Is state GOP taking a different look at immigration?

The call for moderation in the Republican Party's hard-line stance on illegal immigration came from a most unlikely source. So much so, that I almost fell off my chair listening to the guy.

It was an hour or so after the Obama administration announced the president's mini-Dream directive and already Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and various GOP congressional leaders had taken to the airwaves, decrying "backdoor amnesty."

Meanwhile, the spokesman for the state Republican Party was in the house (so to speak), taping a segment for 12 News' "Sunday Square Off" about Barack Obama's plan to confer temporary legal status on illegal immigrants brought here as children.

The party, Shane Wikfors said, needs to reconsider the message it is sending to Latino voters.

"It is a conversation that the Republican Party has got to have at our national convention in Tampa in August," he said. "I think this party needs to re-evaluate its position on how we deal with people that are part of us, part of our community, and this may go against the grain with a lot of the base.

"But, look, we have to take a serious look on how we deal with people who are here in this country and bring them into this melting pot we call America and get them engaged in the political process."

Wikfors went on to say that the state party chairman, Tom Morrissey, agrees with him and that he believes the first vice chairman, Russell Pearce, likely does, too.

OK, I did fall off my chair at that -- metaphorically, at least.

The party of Pearce and Brewer has demonstrated no interest in anything other than the enforcement-only approach that has made them national household words (not all of them printable). Yet here was the party's spokesman in Arizona -- a "tea party" guy, no less -- preaching pragmatism, a quality seldom spotted among the party faithful.

The sort of thing that might begin to inflate that pup tent, now occupied by party purists, into the big tent the party once claimed to possess.

So, naturally, it didn't take long for the elephant fur to start flying.

Randy Pullen, former state Republican Party chairman, fired off a letter to the party's executive committee, complaining Wikfors "effectively changed our party's position on illegal immigration."

"He condoned President Obama's action of last Friday," Pullen wrote. "He went on to state that the position of the party needs to change."

Pullen called on Morrissey to clarify his position.

"If he stands by what Shane has said, he needs to resign his position as chairman. If he disavows the statement by Shane, then Shane should be terminated immediately as communications director," Pullen wrote. "There is no excuse for misrepresenting so emphatically the position of the chairman on such an important issue in Arizona."

Morrissey told me on Tuesday that he supports the party platform, which calls for enforcing "the rule of law" and opposing amnesty. But curiously, he also said he supports Wikfors' "Square Off" remarks. "I am doing an outreach to the Latino community, and I'm assuming that you understand I'm talking about the legal community," Morrissey told me. "I believe that that was what he was trying to convey."

Wikfors was, indeed, talking about outreach to Latino voters -- by re-evaluating the party's position on illegal immigrants brought here as children.

Wikfors declined to comment on Tuesday. But the fact that he's still the party's communications director suggests that somebody over at GOP HQ sees the wisdom in his remarks.

And that would be good news for Republicans who not only would like to take out Obama in November but avoid going the way of the wooly mammoth in the decades to come, as the ranks of independent and Latino voters swell.

While party hard-liners continue to cross their arms and refuse to budge, it's time for pragmatists to find their voice, as Wikfors did: to reclaim control of their party and propose an actual workable solution to our ongoing, unending illegal-immigration dilemma.

Jeb Bush talks about it. Marco Rubio talks about it.

But in Arizona, no one talks about it. Not even John McCain or Jeff Flake, men who once believed that compromise was possible.

Unfortunately, that was then and this is now, when debate equals disloyalty in the ranks of the GOP, when moderation is seen as capitulation.

When the only acceptable Republican response is "secure our borders" and "no amnesty." As if that's a solution.

Or a winning strategy.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@ arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8635.

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