Mitt Romney is trying hard to woo Latino voters this week, downplaying the positions he took on immigration during the Republican primaries. Many Democrats are not convinced.
"I don't think it's going to work," Annette Taddeo of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party told MNSBC's Ed Schultz on Thursday's The Ed Show. "I think it's too little, too late."
Schultz agreed, pointing to what he said was a poor performance by Romney at the Univision forum in Florida on Wednesday. The White House hopeful was defensive about his prior support for self-deportation, wouldn't give a straight answer on whether the nation should follow Arizona's lead on immigration, and offered no specifics on how to deal with the millions of young people brought to the country illegally by their parents, Schultz noted.
Romney's bid to win over Latino voters comes the same week that Mother Jones dropped an explosive video in which the Republican told a room of wealthy donors that his father was born in Mexico. He then half-jokingly bemoans the fact that he himself was not Mexican, because minority status would give him "a better shot of winning this."
Taddeo called Romney's remarks "very offensive," adding that "it takes more than being a Mexican for us to vote for somebody, or being a Hispanic for us to vote for somebody."
During the Univision forum, Romney promised to "staple a green card" to diplomas of foreign nationals who earn advanced degrees in the U.S. He also made a similar comment in the secret video—though, in that case, but he didn't stop there.
"Gosh, I'd love to bring in more legal immigrants that have skills ... I'd like to staple a green card to every Ph.D. in the world and say, 'Come to America, we want you here,'" he said in the video. "Instead, we make it hard for people who get educated here or elsewhere to make this their home. ... Unless, of course, you have no skill or experience, in which case you're welcome to cross the border and stay here for the rest of your life," he said, to laughter from the crowd. "It's very strange."
"He's trying to become this person we all know he isn't," said Taddeo.