By John Seiler

I agree with my colleague Katy Grimes’ assessment that Mitt Romney easily won last night’s debate. He easily command over President Valium.

But the debate ignored an issue critical to California: immigration.

Romney won the primaries largely because he talked tough on immigration. He painted his main opponents, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry, as amnesty wimps. This went over big time with the party’s anti-immigration base.

As longtime Romney enthusiast Ann Coulter wrote last December:

“capitulate on illegal immigration, and the entire country will have the electorate of California. There will be no turning back….

“Massive legal and illegal immigration has already so changed the California electorate that no Republican can be elected statewide anymore. Not so long ago, this was a state that produced great Republican governors and senators like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, S.I. Hayakawa and Pete Wilson. 

“If even Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, two bright, attractive, successful female business executives — one pro-life and one pro-choice — can’t win a statewide election in California spending millions of their own dollars in the middle of the 2010 Republican sweep, it’s buenas noches, muchachos. 

“Only Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney aren’t trying to sneak through amnesty for illegal aliens.”

By then, Bachmann was not a contender. So that left Romney.

Gov. Etch-A-Sketch

But on Monday, Romney flip-flopped on immigration — again. National Journal reported:

“Mitt Romney’s advisers have long insisted that economic doldrums—not immigration policy—would turn Hispanic voters toward the Republican nominee.

“But Romney’s decision to break his silence on allowing young illegal immigrants to stay in the United States reflects a shift in that failing strategy and an implicit admission that the increasingly powerful Hispanic vote could, in part, cost him the election.

“After months of mostly stonewalling about President Obama’s order to stop deporting children brought to the United States illegally by their parents, Romney told The Denver Post on Monday that he would not repeal those temporary visas. On Tuesday, his campaign said he would end the program for others if elected president.”

Actually, the Hispanic vote is only about 7 percent of the electorate. It routinely votes about 67 percent Democratic. Assuming Romney’s new position resonates among Hispanics, he might reduce that 67 percent to 60 percent — if he’s lucky. So, he would improve by 7 percentage points. Multiply that (.07) times a 7 percent electorate (.07) and  at most he would gain 0.35 percentage points.

Moreover, few of the expected pro-Romney Hispanic switch would be in swing states. Most Hispanics live in big Blue states (California, New York, Illinois) or Texas (Red state for now). Florida is an exception, because it’s a swing state with a lot of Hispanics. But most Hispanics there are Cubans, for whom there’s already a special law allowing relatives to come here as refugees from Castro’s communism.

Hispanics soon will be a much larger electorate. They’re 16 percent of the population now, but their population is younger, so they have more kids under 18 years old; and many are immigrants, legal and illegal, until they become citizens. But this isn’t the 2024 election; it’s the 2012 election.

Meanwhile, the white (“Anglo”) electorate still is about 65 percent of the national electorate. Probably at least half of them oppose amnesty. How many of them will be offended now that Romney supports amnesty? Probably a lot more than .35 percentage points. Many in Ohio, Iowa, Colorado and other swing states will stay home in disgust on election day.

It’s no wonder his adviser, Eric Fehrnstrom, said last March after Mitt had wound up his primary victories and secured the nomination, “Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”

Obama could have brought up amnesty as yet another Etch-A-Sketch Romney moment, but the president was napping.

Maybe immigration will come up in a later debate. But for now, this issue crucial especially to California is not even being discussed in this campaign.

‘I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman,’ was the rally cry in the 1970’s for the feminist movement.

But a roar was heard last night — just not the kind liberal women want to hear.

Presidential Primaries

Not satisfied with their four-decade war on men, Democrats and liberal women have turned their guns on other women – specifically conservative women, who incensed liberals with the Presidential primary results in Mississippi and Alabama last evening.

Karen Finney, a MSNBC analyst and Democratic Party operative expressed how appalled she was with Rick Santorum’s primary win last night, who won in two Southern states thanks to the vote of working women.

“This woman vote really hurts me,” Karen Finney said. “I got to say. You heard me say that.”

49 percent of working Republican women voted for Santorum in the Alabama and Mississippi primaries.

“That’s why I say, it’s a little painful because I’m wondering if those women really heard the full message that, yes, there’s the economy, but if you’ve got to worry about your basic healthcare, how are you then going to be able to do what you need to do in terms of having a job, paying your rent, taking care of your kids?” Finney opined.

According to Finney, women are still victims.

Karen Finney must lead a sheltered life far away from the fly-over states and working-class America. Working women are acutely aware of the need for healthcare, having and keeping a job, paying the rent and taking care of their kids. In fact, working women usually do it better. They feed their own children, pay their own rent, and pay for their own healthcare needs, insured or not.

The lack of access to healthcare argument Democrats are trying to gin up is a big lie.

Even when I was in high school in the late 1970’s, all of the young women knew how and where to access healthcare, and how to get contraception. It was available then, and it’s only more abundant now. And this argument is not about healthcare, but about contraception – about government-funded contraception.

The difference is that working women don’t spend their days and night whining about how the government should take care of their kids, rent, healthcare or reproductive organs.

After the MSNBC show aired, WTAM radio in Cleveland reported, “While MSNBC only introduces Finney as a ‘political analyst,’ a quick look at her bio reveals she’s a Democratic political all-star. She’s worked for the DNC, Hillary Clinton, and Elizabeth Edwards in the past. Currently, she serves on the board of NARAL pro-choice America.”

Finney and most of the other Democratic women pushing this strange agenda and fake war on women are frothing-at-the-mouth activists. They can’t even see the stupidity of their own arguments. American women aren’t victims.

The war isn’t against women, but is a war between conservative and liberal women.

Fortunately, working women are laughing at the silly liberals, and exercising their right to vote.

MAR. 14, 2012