By Raoul Lowery Contreras (re-posted from Cafe Con Leche Republicans with permission)

Records of every sort fall in the United States like autumn leaves. We now have a record 53 million Hispanics in the USA; the 1950 Census recorded two and a half million people with Spanish surnames.

Every time a Hispanic American baby is born, the Hispanic/Latino population makes another new record. The percentage of American born vis-a-vis foreign born grows with each birth.

Among teenage and adult Hispanics, one in five (19%) are now unemployed or underemployed with over half totally, completely unemployed (11% plus which is 30% higher than the general population). Hispanics suffered a near-mortal economic wound when they lost two-thirds of their personal net worth in the housing crash.

“Latinos’ average net worth fell from $18,000 in 2009 to $6,000 today, while Caucasians(non-Hispanic whites) saw their net worth fall from $134,000 to $113,000,” according to the National Council of La Raza.

One in six Americans is in poverty. The Hispanic population has been buried by poverty. The Pew Research Center concludes that the current Hispanic poverty rate is 28.2%, almost one in three.

Poverty is worse among Hispanic/Latino children. It is in fact a disaster among our young.

For the first time in history, Hispanic poor children outnumber White children, Black children. According to the Pew Research Center Hispanic poor children number 6.1 million, White poor children 5.5 million and Black poor children number 4.4 million.

The percentages look even worse: Hispanic poor children, 37.3%, White poor children 30.5% and Black poor children, 26.6%. Poverty and unemployment/underemployment is a daily catastrophe for the American Hispanic population.

There is another new Hispanic/Latino record to report: According to the Pew Research Center, “A record 24 million Latinos are eligible to vote in the 2012 presidential election, according to analysis of Census Bureau data by the Pew Hispanic Center…this is up by more than 4 million, or 22%, since 2008, when 19.5 million Latinos were eligible to vote.”

Concurrently, Republican Mitt Romney’s popularity among Swing State (Florida, Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, and Iowa) Hispanics has inched higher to the current 33%, just two points lower than he needs to carry those states with 5 weeks to go before the election.

October 1, “The ImpreMedia – Latino Decisions (national) tracking poll puts Obama ahead with 73% overall to vote for him and 21% for Romney.  In the battleground states (However) Obama gets 61% of the voters versus 33% for Romney, with Florida respondents comprising a significant share of Latinos in battleground states.”

Experienced Hispanic vote analysts conclude that if this 61% Obama margin doesn’t improve, Obama will lose the election. He needs, they say, more Hispanics to vote for him than did in 2008 (67%) because so many non-Hispanic White and Independent voters have abandoned the President for myriad reasons.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2011 there were 51.9 million Latinos in the U.S., making up 16.7% of the nation’s population.

Pew: “Latinos today comprise a greater share of the nation’s 215 million eligible voters than they did just a few years ago—-11.0% this year, up from 9.5% in 2008 and 8.2% in 2004.”

A record Hispanic vote helped Obama win in 2008. That continued a long-term Democrat vote trend by Hispanics that started in earnest in California in the 1994 election that featured a Republican Governor (Pete Wilson) sponsored highly discriminatory anti-Mexican “Proposition 187” that passed but was quashed by the federal courts as unconstitutional.

California has elected only three statewide Republicans since 1994, one of them Arnold Schwarzenneger. Republicans were blanked in the 2010 California elections; this, in a state that had elected only two Democrat governors in the first 74 years of the 20^th Century. It was no accident that California sent powerful Republicans like Senator Hiram Johnson, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Senator Bill Knowland, Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan to Washington.

A skeptical view of Hispanic voting comes from Steve Malanga, Senior Editor of the City Journal who writes, “In the only four states that report such records by ethnicity—-Alabama, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina—-the 2012 registration levels of Hispanics have already surpassed the 2008 levels.”

Malanga doesn’t understand that the national figures don’t matter much, as indicated by Latino Decisions polls in Swing States, states that do matter.

How Puerto Ricans vote in New York is immaterial, for if none voted at all, Democrats would win New York. Democrat Puerto Ricans do count somewhat in Florida; however the larger Republican Cuban American vote largely offsets it, so Florida matters; so does North Carolina and Colorado with their substantial Mexican American votes.

Suffice it to say, that if Romney receives 35% or more of the Hispanic votes in those three states that Obama carried in 2008, he probably wins the Presidency.  If that happens, Malanga’s 2007 prediction will be remembered for being totally wrong.

“Given what the voting numbers show us, it’s unlikely that Hispanics will become an important voting bloc as soon as many predict.”

With record Hispanic poverty, unemployment and loss of wealth in the past four years and a record number of Hispanic voters, predicting an Obama victory based on Hispanic votes looks like a 50-1long shot more than an even-money sure thing.

Editors note: as with all blog postings that appear with a by-line, the opinions presented are the author’s and not necessarily the positions 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.

by Bob Quasius

Ann Coulter has made a fortune writing and selling books excoriating liberals, also called progressives, for a range of offenses, often mocking liberals in the process.

Unfortunately, despite extensive research and writing on the subject of liberalism, Coulter is not always able to spot a liberal. In the blog Only One Candidate Is Right on The Two Most Important Issues posted December 28 on Townhall.com, Ann Coulter proved she can be hoodwinked by liberals. Coulter claims:

In the upcoming presidential election, two issues are more important than any others: repealing Obamacare and halting illegal immigration. If we fail at either one, the country will be changed permanently.

She’s right about ObamaCare, which would unquestionably lead to a complete government takeover of health care. However, Coulter then goes on a diatribe about illegal immigration:

But capitulate on illegal immigration, and the entire country will have the electorate of California. There will be no turning back.

and

Just as Americans ought to be able to learn the perils of a welfare state by looking at Greece, we ought to be able to learn the perils of illegal immigration by looking at California.

Massive legal and illegal immigration has already so changed the California electorate that no Republican can be elected statewide anymore. Not so long ago, this was a state that produced great Republican governors and senators like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, S.I. Hayakawa and Pete Wilson.

A short history lesson of California for Ann Coulter is in order. The GOP used to be competitive in California. Then, incumbent Republican governor Pete Wilson, trailing far behind in the polls, jumped on the Proposition 187 anti-immigrant bandwagon to revive his lagging campaign and win reelection. Once elected, proposition 187 was quickly overturned by the courts, to no one’s surprise since immigration is a federal power. Wilson won reelection playing the race card, but once prop. 187 enthusiasm passed the GOP lost legions of conservative Hispanic voters who were appalled at proposition 187 and became Independents or Democrats. The Field Institute analysis of the 1994 California elections found:

An analysis of Republican Governor Pete Wilson’s 55% to 41% reelection victory over Democrat Kathleen Brown shows that Wilson ran strongest among these voter subgroups: those living in San Diego/Orange, the Inland Empire, and the North Coast/Sierra regions, Republicans, conservatives, white non-Hispanics (especially white men), older voters, those with incomes of $60,000 or more, Protestants, and supporters of Prop. 187, the illegal alien initiative.

and

Proposition 187, the illegal alien initiative, which passed statewide by a 59% to 41% margin, carried in all major regions of the state except the San Francisco Bay Area. Support for Prop. 187 was extremely high in the Inland Empire (+40 points), the North Coast/Sierras (+36 points), San Diego/Orange (+34 points) and the Central Valley (+32 points).

Proposition 187 was spearheaded by John Tanton and the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform, and bankrolled with millions in financing from the Pioneer Fund, whose purpose is “to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences“, in other words scientific racism. John Tanton’s own writings show he’s an ardent eugenics supporter, an environut, and population control enthusiast with deep ties to planned parenthood. Tanton’s resume shows he’s not conservative at all but an ardent liberal, the kind that Coulter regularly bashes in her books and columns!

Amazingly, Coulter relies on NumbersUSA, founded by uberliberals John Tanton and Roy Beck, for her source of information on immigration, grading of candidates, etc. Roy Beck is the current leader of NumbersUSA, who was previously publisher of The Social Contract, infamous for publishing racist books and publications such as The Camp of the Saints, among others. For decades Beck has warned of us of the dire consequences of overpopulation of the U.S. If we took his rantings seriously, the world would have starved to death several times over by now!

Tanton, Beck, and their allies have been manipulating both liberals and conservatives for decades. A great example is this “smoking gun” letter from John Tanton’s own papers, donated to the University of Michigan library, in which Tanton brags:

Roy Beck and I think we have come up with an idea that can actually move the battle lines on the immigration question in our favor. While we are working on other ideas to move Democrats, this one involves using the recently released census data to show Republican members of Congress, the Administration, and the party’s leadership how massive immigration imperils their political future. The goal is to change Republicans’ perception of immigration so that when they encounter the word “immigrant,” their reaction is “Democrat.”

and

Our plan is to hire a lobbyist who will carry the following message to Republicans on Capitol Hill and to business leaders: Continued massive immigration will soon cost you political control of the White House and Congress, given the current, even division of the electorate, and the massive infusion of voters about to be made to the Democratic side. We are about to replay the Democratic hegemony of 1933-53, fueled back then by the massive immigration of 1890-1924.

Contrary to Coulter’s assertions, there’s no reason why the GOP cannot be competitive among Hispanics. According to PEW Research:

Among Latino registered voters, 35% describe their political views as conservative, 32% describe them as moderate and 28% describe their political views as liberal.

67% of Hispanics are center-right ideologically, which is a complete disconnect from recent voting trends, which show Hispanics voting Democrat by nearly a two to one margin, yet President Bush was able to gain over 40% of the Hispanic vote! Note the trend:
Year Democrats Republicans Gap
1999 58 25 33
2002 56 25 31
2004 55 28 27
2006 49 28 21
2007 57 23 34
2008 67 31 36
2010 65 22 43

Each year, as Bush engaged Hispanics and made a serious effort to reform immigration, self-identified Hispanic voters increased. With the failure of immigration reform and harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric from some conservative Republicans, no doubt influenced by John Tanton and Roy Beck, starting in 2007 the trend quickly reversed. A recent poll by Latino Decisions shows GOP support among Latinos at 18%, with 31% of Latinos perceiving the GOP as hostile. 14% of Latinos support deportation of all unauthorized immigrants, so a support level of 18% for the GOP shows just how polarizing the immigration issue is to Latinos. If you’re Latino and don’t support a “deport them all” strategy, you’re unlikely to vote Republican!

Assuming Latinos invariably vote Democrat is a self-fulfilling prophecy, with many Republicans failing to make a serious outreach effort, and don’t pause to think how their rhetoric alienates Hispanic voters. However, Bush proved Hispanics can be wooed, a process started by Ronald Reagan, who quipped “Latinos are Republican. They just don’t know it yet.” No wonder John Tanton and Roy Beck have gone to such lengths to convince many Republicans that Latinos invariably vote Democrat!

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