During his tough gubernatorial primary against Bill McCollum (R), Governor-elect Rick Scott (R-FL) touted his support for Arizona’s immigration law and proposed exporting the controversial bill to Florida. However, once he nabbed the Republican nomination, he “rarely mentioned the issue.” Even now that he has been elected governor of the Latino-heavy state, Scott hasn’t spoken much about the primary campaign promises he made on immigration up until this past week.

First, Scott told the Miami Herald that he’s “supportive of the concept of stopping citizens to ask them to show identification.” Then, in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer over the weekend, Scott echoed his previous comments and said that he still supports bringing an Arizona-style law to Florida:

SCOTT: If you’re in our state, in any state, and you’re stopped because you’re violating the law and asked for an ID — just like you and I would be asked — you should be able to be asked if you’re legal or not.

BLITZER: So you like the law in Arizona — you’d like to implement that in Florida?

SCOTT: You gotta make sure there’s no racial profiling, it’s gotta be fair. And, uh, but sure. We have to know who’s in our state. [...] If you’re violating the law you oughtta be asked if you’re legal or not.

BLITZER: You would sign it into law?

SCOTT: Depending on how it’s written, absolutely.

BLITZER: And if it’s written how it was in Arizona, you’d be willing to take the chances of boycotts of Florida?

SCOTT: I’ll make sure that there’s no racial profiling. I’ll make sure that it’s fair to all Floridians.

Watch it:

If Scott plans on signing off on the bill that was introduced by Florida State Rep. William Snyder (R), then it’s hard to imagine how he could possibly prevent racial profiling. The bill exempts all Canadian and Western Europeans from extensive scrutiny. Anyone who can provide a passport from Canada or the mostly Western European “visa waiver” countries will be “presumed to be legally in the United States.” “That language makes it clear that police are targeting only a specific minority,” Susana Barciela of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, told the Miami New Times.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) also vowed not to allow racial profiling to happen in her state when she signed off on the controversial immigration law, SB-1070. However, her word wasn’t enough to stop the state from losing millions of dollars as a result of an economic boycott against her state.

It also wasn’t enough to put former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s (R) mind at ease. The Denver Post recently reported that Bush expressed concerns that “if his children walked the streets of Phoenix they might look awfully suspicious to police.” Bush’s wife and the mother of his children is from Mexico.

David Frum on what the WikiLeaks cables tell us “about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute“:

We engage in these wearisome and elaborate proceedings because we assume that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute holds the key to regional peace. But now the whole world can see: It’s not true. Governments in the region do not in fact care very much about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

In terms of what the cables show, this is simply false. As I wrote last week, the cables contain abundant evidence that governments in the region do in fact care about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. A sampling:

From a January 2008 meeting between a Congressional delegation and Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Soliman:

2. (S) Soliman led off the New Year’s Eve meeting by telling the Codel that the region is at a special, critical juncture. Egypt is America’s partner. Sometimes we have our differences. But Egypt will continue to provide the USG with its knowledge and expertise on the critical regional issues, such as Lebanon and Iraq. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the core issue; Soliman contended a peaceful resolution would be a “big blow” to terrorist organizations that use the conflict as a pretext. For this reason, President Mubarak is committed to ending the Israeli-Arab “stalemate.”

From a February 2010 meeting between Sen. John Kerry and the Emir of Qatar:

39. (C) Senator Kerry asked the Amir how the U.S. goes about changing its reputation. The Amir said first and foremost the U.S. must do everything in its power to find a lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the best way to begin is by moving first on the Syrian track.

From a January 2007 meeting between U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and Dubai’s ruler, Mohamed bin Rashid Al Makhtoum:

9.(C) Israel/Palestinians: U/S Burns stressed that the US believes progress between Israel and the Palestinians toward peace is central to regional stability, and supports the creation of a Palestinian state. This would be “the best thing,” MbR replied; a peace deal would make radical groups like HAMAS “everyone’s enemy”.

From an April 2009 meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Amman:

2. (S) While Jordanian officials doubt dialogue with the U.S. will convince Iran to withdraw its “tentacles,” they believe they can be severed if Iran is deprived of hot-button issues that make it a hero to many on the Arab street, such as its championing of the Palestinian cause.

From a July 2009 meeting between Gen. Petraeus and Lebanon’s Fuad Siniora:

5. (C) Siniora said that Lebanon was encouraged by and supportive of President Obama’s commitment to achieving a comprehensive Middle East Peace. He said the U.S. administration’s recognition of the centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was an opportunity to push the Arab Peace Initiative forward and to finally achieve a resolution.

One could argue that these leaders are misstating or overstating their views on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, but that would then obviously raise the question of why their views on the Iranian issue — which Frum, like other neocons, has been trumpeting — should be taken more seriously. It is not possible, however, to argue that the cables show that these leaders “just do not in fact care very much” about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Or at least, it’s not honest.

Which brings us to the question of why Frum would be inclined to misrepresent the cables’ contents in a way so easily debunked. I’m not sure, but I will note that among some neocons there seems to be a deep-seated inability to recognize that concern for the Palestinians living under occupation, and for the various consequences thereof, might spring from something other than hostility to Israel. Frum himself stated flat-out back in 2003 that “The pro-Palestinian lobby has always been driven far more by hatred for Israel than by concern for the Palestinians,” an unprovable assertion as offensive as it is revealing. It seems now that, faced with black and white evidence to the contrary, however, Frum’s only option is to pretend it doesn’t exist.

Frum makes clear that he is no fan of Julian Assange or of WikiLeaks, but nevertheless suggests that “If the publics of the Western democracies absorb this information, the world will become a better and safer place.” I quite agree with this statement (though it’s of course somewhat ironic in light of Frum’s own refusal to absorb information that doesn’t accord with his own anti-Palestinian worldview). I would point out, however, that most people in Western democracies probably aren’t going to pore through the cables themselves, instead they’re going to turn to journalists and pundits to analyze and interpret the cables for them. Those who turn to David Frum will be very poorly served.