Kris Kobach is at it again.
The lawyer behind the odious Arizona and Alabama “show me your papers” laws, the man driving the immigration agenda of Mitt Romney’s Republican Party, and the man who bragged about kicking minority voters off of the rolls has somehow gone even further off the rails—and apparently gone full birther.
As Talking Points Memo highlights:
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an informal advisor to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, said on Thursday he and his fellow members of a state board were considering removing President Barack Obama from the Kansas ballot this November.
As if trying to steal the election with
voter suppression laws wasn’t enough.
According to the Topeka Capitol-Journal, Kobach and the board’s rationale is that they don’t have enough evidence to verify President Obama’s birth certificate. Omg.
As Frank Sharry, director of America’s Voice said, “The question isn’t just the obvious ‘what’s the matter with Kansas?’ but the more troubling, ‘what’s the matter with Romney and the Republican Party that they keep giving Kris Kobach an influential seat at the table’?”
Though Kobach’s role in the Romney campaign is technically unofficial, his relationship with both Romney and Republican Party power players are longstanding and very real. Most notably, Kobach persuaded Romney to embrace “self-deportation” and succeeded in getting the RNC’s 2012 platform to include a draconian set of immigration proposals. Meanwhile, Kobach continues to work hand in hand with extremists. He recently filed a lawsuit seeking to block the implementation of the Administration’s DREAMer deferred action program. And now, Kobach is angling for the top spot in the birther brigade – not just questioning President Obama’s birth certificate, but making a move to remove the President from the ballot.
Sadly, Kobach is far from the only troubling relationship Romney has with the anti-immigrant crowd. Just last week, Romney endorsed anti-immigrant extremist Congressman Steve King’s (R-IA) re-electionbid, calling him the kind of “partner” Romney needs in Washington, DC. And Romney and nearly every GOP candidate courted the notorious anti-Latino Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s endorsement during the 2012 Republican primary, though only Romney received the Arpaio endorsement during Romney’s 2008 presidential run.
I and folks in the immigration advocacy world have followed Kris Kobach and his ilk for quite a while. He’s known as the new face of anti-immigrant extremism – telegenic, Yale educated, articulate. But keeping all of that hate & crazy bottled up behind that smile can only stay put for so long and then boom – he goes full birther.