Bret Baier to Romney: Didn’t you used to have basically the same immigration position as Gingrich?

(By Allahpundit, Hot Air) - Skip to 5:05 for the immigration bit — although, if you have time, I recommend watching the whole vid for the odd yet entertaining occasional flare-ups of irritation from the likely nominee. In fact, Romney has the same basic idea about immigration now as he had in 2006. We’ve been over his dispute with Gingrich over immigration before: Essentially, Mitt thinks Newt’s plan to let some longtime residents attain legal non-citizen status is “amnesty” even though his own plan imagines letting some longtime residents become 'citizens' provided they go to the back of line. Why one of those ideas should be deemed significantly more lenient than the other is beyond me. Romney’s has the advantage of not creating any “second class” status for longtime illegals, but he’s willing to grant full citizenship benefits to those who stick it out whereas Gingrich is not. If he wants to attack Newt, he should be hitting him on the strange idea of using local community boards to decide legalization issues instead of a national standard to ensure that more liberal jurisdictions don’t become magnets for longtime illegals. Or maybe that’s the whole point of Newt’s plan, to get illegals to flee to blue areas for more forgiving treatment? Bottom line: There’s really no reason to strongly prefer one of them to the other on this issue.