So Republicans, how's that minority outreach program of yours going? It seems xenophobes like Kris Kobach haven't learned anything from his buddy Mitt Romney's loss in the presidential election.

Big Surprise: Kris Kobach Still Believes in Self-Deportation:

Remember how the Mitt Romney-espoused "self-deportation" rhetoric was supposed to end up in the dustbin of history following President Obama's huge margins among Latino voters back in November? Apparently no one told Kris Kobach.

The Kansas secretary of state and intellectual author of harsh laws in states like Arizona and Alabama was back at it again earlier today, this time at the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings on the Gang of Eight's immigration bill. In response to questions from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Kobach said that "self-deportation is not some radical idea. It is simply the idea that people may comply with the law by their own choice."

GOP Immigration Guru Insists DREAMers Should Self-Deport:

Speaking at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing, Kobach insisted that DREAM eligible applicants, many of whom have lived in the United States for most of their lives, should not be rewarded for the “sins of their parents.” Instead, DREAMers should go back to their parents’ country of origin, Kobach said, and “get in line with the rest of their countrymen.” “That just defies basic compassion,” Durbin shot back, pointing to to Gabby Pacheco, an undocumented immigrant brought to America at the age of eight from Ecuador, who was testifying alongside Kobach. “She’s never known any other country,” Durbin explained, “this is her home.” [...]

Kobach responded by reviving self-deportation, arguing that “if you ratchet up the penalties for violating the law, people choose to leave.”

But Durbin predicted that the momentum has shifted from deportation to reform after the 2012 election. “Ultimately the voters have the last word. The voters had the last word on self-deportation on Nov. 6, so we’re beyond that now,” he said.

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On this Sunday's Meet the Press, host David Gregory asked House Majority Leader Eric Cantor if he was shifting his stance on immigration and the Dream Act after he said this at a speech at the American Enterprise Institute:

In a wide-ranging speech at the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, Cantor said that when it comes to immigration reform, "A good place to start is with the kids."

"One of the great founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents," he said. " It is time to provide an opportunity for legal residence and citizenship for those who were brought to this country as children and who know no other home."

When David Gregory tried to pin him down about whether he would actually be supportive of the Dream Act which would create a path to citizenship for these children, Cantor refused to answer him and claimed he didn't know what the Dream Act was. And despite the fact that Gregory pressed him for a yes or no answer specifically on the path to citizenship, Gregory eventually allowed Cantor to get away with punting on the question and moved on to the next topic.

CANTOR: David, it's been over ten years now where this problem has not been dealt with and we've been unable to find any common ground and what I said this week at the American Enterprise Institute was that I thought the best way to start was with children. […]

GREGORY: So you would support the Dream Act?

CANTOR: I have put out a proposal. I don't know what the Dream Act at this point is. What I say is we've got a place, I think all of us can come together and that is for the kids. Now...

GREGORY: Can you bring conservatives along to supporting a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants who are here without having to first leave the country?

CANTOR: There is a lot of movement right now in the House and the Senate and both sides of the aisle, with both having a lot of different ideas. I think...

GREGORY: But yes or no to that question, because you could really do it if you went all in, you could bring along the right in the House, couldn't you?

CANTOR: I think that a good place to start is with children and listen, we've got some... look, here's the difficulty in this issue I think, and it is because we've got families that are here that become part of the fabric of our country, right? And we want to make sure that we're compassionate and sensitive to their plight, I mean, these kids know no other place as home. On the other hand, we are a country of laws. You know, we have a situation with the border security that we've got to get straight. We have to secure our borders and there is this balance that needs to take place. But the best place to begin I think is with the children. Let's go ahead and get that under our belt, put a win on the board and so we can promise a better life for those kids who are here due to no fault of their own.

Sounds like a lot of weasel words to me. As Think Progress noted, Rep. Raul Labrador has proposed legislation that would create a permanent underclass of undocumented immigrants. Who want to take dibs that his legislation is what we'll see Cantor and his fellow House members end up supporting? I don't think we'll ever see Republicans support a path to citizenship, because allowing these immigrants to become citizens means allowing them to vote and we all know they don't want that. Right now their so-called "rebranding" effort just looks like smearing a whole lot of lipstick on the same old pig.

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As Igor Volsky at Think Progress noted, we'll see how far this goes with Republicans when you've got Senators like John McCain calling equality for gay and lesbian families in immigration reform as a “red herring” and comparing it to tax payer funding for abortion: Harry Reid Predicts Immigration Reform Will Pass, Says It Must Include Protections For Same-Sex Families:

Senate Majority Leader Harry (D-NV) expressed support for including gay and lesbian families in comprehensive immigration reform, during an appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, insisting that they should have the same protections as everyone else.

The United States is home to at least 28,500 same-sex couples in which one partner is a citizen and the other is not, but federal law does not recognize these relationships and prohibits gay and lesbian couples and their children from seeking visas on the basis of same-sex unions. The Obama administration’s framework would allow families to apply for visas on the basis of their permanent unions, while the bipartisan senate principles do not. Reid characterized the GOP resistance to including the equality amendment as an excuse to avoid supporting comprehensive reform: Read on...

Regardless of their rhetoric and Harry Reid's optimism, I won't be surprised if Republicans find an excuse to block the bill, but we shall see.

Full transcript below the fold.

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After a couple of her well known on-air brain farts, I wonder Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is the one that we should be worried about being on the road, not the deferred-action immigrants who are just trying to get to work in her state. Arizona Governor Compares Undocumented Immigrants To Drunks And Children:

Since President Obama issued an administrative directive allowing some undocumented young immigrants to temporarily remain in the country, states have adopted policies to ensure they have equal work opportunity. But on Thursday, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) reiterated her opposition to granting driver licenses to the eligible immigrants and compared them to children or people with a record of driving under the influence.

Speaking on Fox News, Brewer suggested that she would never issue licenses to undocumented immigrants because that’s what state law says, despite the fact that it was her executive order that interpreted state law to mean that:

BILL HEMMER (HOST): In June the White House announced a new plan if you were here in the U.S. before the age of 16, and you are younger than the age of 31, and you’ve been here at least five years, you can stay. That is the broad outline of his proposal passed over the summer. What you’re arguing is that the law of the land in Arizona if you’re illegal you don’t get the same rights as those who are legal, correct?

BREWER: The state is the one who licenses the people to be able to drive, it’s not the federal government. And we don’t license kids under 16. We don’t license DUI drivers. And our laws are very clear and I took an oath to uphold that.

[...] These laws have been passed for reasons of public safety; lawmakers believe that unlicensed adult immigrants are likely to drive anyway because they need to get to work, risking increased accidents and higher insurance costs. Public safety concerns, of course, run the opposite direction with children and serial drunk drivers, who cannot ever be trusted to drive safely and hence must be kept off the road.

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While quite a few Republicans are waking up to the fact that maybe it's not such a good idea to insult huge swaths of the voting public as Mitt Romney did when he made his remarks about President Obama winning the election because he gave "gifts" to minorities, women and young voters, it seems The Blaze's Will Cain hasn't gotten the message yet either.

This Sunday evening on CNN during Don Lemon's show, Cain appeared with regular LZ Granderson, and after Lemon played recordings of Bobby Jindal, Newt Gingrich and Haley Barbour all condemning Romney's remarks, both men were stunned when Cain decided to come to Romney's defense.

And as Granderson rightfully pointed out during the interview, besides being extremely insulting, Romney's remarks weren't even accurate, regardless of Cain's weak defense of them here. Cutting the middle man out of the student loan program, making sure women have affordable access to contraceptives, allowing people to stay on their parents' insurance plans, and allowing children who were brought to the United States to stay here instead of being deported are not "gifts." They're good policy.

If Cain wants to make sure that the Republican party remains the party of hateful old white men and help his buddy Willard make sure no one else ever wants to vote for them again, just keep talking buddy.

h/t Dave

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Benjy Sarlin over at Talking Points Memo flags Romney for this obvious screw-up. Understandable though when you consider the ever changing positions Romney has had throughout his career on major issues. Even he probably can't keep track of what he believes (or says he believes) anymore.

Mitt Romney accidentally floated a new immigration position in an interview with conservative site Newsmax on Friday, suggesting that he favored a path to permanent status for young illegal immigrants through higher education. The campaign quickly walked the position back when confronted with the discrepancy by TPM.

via the wingnut site Newsmax:

“I will reform immigration with an idea of making immigration more transparent, helping reunite families, assuring that we have a large and ample supply of workers that are needed in agriculture and other temporary assignments,” he said.

As for children of those who came to this country illegally, “I want to make sure they have a permanent answer as to what their status will be.”

He then suggested he would go beyond Obama’s plan. “… I’ve indicated in my view that those who serve in the military or have advanced degrees would certainly qualify for that kind of permanent status.”

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This Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, David Gregory repeatedly asked Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to give him specifics on his version of the Dream Act, which he abandoned earlier this month after President Obama announced the his new policy halting deportation hearings for those who would have been affected by the Dream Act had it passed.

Just as in his previous interviews, Rubio insisted that insisted that "complicated issues require careful solutions," blamed President Obama for the fact that there's probably no chance in hell Rubio would get his legislation past his own caucus and they didn't want to do anything to encourage illegal immigration.

It's fairly obvious why Rubio didn't want to answer David Gregory's questions on whether immigrants should have to “go home” first before being allowed a path to citizenship in the United States. Rubio, like their presidential candidate Mitt Romney is now trying to thread the needle between not alienating their xenophobic base and not further alienating the Hispanic community with their overly harsh rhetoric on immigration and Romney's past statements about self-deportation. I don't think it's going to do them much good since there's nothing Mitt Romney can do to make those video recordings go away with the statements he's during both this and his last presidential campaign.

Transcript below the fold.

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ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper says that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has a harsher stance on immigration than any Republican presidential nominee in decades.

Conservative columnist George Will on Sunday told Tapper that Romney was at a disadvantage with Latino voters because "he has to unring a bell that he rang during the primaries."

"It's interesting that Gov. Romney from New England is much more severe than Reagan, McCain or either Bush presidents were," Will noted. "All four of those coming from border states with more familiarity with it. So [President Barack Obama] has a double advantage here."

"I think empirically, Peggy, he's the most conservative nominee on the issue of illegal immigration and the Mexican border than any Republican nominee we've seen in the last 20 or 30 years," Tapper pointed out to Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan.

"Yeah," Noonan agreed. "And I don't suppose he thinks he can make real numeric progress with the Latino vote."

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA), who is chair of the House Democratic Caucus, noted that Romney should have been able to make inroads with Latino voters because of the sluggish economy if it were not for his immigration policies.

"The difficulty for Mitt Romney is he was so vicious in going at the issue of immigration that he locked himself in," Becerra explained. "It was very telling in Miami -- the heart of Republican Latinos, where you find more of them than anywhere else -- Mitt Romney goes and speaks to a crowd, he gets polite applause. Barack Obama goes into Miami and he gets standing ovations from a crowd of mostly Latino elected and appointed officials, Republican and Democratic."

"And so it's become clear that for Mitt Romney, it's trying to sketch his way out of what he said in the primaries," the congressman added. "He went so far to the right. He still associates with these guys that are so conservative."

During the Republican primary battle, Romney had courted conservative voters with anti-immigration positions. He called Arizona’s tough immigration law a “model” for the country; he promised to veto the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act; and he said that undocumented immigrants should self-deport.

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A senior adviser to presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Sunday continued to dodge questions about whether his boss would rescind President Barack Obama's recently-announced policy to halt deportation proceedings for many young undocumented immigrants.

During an interview on CNN, host Candy Crowley asked Ed Gillespie if Romney would dismantle the order and place these young immigrants back in danger of being deported.

"Every executive action that Obama has taken will be subject to review," Gillespie explained. "In the case of this case, it will be subject to review as to whether or not it's legal. So, there's legitimate questions about the legality of it."

"Isn't it important, you know, not just for these kids that are involved or these young 20-somethings that are involved that say, 'Oh, wow, if I meet certain criteria, I can get my working papers.'" Crowley noted. "Come Jan. 20 or the 21st or whenever the inauguration is if Mitt Romney is the president, they could lose that. Shouldn't there be some certainty, whether it's immigration or what he wants to cut in order to sustain tax cuts that he wants? ... It's such a simple question, would he keep that in place?"

"We are laying out specifics," Gillespie insisted. "Between now and November, it's clear that the Oval Office is an extension of the Chicago [Obama] campaign headquarters, and they're going to make a lot of political moves. And there are a lot of other target demographics that the president will try to appeal to with executive actions. We're going to review all of these."

"But you can't tell me today whether he would leave that in place?" Crowley pressed.

"All of these are subject to review and repeal," Gillespie replied.

CBS host Bob Schieffer was first last week to try to cajole an answer out of the candidate himself, asking him about it three times.

"We’ll look at that setting as we reach that,” Romney said. “My anticipation is that I would come into office and say, we need to get this done on a long-term basis, not this kind of stopgap measure."

From this Saturday's show, Chris Hayes on the White House's failure to understand that it did not matter how far they moved to the right on anything from the health care law, to immigration, to gun control, Republicans don't care much about reality. They're going to create their own reality instead for political gain. As he noted at the end of his monologue:

And so, that's why promoting this implausible conspiracy theory about a secret plot to make gun owners look bad by giving guns to Mexican traffickers is so important to the right and the NRA. It's why they've been flogging Fast and Furious and why the NRA scored the vote on contempt. Since there is no actual case that the President wants to crush gun-rights, they have to make one.Because this is post-truth politics. Because you cannot make political gains with substantive concessions. They're still going to call you a gun-hating Kenyan socialist.

I think as evidenced by the White House's announcement last week of protections for DREAM Act eligible youth, that they are finally starting to wake up to that fact.

The panel discussion followed with Hayes' guests, Jose Antonio Vargas, Michael Ian Black, L. Joy Williams and the New York Times Ross Douthat, who as expected as soon as I saw his name on the guest list for this weekend, had lots of false equivalencies to offer on things such as GOP obstruction and their abuse of the filibuster to what is or is not a political witch hunt and when it's actually fair to say an administration is shredding our Constitution or not and why.

I think Hayes point on Republicans and their feigned outrage over the death of the border agent in this Fast and Furious case can't be repeated often enough as well. They don't show the same outrage or grief about the 30-thousand people killed every year by guns, so we know full well this is not about them having one iota of concern for gun control. It's pure politics.

More of Hayes commentary below the fold: The era of post-truth politics:

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