Today’s Wall Street Journal offers a pretty stark picture concerning the Hispanic vote:
Over time, Hispanics also will change the politics of the Republican strongholds of Georgia, where the Hispanic population nearly doubled over the last decade, and even deep-red Texas, where 38% of the population now is Hispanic. Fun fact: The second most popular name for a baby boy born in Texas last year was Jose.
The obvious question, then, is what the two parties’ relative strengths and weaknesses are among Hispanics. Democrats have the historic and more natural appeal: They are the party with a far larger share of minorities in its base, and the party that champions social programs important to many low-income Hispanics. The Democrats’ mainstream position on an immigration overhaul—more open, for example, to paving a path to citizenship for illegal aliens who have been working and paying taxes for a long period—has given them a more friendly feel to many Hispanics.
Yet the problem for Democrats is that they haven’t turned this hospitable population into the kind of electoral force it might be; the 31.2% of eligible Hispanics who voted in 2010 compares to 48.5% among whites, according to a new report from the Pew Hispanic Center. Moreover, it is possible a recent Obama administration crackdown on illegal aliens in the workplace could engender a backlash.
To them, Republicans’ message will be two-fold: Jobs are the most important issue to Hispanics, and we are the job-creating party, and Republicans share the conservative social values predominant in the Hispanic community.
Sure am glad we’re not taking a natural fit for the GOP and giving this demographic reasons to push away from a free market, pro-entrepreneurship, and pro-family platform…
Of course, trying to box in the Hispanic vote as a monolith and lean them towards one party or the other is grossly simplistic and detrimental, IMHO. For the record, there is nothing more I despise in politics more than the politics of race. All this having been said, those with pro-family and entrepreneurial values should be welcomed with open arms into the GOP fold.
Short-sighted efforts to drive them away? Well… there’s a party for heavy-handed government. And it’s certainly not the Republican Party.
