Romney: "Illegals"

by Michael Sean Winters

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I have not worked on a campaign since 2004, but if I were working on President Barack Obama's campaign team, I would be crafting a television ad for Univision this morning that features this quote of Gov. Romney's from last night:

Now let me mention one other thing, and that is, self-deportation says let it -- let people make their own choice. What I was saying is, we’re not going to round up 12 million people, undocumented, illegals, and take them out of the nation. Instead, let -- make -- people make their own choice. And if they -- if they find that -- that they can’t get the benefits here that they want and they can’t find the job they want, then they’ll make a decision to go a place where -- where they have better opportunities.

The operative word is, of course, "illegals," which Mr. Romney uses as a proper noun. These are not people, they are "illegals." The funny, well, not funny in the sense of laugh a lot but funny in the sense in which Mr. Romney joked in the infamous 47% video that he would have a better shot at the presidency if he were Latino, the funny thing is that he does not even recognize how offensive he is being. After all, people speak like that at the club, don't they? Clueless and offensive in equal measure. And, the Romney campaign is wondering why they are losing Latino voters by overwhelming margins?

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