The United States had another win on Obamacare Day, when the State of Arizona lost in an attempt to ignore or dodge federal law:
The Supreme Court today denied an application by the State of Arizona to put on hold an April ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit sitting en banc found that voter registration provisions of Arizona’s Proposition 200 violate the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), and that Arizona cannot reject federal mail-in voter registration applications if they do not include documentary proof of citizenship.
While Arizona can still seek Supreme Court review of the Ninth Circuit decision, today’s Supreme Court’s decision makes it unlikely that the Court would grant such a request.
This means that the State of Arizona cannot impose restrictions on voting if those restrictions violate the National Voter Registration Act.
Meet Kris Kobach, the Secretary of State of Kansas, who has been advising Romney since 2008:
Kobach is most known, however, as the author of the Arizona Senate Bill 1070, the controversial law that gives local police broad powers to question and arrest undocumented immigrants. Several other states, including Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, used the law as model for similar legislation. Kobach helped write the Alabama version.
He also is the driving force behind proof-of-citizenship voter registration requirements in Kansas that other states have modeled. In January, Kobach endorsed the presidential campaign of Republican Mitt Romney days before the South Carolina primary.
Kris Kobach believes that he is an advisor to Mitt Romney. This is potentially controversial, because Kobach is an anti-immigrant extremist who has also has done extensive work on voting issues. As in all things involving Mitt Romney, there are so many lies and dodges and contradictory claims that I have no earthly idea whether Kobach is an “official” advisor to Mitt Romney or not.
This is what Mitt Romney said about Kobach:
“We need more conservative leaders like Kris willing to stand up for the rule of law,” Romney said in a January 2012 statement announcing Kobach’s endorsement of his most recent bid. “With Kris on the team, I look forward to working with him to take forceful steps to curtail illegal immigration and to support states like South Carolina and Arizona that are stepping forward to address this problem.”
This is what Kobach said about Romney last January:
Kobach told Fox News in January that Romney held the most far-right views on immigration of any of the GOP presidential candidates — perhaps not the message the candidate wants to put forward for a general election in which many Latino voters disagree with those ideas.
Here’s Kobach’s conspiracy theory on this confusion between advisor, informal advisor and supporter, confusion Mitt Romney created with his customary cowardice, aversion to risk, and dishonesty:
He brushed off the incident as “a tempest in the teapot that’s being purposefully … fabricated by the Obama campaign,” a reference to the Obama campaign’s efforts to portray the report as an indication that Romney was turning to the center in order to re-position himself for the general election.
“Nothing’s changed,” Kobach says. “I just got off the phone with the senior officials in the Romney campaign and they confirmed nothing’s changed, I’m still an informal adviser in the sense that I regularly provide policy advice to the Romney team. The governor takes my advice, and does what he wants with it.”
“This is probably an interesting little example of the kind of the games that the Obama team will play,” he added, “that is, they’ll try to goad someone on the Romney team into saying something that semantically can be twisted into a change of position, and then they’ll accuse the candidate of changing position, when in fact nothing’s changed.”
It’s not that Mitt Romney is absolutely incapable of issuing a simple, unambiguous factual statement, it’s President Obama and his evil Chicago machine mandating that Mitt Romney do these crazy cartwheels every time someone asks him a direct question. The truth is, no one in this country has any idea where Mitt Romney really is on voting rights, or immigration, or anything else. Mitt Romney would like to keep it that way, because it’s safer for Mitt Romney.
Throwin Stones
Love your posts Kay.
JGabriel, Statist Minded Ideologue of the Left
Kay, minor grammar nitpick:
You should either put “dishonesty” before “aversion to risk”, or at least separate them with an Oxford comma after “risk”.
Right now it reads like dishonesty gets grouped together with risk after aversion — but that can’t be right because we all know Mitt has no aversion to dishonesty.
.
JPL
@Throwin Stones: Seconded!
Citizen_X
Speaking of bad sentences, what the hell does that mean? I’ve read it three times and I have no idea what they’re saying, or how it would make sense in context.
Hey National Review, this here’s America! Speak English or get the hell out, comprende?
Kay
@JGabriel, Statist Minded Ideologue of the Left:
Thank you. I will do that.
BGinCHI
Mitt’s position is clear:
Profits for business and austerity for everyone else.
He’s just waiting for his owner/shareholders’ plan to move all the wealth upwards.
Kay
@Citizen_X:
I think the fact that Romney has not gone to the center for the general deserves more scrutiny. We were told repeatedly he’d be going to the center. He hasn’t. That means something.
He’s decided this is a base election, and he’s not going to get a big share of “swing voters”, it seems. That’s my take, anyway. Political media gave him credit for something he hadn’t done yet (moved to the center) and then when he didn’t do it, they never corrected their original (wrong) assumption.
c u n d gulag
Mitt Romney – if you want to vote for a candidate with “no there, there.”
JGabriel, Statist Minded Ideologue of the Left
Kay @ Top:
Which raises a possibly interesting question: Have we ever before had a presidential candidate who ran for office like Republican SCOTUS nominee testifying before the Senate?
I do not think that is winning strategy.
.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Kay: That he’s not going to get a big share of swing voters is probably the most astute insight the Rmoney campaign has managed. And how they see victory without it is beyond me.
Thanks for all your great posts, Kay.
JGabriel, Statist Minded Ideologue of the Left
@JGabriel should read:
I wonder if something is wrong with my “a” key, or if I just drop articles and other words because I’m a crappy typist who types much slower than I think?
.
Chris
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Vote suppression. All about the vote suppression.
Valdivia
As always Kay your posts are fantastic and get to the bottom line about what is at stake in this election and how badly our media fails us in reporting on these important issues. The only reason people don’t know where he stands (Romney) is because the MSM refused to actually ask for a definite answer from the guy. If they did their job they would say–if you won’t answer we will say you refuse to give answers. Instead they couch it in vague terms and give him a pass.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
He’s tried to go to the center. Every time he does, he’s either laughed at or his base screams at him. I believe the latter is the important part. He’s not relying on the base, he’s trying desperately to hold onto them.
After much thought, I actually think this ACA ruling is his big chance. If he can get his base mad enough that their voter turnout is incredible, he might have a shot. 2010 was a standard backlash election. Obama and the 2009-2010 Dem congress actually kicked legislative ass, which left Dems unmotivated and the GOP frothing mad to reverse those gains. A repeat of that is the only thing I can see saving this election for the GOP now. Romney just has to have the skill to grab that opportunity.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Yeah, right.
lamh35
interesting video. Gov Scott and aids fining out about ACA. the first are all smiles once someone saw the initial “struck down” reporting, then those smiles disappearing once someone corrected them. check out the big azz smiles despite the facts that millions of people might be without health care.
Bondi tells Scott about healthcare decision
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V0p-vl_4qA&feature=player_embedded%E2%80%AA
TaMara (BHF)
Kay I love your posts. You always raise the level of dialogue and I appreciate it. I learn something every time.
RaflW
Keep it comin’ Kay. Mitt will not be moving to the center. For one thing, the center is hollowed out.
And for another, he’s a freakin’ coward extraordinaire.
Spaghetti Lee
@Frankensteinbeck:
How long can he do that before people start realizing that mandate-based health care reform was his idea in the first place? You can be damn sure Obama’s gonna remind everyone. Might not be as big a deal if he didn’t have the reputation of being a flip-flopping coward who will say anything to get votes, but there we are.
Neutron Flux
I always like your posts. For this one, though, I live in Kansas and I see every day what an asshole this guy is.
Finally I decided the only thing I could do is donate money and time to the county Democratic party specifically for GOTV and Voter Registration.
One step at a time.
gogol's wife
@Kay:
Kristof just had a column in the NYTimes about how he still really believes in his heart that Mitt is a moderate. I couldn’t believe it. Basically the column was criticizing Romney by presenting all his contradictory statements and asking which ones were said by Obama and which ones by Romney, only to reveal at the end that they were all said by Romney, but in the very middle of the column he gave Mitt the benefit of the doubt as being truly a moderate. I was so disgusted!
Frankensteinbeck
@Spaghetti Lee:
Since he’d be talking to his base, it’s a bit easier than you’d think. The important trick to remember there is that they don’t give two shakes of an earth pony’s tail about the mandate or consistency. The message would focus on the ‘he’s winning and we have to stop him’ aspect, and the question of the mandate should be ignored. The main motivator would be to sound angry and afraid and fool his rubes into thinking he’ll use the ‘n’ word any second now. All the stuff he’s no good at.
Valdivia
@gogol’s wife:
they are deluding themselves. they want to believe he is a tehcnocrat who believes in policy like they do. The jerks with these bs are practically saying don’t believe anything about Romney believe what we think we can read in his heart. drives me insane.
Gretchen
@Neutron Flux:
Kansan here too. My district isn’t even bothering to run a dem against our teabagger, even tho we had a dem rep for ten years until he retired. I asked them why I should give them money if they weren’t running a dem, and they had no answer.
Kobach ran against that dem rep, and joined my church shortly before the election. The pastor gave a speech from the pulpit encouraging us to vote for this member of our church, who had joined literally two weeks before. I wonder how many churches he joined that season so he could run as a member. Total slimeball.
burnspbesq
Good news. I fully expected Kennedy (who, as Circuit Justice for the Ninth Circuit, gets first crack at emergency motions) to stay the Ninth Circuit mandate.
Sophia
@Neutron Flux: To me, the most disconcerting thing about Kobach is that I don’t think he actually believes most (any?) of the shit he pushes. He’s the most effervescent cynic I’ve ever encountered, and the world is his holodeck.
Bobby Thomson
@Sophia: Certainly many of the positions Kris advocates today are inconsistent with his own personal conduct 25-30 years ago. He’s also always been an incredibly slippery mother fucker. So the “cynical hypocrite” theory is not without any basis. Nonetheless, everything I hear from people I trust to know suggests that he really is a true believer these days.
And he’s been flogging immigration ever since Prop 187 (at the latest), so there’s that.
Kay
@gogol’s wife:
I am perfectly serious about this. They should stop. They have absolutely no idea what Mitt Romney will do, based on what he has said. None. This is faith-based.
Baud
@gogol’s wife:
The only time it is appropriate to use the phrase “I believe Romney is a moderate” is when it’s immediately followed by “but I know Romney is a liar.”
burnspbesq
@Kay:
For all anyone knows, Kristof could be right. But that’s the point: you shouldn’t have to guess.
Baud
@burnspbesq:
No. I know he’s wrong because I personally heard Romney on the TV call himself “severely conservative.”
Obama’s right to say we should take Romney at his word.
RaflW
@gogol’s wife: Kristoff is pathetic in his naivete. On more than just Mittens.
He’s gotten 550 likes on Facebook for this latest drivel, and lots of comments – now including mine that Mitt cannot move back to moderate after election. Just no way it’s gonna happen, the base will rip him to shreds.
I sure as heck hope there aren’t too many hopeful fools out there like Nick.
rikyrah
fuck these unicorn, give me a pony muthafuckas.
Willard is worse than Newt and RickyBoy, because they actually believe in something.
Willard is a human cifer with no core who’d sell his Mama for a block of votes.
Maybe in Kristof’s unicorn-having world, one can take a gamble on Willard.
But, down here, with me and the rest of the jamokes, the gamble is too much to risk.
ps- great post, Kay. another informative one.
Patricia Kayden
“The truth is, no one in this country has any idea where Mitt Romney really is on voting rights, or immigration, or anything else. Mitt Romney would like to keep it that way, because it’s safer for Mitt Romney.”
Why don’t you believe that Romneybot 2.0 is as severely conservative as he says he is? What makes you think that he wants to run from the center? I believe that he’ll be as extreme on immigration, voting rights, reproductive rights, gay rights, etc., as the T’Baggers and his billionaire supporters want him to be.
Of course, he’s keeping his mouth shut about his extremist positions. He needs independent votes to be elected.