One of my favorite Saturday Night Live characters of all time was Nathan Thurm, created by Martin Short. In brief, the character was a weasel, a corrupt politicking jerk who would lie and then deny he lied, then deny his denial.
Ladies and gentlemen, last night we met Mitt Thurm:
"I said I'm not in favor of a deportation, a mass deportation effort rounding up 12 million people and kicking them out of the country," Romney said. "I believe people make their own choices as to whether they want to go home and that's what I mean by self-deportation. People decide if they want to go back to the country of their origin and get in line legally to be able to come to this country."
Democrats have attacked Romney's "self-deportation" concept since the primary campaign, when Romney used immigration as an issue with which to attack his rivals from the right, essentially promising to make economic opportunity so scarce for illegal immigrants that they would leave the United States voluntarily.
To quote Nate, "I never said that! It's so funny to me that you would think I said that!" After all, forcing people to "self-deport" rather than starve their families is hardly voluntary, is it? It's called "ethnic cleansing."
Mitt backpedaled and flagrantly denied his own words in front of a live audience and on live network (Univision) television. He denied his full-throated support of Arizona's racist immigration law, saying that, no, he only supported the employer verification rules, and claimed Obama, who had actually ramped up the number of deportations in his first term, was soft of illegal immigration.
He then denied that he ever denied that his Massachussetts healthcare plan was the blueprint for the Affordable Healthcare Act, and that he thinks anyone who received public assistance is not worth his time, mentioning that his own father received welfare when he had to flee Mexico ahead of a revolution.
Hmmmmmmmmm, he doesn't do nuance all that well.
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