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" Willard Romney, whom the president wrong-footed so very badly on the issue of immigration last week, took to the podium today at the convention of the National Association of Latin Elected Officials to say as little as possible and, it appears, succeeded mightily. &amp;quot;Tomorrow, President Obama will speak here, for the first time since his last campaign. He may admit that he hasn&amp;#039;t kept every promise. And he&amp;#039;ll probably say that, even though you aren&amp;#039;t better off today than you were four years ago, things could be worse. He&amp;#039;ll imply that you really don&amp;#039;t have an alternative. He&amp;#039;s taking your vote for granted. I&amp;#039;ve come here today with a simple message: You do have an alternative. Your vote should be respected. And your voice is more important now than ever before. This November, we&amp;#039;ll make a choice. We can continue along the path we&amp;#039;re on \u2014 or we can choose a better way... Today, I am asking you to join me because, while we may not agree on everything, we share the same goal, the same vision, and the same belief in American greatness that draws so many to our shores. Liberty&amp;#039;s torch can burn just as brightly for future generations of immigrants as it has burned for immigrants past...&amp;quot; Forget all that stuff I said last winter. Now, we are all brothers in banality. If this truly was a &amp;quot;pivotal&amp;quot; speech, then Romney did a complete 360 and wound up facing the same way he was when he started, into the teeth of a demographic gale from which he cannot run or hide. But Mr. Romney, who has refused to say whether he would overturn a policy announced last week by President Obama that would stop the deportation of some illegal immigrants who were brought to the country as children, again sidestepped that question. &amp;quot;Some people have asked if I will let stand the president&amp;#039;s executive action,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;The answer is that I will put in place my own long-term solution that will replace and supersede the president&amp;#039;s temporary measure.&amp;quot; This is, of course, all his granny. He knows that any &amp;quot;long-term solution&amp;quot; that doesn&amp;#039;t involve hurling brown people back over the southern border in shackles will not find any favor with the people who actually lead his party on this issue. (This is the reality to which he bent the knee repeatedly in the primaries.) He nodded, briefly, toward one of the provisions of the DREAM Act that the Republican leadership on this issue managed to chloroform in the House, admitting that, if some undocumented young folks want to join the Army and get their asses shot at in the country&amp;#039;s service, then he, Willard Romney, might well see himself clear to allowing them eventually to become citizens. This did not get him lifted up and carried around the room. The nearly twenty-minute speech was met with tepid applause and moments of pointed silence. He seemed to hit his stride near the middle of his remarks, when he talked about balancing the budget, giving parents a choice of where to send their children to school, and providing a path to legal status for immigrants who have served in the military. At the end, about half the room stood up to applaud. &amp;quot;About half the room&amp;quot;? You mean, very nearly half of his audience stood at the end of his speech? Are you sure they weren&amp;#039;t running for the snack bar? Luckily, former Governor Jeb (The Smart One) Bush was there to give out some lovely parting gifts. &amp;quot;It was a great speech, I was real impressed with it and I&amp;#039;m glad he came,&amp;quot; Mr. Bush said. &amp;quot;I think he was received respectfully and warmly.&amp;quot; Well, that makes one of you. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a14535/mitt-goes-latin/>