How Obama Foiled Romney on Immigration

After months of dodging the question, Mitt Romney has finally said that as president, he'd support President Obama's executive order giving legal status to illegal immigrants' kids. "The people who have received the special visa that the president has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would continue to be valid," he told the Denver Post. "I'm not going to take something that they've purchased." But Romney's "belated admission now that he wouldn’t repeal the executive order hardly feels like a bold stroke of leadership. It’s a faint echo," writes Steve Kornacki at Salon. And it illustrates how Obama's current political power has posed a roadblock for Romney.

During the primaries, Romney veered far right on immigration, but he appeared set to use the issue "to make his pivot" toward the center for the general election, likely by endorsing Sen. Marco Rubio's "watered down Dream Act." But before he could do so, Obama "swooped in" and "stole Romney's thunder" with the executive order. In "a particularly awful spot" between the ever-more extreme GOP base and swing voters, Romney was left with "nowhere to go on immigration, and pretty much nothing to say." Click for Kornacki's full column. (More Mitt Romney stories.)