Carl Cannon - Washington editor of RealClearPolitics - offers the corrupt and misleading "Romney Needs a Latino Running Mate -- But Who?" (link).

It's just the latest in an establishment effort to reduce Mitt Romney's somewhat strong position on immigration; Cannon's article is also part of the sub-effort to get Romney to nominate the weak-on-immigration Marco Rubio as his running mate. A previous installment - which is similar to the current in many ways - was offered by Marc Thiessen of the Washington Post less than a week ago.

How the current version misleads will be presented below. Consider this excerpt:

Although it’s axiomatic that Hispanics are the fastest-growing demographic group in this country, there is, of course, no bloc Latino vote anymore than Hispanics themselves are monolithic. But loose talk about building moats (stocked with alligators, no less) along the nation’s southern border, enforcing laws designed for ethnic profiling, and “self-deportation” -- this last (inane) formulation is Romney’s own -- has created a crying need for the Republican nominee to send a signal to 40 million Americans that they are not going to be marginalized by the Party of Lincoln... ...(Luis Fortuno is), Puerto Rican, not Mexican-American, which would help Romney more. That's an issue with Rubio, too -- his parents came from Cuba -- as is Rubio’s opposition to the DREAM Act, which is popular among rank-and-file Latino voters... ...[Rubio is] a fiscal and social conservative who was elected with ardent Tea Party support. He possesses both charisma and experience in Tallahassee as the speaker in the lower house of the state legislature. He is a freshman senator -- as Barack Obama was in 2008 -- and he speaks with passion and precision about his party’s need to make Latinos feel welcome in the political party that was formed to end slavery. Viva Marco!

1. Give Cannon some slight props for realizing that Hispanics aren't a monolithic bloc and that Mexican-Americans and Cuban-Americans differ. That doesn't make up for his urging of a VP who's the right color (note: per the rules, it's OK to promote someone who's "the right color" as long as that color isn't white).

2. The "loose talk" Cannon refers to wasn't from Romney, but from Herman Cain, and he wasn't serious. As discussed at the last link, Cain was doing a take-off on sarcastic statements Barack Obama made. The reason Obama made those statements is because he's corrupt: just like George W Bush he both supports illegal immigration and realizes that one way to get comprehensive immigration reform (or a lighter version of it) is to do the occasional immigration enforcement. But, Cannon needn't worry in any case: Cain's supposed toughness on immigration was just "boob bait for Bubba": in the extremely unlikely event he'd been elected, Cain would have turned out as bad as George W. Bush. Did Cannon tell you that? No, he didn't: just like the low-wattage-or-deceptive Marie Diamond of ThinkProgress, Cannon presented the "alligators" bit like it was a real plan.

3. No state-level immigration laws are "designed for ethnic profiling". For instance, Arizona has bent over backwards to try to rule that out of the equation. The Mexican government-linked American Civil Liberties Union and similar groups disingenuously try to pretend that such laws are ripe for ethnic profiling, but that usually just involves coming up with anecdotes. While the ACLU et al have been successful at filing suits, issuing press releases, and getting temporary injunctions, one would think that if they'd won a racial-profiling-related immigration case it would be on aclu.org/racial-justice/racial-profiling.

4. "Self-deportation" is neither inane nor something Romney came up with. It's a proven plan to reduce the number of illegal aliens in the U.S. as well as to reduce future illegal immigration. See the attrition page for a longer explanation and even an example of the Center for American Progress unwittingly admitted that it works. Can you trust Cannon since he thought Romney came up with "self-deportation" and since he doesn't realize it's a demonstrated plan?

5. The DREAM Act is an openly anti-American bill that would let the illegal aliens covered by it deprive some citizens of college. It would be good if Rubio opposed it on those grounds, except that's not what he's doing. In fact, Rubio is crafting his own version of that anti-American bill. I'll leave it up to the reader to determine whether Cannon just didn't know about that, or did know and decided to mislead.

6. Regarding Rubio's support from the Tea Parties, see the note in the previous article about Thiessen: that's yet another indictment of the Teapartiers.

7. The last, extremely disreputable line implies that there's some sort of correspondence between slavery and illegal immigration. There is, but it's not what Cannon thinks it is. Virtually all illegal aliens came here of their own free will: whether they overstayed a visa they went through a long process to get, or they arduously crossed the desert after paying thousands to a smuggler they did it all of their own free will. They could cure any problems they're having through the simple step of returning to their home countries. They came here of their own free will and they're more than welcome to return the same way. However, there is one way in which slavery is like illegal immigration: the motivations of those who sought to profit from both. Slavery was used by those who wanted a supply of cheap labor, such as cotton growers. Nowadays, the spiritual ancestors of those same folks - growers, food processors, and so on - are using illegal immigration to get a modern supply of cheap labor. Cannon is on their side, not on the side of most Americans.

Please take a moment right now and tweet the link to this post (see the short link below) to @CarlCannon. If you agree with the above, let him know that (now that you and I both know who he is) you don't find him credible. And, if you disagree with anything above, be sure and add a comment and I'll add even more reasons why he isn't credible.