A Xenophobic Zeitgeist - The GOP may erase the gains it's made with Hispanics

[WillyT]

<snip>

Sept. 24, 2007 issue - Lionel Sosa has long been one of the Republicans' most potent weapons come election time. A Hispanic marketing guru, he's crafted successful ad campaigns for presidential candidates from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush aimed at drawing more Latinos into the GOP fold. So his presidential pick this time—New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat—is startling. Part of the reason, he says, is ethnic loyalty: Richardson is the first serious Latino contender. But Sosa, who last worked for Bush in 2004, has also been dismayed by the way many GOP candidates have handled the illegal-immigration issue, advocating policies like building a border wall and employing rhetoric that he says is venomous and xenophobic: "It's just an exaggerated, unfriendly position that needlessly turns away Latinos."

That stance appears to be the root cause of a Hispanic migration from the GOP. In 2004, Bush got about 40 percent of that bloc—a high that largely resulted from an intense courtship by Bush and the now departed strategist Karl Rove. Yet in the 2006 midterms—held after a caustic immigration debate in Congress—GOP candidates got only 30 percent of that vote. Polls this year show Latino support for Republicans at similarly depressed levels. That doesn't bode well for the party, since Hispanic registered voters should hit 11.4 million in '08, compared with 7.5 million in '00, according to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO). Moreover, they live in swing states like Nevada, New Mexico and Florida, where they could determine an outcome. "I am worried," Rove told reporters after leaving the White House in August. "You cannot ignore the aspirations of the fastest-growing minority in America."

Yet that appears to be what the GOP is doing. Unlike the Democrats, all the Republican presidential candidates, except Sen. John McCain, declined to participate in a debate on the Spanish-language channel Univision, possibly to avoid hostile immigration questioning (the network says it's trying to reschedule). They also ditched conventions earlier this year held by high-profile groups like the National Council of La Raza and NALEO. The Republican National Committee has yet to fill a Hispanic-outreach job vacated last November. "The RNC seems to have just given up," says Samuel Bettencourt, a Hispanic Republican who has handled outreach for nonprofits. (An RNC spokesperson says Sen. Mel Martinez, the committee's Latino chair, is committed to courting Hispanics. Martinez was unavailable for comment.) Recently, Bettencourt found further cause for gloom: a job he'd been offered this summer as executive director of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, a prominent grass-roots group, fell through when the incoming board told him it lacked sufficient funds to pay him. "They have no staff, no office ... were even talking about closing," says Bettencourt. (The RNHA's new chairman, Danny Vargas, says the group will remain operative and is developing fund-raising plans.)

Among Latino evangelicals, the portrait's just as bleak. They make up a growing portion of the Hispanic electorate and are twice as likely as Latino Catholics to identify with the GOP, according to Pew Research Center surveys. Yet "right now, the nativist and xenophobic constituency is in charge of the Republican Party," says the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the evangelical National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. "That's a party the Hispanic-American voter cannot support."

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Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20789363/site/newsweek/

Raise your hand if ya saw this one coming.

:thumbsup:

[bluestateguy]

1. Bush's all time lowest ratings were when the immigration bill was in front of the Senate

Perhaps Harry Reid should bring it up again.

[saltpoint]

2. One Hispanic Democratic operative of my acquaintence, when I asked about

Republican chances with Hispanic voters in 08, said this:

"We think Bush is full of shit."

Not to put too fine a point on it.

Whoever the GOP nominates inherits all the messes Bush has made, and he's made plenty, and this is one of the large ones.

[TlalocW]

3. Bush's Hispanic support has always been about a mile long but an inch wide

In 2000, I attended the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Conference that's held every year in Chicago in September/October, and I hung around with a buddy of mine that had been the Hispanic Student Services Coordinator at my grad school but had left and gone to work at the University of Texas at El Paso. UTEP /El Paso does this interesting thing where they let Mexican nationals over the border in Juarez attend college on the American side for about the same price as native-born Americans, and most of the students he had brought with him were from Mexico.

They told me that some Bush operatives had approached them, knowing they were Mexican, and asked them if they wanted to take part in a non-partisan political event to help acquaint them with American politics. They would be bussed to the event, and their room and board would be paid for. Well, the event was in Philadelphia, and it was the GOP National Convention. Their participation in it consisted of being trotted up on stage when it was time to show everyone how much Hispanics supported Bush by having them stand around while George P. Bush gave a speech. One of the girls showed me a picture of her on stage, looking slightly confused but applauding when she was supposed to.

All in all, they thought it was funny, and it was a free trip, but they couldn't understand why they couldn't find American Hispanics to show support for Bush.

Along the same lines, the leader of the Black gospel group they had perform when it was, "Show How Much Blacks Love Bush" time, said he was a Gore supporter, but they went to the GOP convention so they could be on television.

TlalocW