary, that is, where mainly wingnuts vote. The general will be a different kettle of pescados. At least one GOP strategist has proclaimed that a Republican presidential contender will need 40 percent of the Latino vote to win back the White House.
But when, according to a 2011 Latino Decisions poll, one-fourth of Latinos know a family member or someone else facing deportation, and more than half of Latinos say they know someone who is undocumented, the concept of "attrition through enforcement" or "self-deportation" becomes even more horrific and unjust.
So Romney will be punished by Hispanics if he maintains the same position post-primary.
Of his own chances for election in 2012, Pearce declared that this time it would be a "fair fight," claiming, erroneously, that he received "about 70 percent of the Republican vote" in the 2011 recall election.
In your dreams, Russ. The reality is your own people -- conservative Mormon Republicans in Legislative District 18 -- took you out, and handed victory to now state Senator Jerry Lewis.
Crikey, that's almost enough to get this die-hard agnostic readin' The Book of Mormon.
One of those who recruited Lewis to run, LD 18 GOPer Tyler Montague, has written a compelling analysis of the recall results, thoroughly debunking the notion that Pearce's loss was due to the Dems who voted against him.
In his essay "Lewis Won a Republican Primary," Montague made the following observations:
"Registered Democrats comprise only 26% of LD18; which means they can't impose their will on anyone. They accounted for 28% of the vote total in the recall election, and of those, it is estimated that 36% of Democrats voted for Russell Pearce. Republicans have many more LD18 voters, who further amplify their influence with a tendency to vote at a much greater rate. Republicans formed 49% of the vote. Republicans and Independents did the heavy lifting to get to the 55%-43% final margin of victory."I initially doubted that 36 percent-of-Dems-for-Pearce stat, which was the finding of a Capitol Times/ABC 15 poll done shortly before the election. Subsequently, I've had many, both in the Lewis camp and in the pro-recall camp of Randy Parraz, tell me that there are more bigoted Pearce-lovin' Ds in LD 18 than they ever imagined.
BTW, I nearly spit my coffee through my nose when I read this line from Arizona's Prince of Prevarication in the Post article: "good people can disagree -- all you want is honesty..."
Honesty? This, from a man who lies about the teachings of his own church, the reason why he was fired as director of the Motor Vehicle Division by another Republican, the supposed support given by Latinos to 1070 (actually, it's near nil), along with various other whoppers I've caught him in over the years?
Russell Pearce wouldn't know honesty if it French-kissed him, asked him to dance the fandango and offered to split the tab on a room at the nearest Motel 6. He could give lessons in lying to Bill Clinton, for cryin' out loud. The man lies like he breathes. Should he stop lying for any sustained length of time, he might need CPR to revive.
