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The GOP’s Hispanic Problem

Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

By Raoul Lowery Contreras (re-posted with author’s permission – original link)

Our Founding Fathers never conceived that a massive “Brown Horde” would take over their White Male paradise, the United States of America. The “horde” has done just that in the last three Presidential elections including reelecting Obama, who by all political measures should have disappeared into one-term Hell.

First they voted for George W. Bush in 2004 in percentages (44%) for a Republican that topped any Hispanic vote for any Republican in history. Then they came back in 2008 and 67% of them voted for Barack Obama to experience helping elect the first “Black” President. They came back November 6 and threw in a 70% vote for Obama topping 2008.

Without that percentage and an increase in 30% more Hispanics than voted in 2008, Obama could have lost Florida, Nevada and Colorado and lost the election.

Tellingly, the same “gender gap” that existed among all women in their lack of support for Republican Romney, exists among Hispanic women. The University of Washington-based LATINO DECISIONS reviewed national exit polls and concluded that 76% of Hispanic women voted for Obama while 65% of Hispanic men voted for Obama – a gender gap of 11 points.

Professor Isidro Ortiz of San Diego State University told NBC San Diego: “Why would a Latino or Latina voter look at those (Republican) positions and say they are favorable to us?”

They seem to have ignored these facts: Record levels of unemployment and underemployment among Hispanics (19%), modern record levels of Hispanic/Latino poverty (28%), a drop of two thirds (67%) of Hispanic net worth since June, 2009 and the fact that Obama plain lied about “fixing” immigration in his first year in office. He never mentioned it again until an El Paso Speech in his third year, and then again in 2012 but never, never sent an immigration reform proposal to Congress.

These facts weren’t enough to convince them to dump Obama, so Professor Ortiz is correct – they rejected what they perceived the Republican Party to be – the illegitimate off-spring of insane ethnic-hating old White male Republicans. These haters themselves reject the GOP’s birth as the first legitimate opposition to America’s Original Sin, Slavery.

These people think that the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution are illegitimate. They think this not because the amendments were ratified by state governments created by Washington and staffed with newly freed slaves, but because they changed –forever – the status of what the Supreme Court had ruled weren’t people in 1857. It ruled that they were property and could never become citizens because they were African Blacks.

Those same Founding Fathers had written the first immigration laws in 1790 that required “new” citizens to be “free and White.” That was the law until 1868.

Compare the founding of the Republican Party and the bloody civil war it took to cement into the Constitution the rejection of the Founding Father’s preoccupation with race. The founder of what is now the Democrat Party – Thomas Jefferson – was a principal architect of legal slavery and original immigration laws. In his writings, he posited that Negro men smell like they do because they “urinate through the pores of their skin.”

Democrats have slavery, Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, lynching of thousands of Black men and total segregation of Blacks and Whites and in Texas, Mexicans. The Republicans have the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, the Supreme Court’s race-based rulings in 1954 (Hernandez v. Texas, Brown v. Board of Education), Republican bayonets that integrated a Little Rock high school, Senate Republicans overcoming Southern Democrat Senators to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964/1965 and Southern school integration directed by Richard Nixon’s Justice Department.

Democrats killed George W. Bush’s Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2007 at the direct order of national labor unions. They are against the key element to any immigration reform, a guest worker program.

What, then, can Republicans do to meaningfully bring some Hispanics home?

They can name rising star Hispanic Republicans to a Commission – Senator Marco Rubio (Cuban), Representative Raul Labrador (Puerto Rican) and Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval and New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez (Mexican Americans) – that will provide Republican congressmen a market-based-outreach keyed on a Comprehensive Immigration Reform plan supportable by Speaker John Boehner and the Republican House. Then Obama and Senate Democrats can put up or shut up.

The GOP wins the economic argument every time; it loses the welfare argument every time. It can, however, win the immigration argument by simply creating immigration reform. It can also shed insane Mexican haters like Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, former congressman Tom Tancredo, Pat Buchanan, his sister Bay and muzzle Senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama and David Vitter of Louisiana.

The GOP cannot reflect only White male southerners, it must reflect a diverse society of 314,728,350 (million) Americans; better yet, it should not just reflect, it should mirror the country.

A Diversified GOP Hammers the Big Lie

Friday, August 3rd, 2012

By Raoul Lowery Contreras (reposted from Cafe Con Leche Republicans)

One of the most important questions running through Mitt Romney’s mind while considering whom to choose for his Vice-Presidential nomination is – can U.S. Senator Marco Rubio bring in Florida with its 29 electoral votes and can he help keep President Obama’s Hispanic margin down?

Liberal Democrat Hispanics and their polling colleagues at Latino Decisions say Rubio doesn’t help Romney among Hispanic registered voters, but there is a better answer to that question. It was provided by Hispanic Republicans in Texas on run-off day, Tuesday the 30th.

Not only did Ted Cruz receive a mountain of votes in his 56.8% to 43.2% defeat of the Texas’ Lt. Governor but he received a mountain of Hispanic Republican votes as well.

A study of each Texas county on the border with Mexico demonstrates that a Cuban-American can receive Mexican American votes. Examples: Cameron County with 87% Mexican Americans produced a 62.6% victory for Cruz; Zapata County with 92% Mexican Americans voted 75% for Cruz. Webb County with 95% Mexican Americans produced a 55.7% Cruz victory. The largest border county is El Paso with 82% of its people Mexican American, produced a 73.3% Cruz victory; Val Verde County is the only border county to have voted for Cruz’ opponent.

The question, then, of whether or not Senator Marco Rubio can help Romney with Hispanic votes has been answered. Rubio is far more attractive than Ted Cruz, in my opinion, yet Cruz romped with Texas Hispanics when they chose between his new face and an old one who spent millions of his own dollars and outspent Cruz 3 to 1.

The Rubio-can-help theory has much more import today than it did the Monday before the Texas run-off for reasons that cause a lifelong Hispanic Republican like me to cackle. Even as Democrats play catch-up by naming San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro as their keynote speaker 26 years after the Republican Party pioneered Hispanic outreach by having United States Treasurer Katherine Ortega deliver the ’84 Keynote speech, Democrats have a long way to go.

Chris Cilliza of the Washington Post writes:

“Cruz, a Cuban-American, joins Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Govs. Bobby Jindal (La.), Susana Martinez (N.M.), Nikki Haley (S.C.) and Brian Sandoval (Nev.)… as non-white Republicans — Cruz, Rubio, Sandoval and Martinez are Hispanic, Jindal and Haley are Indian-American… — that are nearly certain to run for national office, serve on a national ticket or be mentioned for a national ticket at some point in the not-too-distant future.”

“For a party that has struggled in recent years to escape the caricature that it is dominated by old, white men, the spate of minority faces rising to statewide office is a welcome development,” Cilliza writes.

“To be clear, a handful of Hispanic, Indian-American… elected officials with star potential does not mean that the Republican Party is changing top to bottom…”

If these words were written by a life-long Republican their meaning and potential impact would be minimal. Coming from a highly-placed Washington Post politics writer, they are gold-plated for independents and people that pay attention to politics from high above everyday run-of-the-mill inside newspaper stories.

Four heavyweight Hispanic governors and Senators compared to no Democrat Hispanic governors and one Senator equals a four-to-one image that cannot be matched in any way by Democrats. Add in Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley, Indian-Americans and the GOP stomps Harry Reid and his gang of wimps. The GOP pioneered election victories by Arab Americans for Governor of New Hampshire and Oregon and who can miss Lebanese American Darrell Issa in the House of Representatives?

Combining the view that the GOP is making huge strides with “minority” governors and senators nationally, we now see that Mexican Americans (63% of all Hispanics) will, in fact, vote for a Cuban American.

That plows under the canard that Mexicans won’t vote for a Romney-Rubio ticket this November.

In the long term, these words from the Washington Post’s Chris Cilliza have great import:

“Given how badly the party has struggled among non-white voters, however, the crop of minority candidates with a legitimate case to make it on the national stage (at some point) is a stunning development and can, if the GOP plays it right, help it change the face — figuratively and literally — of the GOP.”

Will the GOP “play it right?” It will if I have anything to do with it along with, of course, soon-to-be U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio and Governors Susana Martinez (NM) and Brian Sandoval (NV). And, let us not forget the seven Hispanic congress people in the House of Representatives.
Editors note: As with all postings on this blog which appear with a byline, the posting represents the author’s opinion and not the official position of Cafe Con Leche Republicans.

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Raoul Lowery Contreras (1941) was born in Mexico, raised in the USA. Former U.S. Marine, athlete, Dean’s List at San Diego State. Professional political consultant and California Republican Party official(1963-65)…Television news commentator, radio talk show host…published Op-Ed writer (1988 to present)…author of 12 books (as of 1-05-12). His books are available on Amazon.com.