Maggie Haberman reports on a top level meeting between Mitt Romney and a group of elites, including Rupert Murdoch, last week.
But one of the most notable exchanges was on immigration, when Falco began by telling Romney how frequently President Obama has been on Univision in comparison to the Republican candidate, and added that he thinks it's important for the GOP hopeful to address what the president did on immigration a few weeks ago with his executive action move to halt some deportations.
Murdoch chimed in, three sources said, telling the candidate, "You have to take the fight to Obama on this." Romney said the Hispanic vote is important, noting he has Sen. Marco Rubio on the trail for him and that one of his own sons speaks Spanish, but indicated he is not going to change positions from some of what he said in the primaries.
"I know I took some positions in the primary that are" hard to contend with in a general, Romney said, according to two sources.
"I am not going to be a flip-flopper," he added, according to one guest. He talked more about the various concerns that he has to balance in terms of competing constituencies who have different views - and noted, two sources said, the precise percentage that Hispanic voters make up in the swing states, a figure that was less than 20 percent.
The say-what moment here?
That Romney reportedly included his son's Spanish-fluency as a key component of his appeal to Hispanics.
But stepping back from that, the larger point is that Romney feels almost impossibly boxed-in on immigration, and doesn't seem to have a grand, secret strategy for turning things around with Hispanic voters.
According to this report, he seems to be banking on..... Marco Rubio's surrogacy + His son's fluency in the Spanish language + The impression that there aren't enough Hispanics in swing states to swing the election.
