Yesterday we penned a blog post on how the relationship between Kris Kobach and Mitt Romney has taken a complicated turn, on account of how Romney has become the presumptive Republican nominee and now must quest after the all-important Latino vote—a demographic which hates Kobach.
Kobach was an unpaid immigration adviser to Romney, until suddenly he wasn’t. Kobach was left off a list of staffers and advisers, and a Romney spokesperson called Kobach a “supporter” rather than an “adviser” when Politico’s Glenn Thrush called to investigate.
That, apparently, was unacceptable to Kobach. From the Washington Post yesterday:
Kobach confirmed to me that the Romney campaign had privately assured him that his status is unchanged. “I’m still providing policy advice on immigration to the governor and his team,” Kobach told me. “I spoke with them yesterday afternoon, and they confirmed that nothing has changed.”
But from the Romney campaign after that:
When Politico’s Glenn Thrush asked the Romney campaign again about Kobach’s claim that he’s still working with Romney, a spokesperson had, no comment other than to stand by the claim that Kobach is merely a “supporter,” rather than adviser to the campaign.
If, in fact, Kris Kobach is still an advisor to the Romney camp, he’s doing a terrible job. Considering that Mitt’s #1 problem is the image of him as a flip-flopper, Kobach is not doing him any favors by drawing out this he-said-he-said back-and-forth. It’s becoming obvious that Romney is trying to publicly distance himself from Kobach—again, in the hopes of impressing and wooing that Latino vote—while privately trying to reassure Kobach that they are still two men of the same mind. Huge surprise, the man whom everyone suspects of going around and telling different people what he thinks they want to hear—goes around telling different people what he thinks they want to hear. The only problem is Kobach, who is not getting with the program.
(This isn’t even the only issue where Kobach is complicating things for Romney. Kobach claimed yesterday that he did not believe Romney would ever support any version of the DREAM Act — sorta maybe giving Romney’s hand away as he considers making support of that bill an olive branch.)
It’s not the farthest off the reservation a rogue advisor/supporter has ever gone. But we think Markos at Daily Kos got it exactly right yesterday when he wrote about what the Romney camp’s reaction to Kobach’s continued protestations must be:
Even here in California, I can virtually hear Romney’s staff in Boston screaming, “Shut the hell up!”