by Bob Price (re-posted with permission – original link)

Now before all you noise makers on the extreme right get your knickers in a wad, this is not a story about amnesty. But it is a story about fixing a problem that should have been fixed in the last decade. It is also a story about learning how to communicate our message in a way that doesn’t drive away people who should be aligned with our core values and principles. Immigration is a problem Democrats don’t want to fix because it is an effective wedge issue to keep Hispanics, who share your same social conservative values, from voting with you.

So called “conservative” organizations like FAIR and NumbersUSA are really left wing environmental and pro-choice backed groups that have figured out they can play your amnesty string and keep you so pissed off at illegal immigrants that now, in some circles, the word Hispanic is equal to “illegal alien”.

If the Democrats wanted to solve this problem, they would have pushed through Congressman Luis Gutierrez’ reform plan back in 2009. They clearly could have passed it in the House and Senate without one single Republican vote. But they did not. Why? Because it is a winning strategy for Democrats to use against Republicans.

Recently, conservative icon and radio talkshow host Sean Hannity told his listeners that he has “evolved” on immigration. That is what smart people do after a decisive loss. They look at issues that caused their defeat and find ways to fix them. In this election, Republicans only earned the vote of 29% of the Hispanics who voted. It is not because Hispanics want amnesty or abortion or many of the other liberal social policies of the left. It is because our rhetoric drives them away from us.

“We’ve got to get rid of the immigration issue altogether,” he said. “It’s simple to me to fix it. I think you control the border first. You create a pathway for those people that are here. You don’t say you’ve got to go home. And that is a position that I’ve evolved on. Because, you know what, it’s got to be resolved. The majority of people here, if some people have criminal records you can send them home, but if people are here, law-abiding, participating for years, their kids are born here, you know, it’s first secure the border, pathway to citizenship, done, whatever little penalties you want to put in there, if you want, and it’s done.”

Wow, that sounds an awful lot like “The Texas Solution” Plank of the Republican Party of Texas 2012 Platform. While not a perfect solution, The Texas Solution makes steps in the right direction.

Hannity has already caught a lot of heat for his “evolution”. But it is a necessary step. For the Republican Party to survive and succeed in this era of changing demographics we must evolve and reshape our message without changing our core values. Fox News reports this is happening among conservatives and other Republicans. I stand alongside Hannity on this issue.

But winning the Hispanic vote is not just about immigration reform. Like many other minority groups, Hispanics should be aligned with Republicans because many of our core values align. But that is not enough. We cannot simply reach out with an immigration reform olive branch. We must look for ways to make minorities feel wanted in the Republican Party. Those minorities who have come to the Republican Party have done well. Look at Senator Marco Rubio, Senator-Elect Ted Cruz, New Mexico and Governor Susana Martinez. Look at the number of Hispanic state legislators in Texas have been elected these past few years. But when you get to the grassroots level, minorities tell me they don’t feel welcomed when the attend Republican meetings and other conservative groups. They don’t want to be put on a pedestal, they want to be included.

We have a long way to go to rebuild the Republican brand. The liberal media will hold onto the myths like the “Republican War on Women” and will continue to drive the wedge between Republicans and Blacks, or Republicans and Hispanics. That is just who they are. It is what they are motivated to do. But we must stop giving them soundbites to use against us. Comments from Akin and Mourdock did more to harm Republicans this year because the media will amplify it and keep beating the drum. They completely ignored the insane remarks by Harris County DA Candidate Lloyd Oliver and his war against women.

When the media comes to Tea Party and Republican events, they will look for the most extreme looking or sounding people they can find and make them our icon. We must shift this tone and lead our way out of this. For every idiot they find to quote, we must put forth fifty true Republican voices that speak the truth about what we believe.

President Ronald Reagan believed winning elections required winning the communications war. We have been losing that for a very long time and it is time to take it back. It is time for us to evolve. To evolve into people who communicate our ideas in a way that is not offensive to others. Many times it is not what we say, but how we say it. It is the angry tone or the hostile rhetoric that drives the wedge. We must learn to communicate in a way that conveys our values and principles but in an educational and non-judgmental way.

It is a long road to 2014 and even longer to 2016. We have many battles to fight and win along the way. Let’s see if we can win some more allies along the way.

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 13^th, 14^th, and 15^th 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 13^th, 14^th and 15^th 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.

Recently actor John Leguizamo stated ”Latin people for Republicans are like roaches for raid” and “It doesn’t make sense. [Republicans are] not for us. You’re not for my values.”

Bob Quasius, President of pro-immigrant GOP group Cafe Con Leche Republicans, today called upon Leguizamo to apologize, stating “We are appalled that John Leguizamo compared “cockroaches” and “Latinos”, inferring that Republicans view Latinos as “cockroaches.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Polls consistently show that a majority of Republicans support immigration reform, and support levels for both immigration reform and immigration enforcement are not much different than Americans in general. PEW Research’s May 2011 poll found that even among “staunch conservatives”, a 49%/49% split support immigration reform including a path to legalization for unauthorized immigrants.

Latino Republicans continue to be elected to high public offices, and several Latinos were high profile speakers at the recent Republican National Convention, including American’s first Hispanic woman governor, Susana Martinez, and Senator Marco Rubio, who introduced Mitt Romney, and was on Mitt Romney’s short list of vice-presidential running mates.

Pew Hispanic polls consistently find that more than 60% of Latinos are center-right ideologically, showing that Latino values are more in-line with Republican Party values than the Democratic Party. Perhaps if John Leguizamo and Eva Longoria spent less time among Holloywood liberal elites they would be more in touch with mainstream Latino values.

We find it particularly galling that Hollywood liberals like John Leguizamo and Eva Longoria continue to ‘put lip stick on a pig’ by praising Obama. The Obama administration has deported more immigrants than any other president, utterly failed to lead on immigration reform, aggressively rolled out secure communities, which fuels racial profiling and has resulted in the false arrest of thousands of Latino citizens, and has denied U.S. passports to thousands of midwife birthed Latino citizens from South Texas. Obama is one of our worst presidents in modern history.

We predict Mitt Romney will do better than expected among Latinos in November. Many Latinos are seeing through Obama’s empty promises and fakery on immigration, and the need to have competent leadership in the White House to turn around our dismal economy.”

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About Us – Cafe Con Leche Republicans is a national organization of Republicans who welcome “New Americans”, defined as immigrants and family of recent immigrants. Our mission is to make America and the GOP, more welcoming to “New Immigrants” through political activism, “in-reach” and education within the Republican Party, and lobbying government to adopt more immigrant friendly policies. We also seek to bring more conservative and moderate “New Americans” to the Republican Party. These efforts will strengthen the GOP, and lead more Republicans to embrace welcoming policies for immigrants and their families. We have members nationwide, with chapters in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and California. Our members and leadership are predominantly Hispanic, though we define ourselves by mission and guiding principles, not ethnicity, and we welcome all who share our goals. Our leadership is 100% Republican.

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.