MSNBC (Opinion)
By Steve Benen
July 7, 2015
The
chief economist at the Heritage Foundation is itself an awkward title –
the Republican think tank has moved away from its pretense of rigorous
policy analysis – but
the job belongs to Stephen Moore. Earlier this year, after Moore
published a bizarre piece criticizing the Affordable Care Act, Paul
Krugman described the conservative as “a guy who has a troubled
relationship with facts.”
Krugman
added at the time, “I don’t mean that he’s a slick dissembler; I mean
that [Moore] seems more or less unable to publish an article without
filling it with howlers
… in a way that ends up doing his cause a disservice.”
This
assessment came to mind last night, reading this New York Times report
on a bizarre incident involving Moore and a leading Republican
presidential candidate.
Last
Wednesday, Stephen Moore, a scholar at the Heritage Foundation who is
an outspoken supporter of an immigration overhaul, described a recent
telephone call with Gov.
Scott Walker of Wisconsin, in which he said Mr. Walker had assured him
he had not completely renounced his earlier support for a pathway to
citizenship for illegal immigrants.
“
‘I’m not going nativist, I’m pro-immigration,’” Mr. Walker said,
according to Mr. Moore’s account of the call to a reporter for The New
York Times.
On
Sunday, after three days of pressure from Mr. Walker’s aides, Mr. Moore
said that he had “misspoken” when recounting his call with Mr. Walker –
and that the call had
never actually taken place.
This one’s a doozy, so let’s back up for a moment and consider how we got to this point.
Scott
Walker’s position on immigration has been a garbled mess for months.
The Republican governor used to be quite moderate on the issue, but as
he moved closer to a
national campaign, he quickly shifted to the far-right, even going so
far as to attack legal immigration.
In
private, however, Walker has hedged on his new-found posture, and in
March, the Wisconsin governor reportedly told a New Hampshire audience –
behind closed doors –
that he supports a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants
already in the United States.
Walker and his team denied the reports, but added little clarity to his actual position.
With
this in mind, Moore, a reform proponent, told the New York Times last
week that he had a recent phone conversation with Walker, and heard
directly from the unannounced
candidate that he was “not going nativist” and does not oppose
immigration.
This,
of course, raised questions anew within the GOP – is Walker saying one
thing in private and something else in public? Is the governor simply
pandering, offering
half-hearted promises to the right on a key issue? Moore’s
on-the-record comments naturally reinforced fears within the party.
Which
led to yesterday, when Moore reversed course entirely. It’s not that he
misunderstood Walker’s comments, the Heritage Foundation economist
said, it’s that Moore
now says he never even spoke to the governor about immigration at all.
Which
version of the story is true is now anyone’s guess. It’s possible Team
Walker pressured Moore to take this new line; it’s possible Moore didn’t
have the conversation
he claimed to have.
The
GOP governor could help clear things up, at least a little, by taking a
firm position and sticking to it, but for now, that’s apparently asking
too much. From last
night’s New York Times report: “So, what exactly is Mr. Walker’s
current position on immigration? Asked if he supported any path to
citizenship or legal status for illegal immigrants, Mr. Walker’s
spokeswoman, AshLee Strong, did not directly respond.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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