WARNING: I didn’t watch any Fox News this weekend so I might be wrong about this. But so far, it seems to me that the leading lights of conservatism have managed to keep their troops under control on the immigration front. President Obama announced his mini-DREAM DHS directive on Friday, and Time’s Massimo Calabresi describes Mitt Romney’s choices:
He could play it safe, accentuating whatever slight differences might exist between the nascent Rubio plan and the one Obama had just unveiled with full fanfare. That would be a tough sell, since Obama appeared to have crafted his measure explicitly to steal Rubio’s thunder. Alternatively, Romney could go bold, embrace the President’s plan, perhaps even go a step further, become a champion of immigration reform and shift his bets from the base to Latinos.
In an interview for Sunday’s Face the Nation on CBS, taped Saturday in Pennsylvania where Romney was campaigning, Romney showed he was opting for the cautious response.
Other conservatives seem to have mostly followed suit. I did read several items over the weekend complaining that Obama was abusing presidential power by declaring which laws he’d enforce and which ones he wouldn’t, but frankly, even those seemed a little pro forma. For the most part, everyone seemed to be lying low, afraid that furious denunciations of the usual sort would torpedo their chance of winning any Latino votes this November.
So have conservatives really decided to back down on this? Have they kept their troops pretty much in line? Is the spittle-flecked stuff being restricted to private email lists? Any Fox News watchers out there care to weigh in?
