Thursday, November 1, 2012

Amnesty and Pandering Not Key to Hispanic Vote

Last week, Barack Obama told the Des Moines Register that "[s]hould I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community."  While the Romney campaign denounced the comments as proof that Obama takes the Hispanic vote for granted, many Republicans have been saying pretty much the same thing.  For example, Karl Rove recently told a group of college students in Arkansas that the Republican party is "doomed" if it does not appeal to Hispanics.
According to Rove, Hispanics are "by and large the natural allies of conservatives," but the Republican party has "adopted language that makes them feel unwelcome."  Rove went on to suggest that conservatives should support a "guest worker program" with a "path to citizenship" for illegal aliens.
As the election approaches, there are more and more stories that repeat the exact same mantra about how the Republican Party has doomed itself by taking a tough stand on illegal immigration.  The Huffington Post ran a story that featured an erstwhile conservative and Republican Hispanic who "has switched her support to President Barack Obama because of his support for legislation known as the DREAM Act."  According to the story, this one anecdote is emblematic of the entire Latino electorate "trending sharply Democratic in the wake of increasingly hard-line Republican positions on immigration."
And it is not just left-wing publications like the Huffington Post promoting this line.  The Wall Street Journal ran a similar article, where they found Hispanics who will praise the Republicans for having "more respect for life, for family. They are better at running the economy[.]"  But these people will not vote for Romney due to his supposedly tough stance on immigration.

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