A raucous crowd of about 80 (mostly) Democrats filled Salvador’s restaurant in Ajijic to watch the second presidential debate between Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama Tuesday night.
In contrast to the subdued audience at the prior week’s showing of the movie “2016: Obama’s America” by the Lakeside Tea Party, spectators at this event let their feelings be known. Jeers and hoots were heard over statements from Romney and applause and cheers when Obama corrected his opponent for complaining about the administration’s record.
Obama had his game on and, as visiting Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page noted, this time the debate was the president’s to lose and he didn’t do so.
On immigration reform, the issue that most interests many Mexican families, Romney berated Obama for not keeping his promise to achieve a federal law overhaul in his first term. The president responded that Romney’s immigration adviser was the man who wrote the controversial Arizona immigration law. Romney said he was against amnesty, but thought that adults brought illegally into the United States as children should have a pathway to citizenship, although he only mentioned military service as an option. Obama said that he had stopped the deportation of students and only wanted to deport criminals. Romney said he supports the E-verify portion of the Arizona law, in which employers would have to verify workers’ immigration status before hiring them. He also said illegal immigrants should not be given driver’s licenses. Depriving options to work, and drive, he said, would cause voluntary deportation and help reduce the number of illegal immigrants in the country.Obama was personal in his attacks on Romney and called him out on his pre-convention statements that he now seemed to be drawing away from, including his stands on planned parenthood, moving jobs to China, tax cuts for the rich and his statements that the president shouldn’t have bailed out Detroit.