On Monday, Mitt Romney will deliver a major address to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the next phase in the Republican’s latest effort to plan to court Hispanic voters.
But excerpts of his remarks released Sunday night reveal that Romney’s new groove on Hispanic outreach sounds a lot like his old one. And that means no specifics on immigration reform — instead, Romney will continue pitching Hispanic voters by talking about unemployment.
This is essentially all Hispanics have heard from Romney for months. Polls have shown the strategy hasn’t worked — Romney trails Obama in the PollTracker Average of the Latino electorate polls by a margin of 64.1 percent to 28.9 percent, a gap that’s remained fairly steady throughout the summer.
Team Romney says it wants to dramatically change its standing among Hispanic voters between now and November. During the Republican National Convention, the Romney campaign set a target of 38 percent support among Hispanic voters on Election Day.
To make that happen, the campaign has promised a raft of new Hispanic-targeted advertising and outreach. On Tuesday, Romney will sit for a rare interview with the Hispanic media when he appears on Univision. Monday’s big address to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce is also part of his effort to bolster his support among Latinos.
Hispanic advocates have said Romney’s tough stance on immigration — which he solidified during the primaries — has cost him. On Monday, Romney will return to attacking Obama for not making good on his promise to achieve comprehensive immigration reform in his first term, but the excerpts of Romney’s speech indicate he offers nothing in the way of specifics on how a Republican-led administration would make that happen.
“I will work with Republicans and Democrats to permanently fix our immigration system,” Romney plans to say, according to the excerpts. “We will never achieve a legal immigration system that is fair and efficient if we do not first get control of our borders. I believe we can all agree that what we need are fair and enforceable immigration laws that will stem the flow of illegal immigration, while strengthening legal immigration.”
Romney prefers to talk about the economy, pointing to the high unemployment rate among Hispanics as the chief reason they should vote for him over Obama.
“In 2008, candidate Obama promised us a world of limitless hope,” Romney says in the excerpts. “What we got instead is a world where hope has painful limits — limits that make it harder to start a business, to grow a business or to find a job.”
For its part, the Obama campaign is dismissing Romney’s new outreach plan, releasing a web video mocking the new focus as “Extreme Makeover: Campaign Edition.” The video suggests Team Obama is confident Romney’s speech, media appearance and new ads won’t have much of an impact as long as Romney sticks with policy stances polling has shown turning off the Hispanic community.
“On his promise to veto the DREAM Act, well, duct tape can fix everything can’t it?” the Obama video’s narrator says.
