In a telephone interview the other day with some guy on the
uber Christian conservative radio show host on Focus Today former ERA foe
Phyllis Schlafly opined that the RNC
needs to stop wasting its time with its Hispanic outreach program. Asked about
how George W. Bush succeeded in reaching out for the Hispanic vote, Schlafly
said:
“I think that's a great myth because the Hispanics who come in like this are going to vote Democrat. And there is not the slightest bit of evidence they are going to vote Republican.”
See that? George Bush’s rapport with Hispanics is a myth.
I have to agree.
Republicans are better served not trying to attract the
Hispanic vote.
First, Hispanics have no reason to believe that Republicans
have come to some epiphany that Mitt Romney really wasn’t serious about his47%
comment. They heard Mitt dismiss them to an approving well-heeled audience of
donors and high rollers.
Second, you can’t spend an entire presidential term, as
Republicans did between 2009 and 2013 degrading the poor and lower middle
class, and attacking immigrants of all stripes, and not escape Hispanics’
notice.
Schlafly’s right. Hispanics, if they vote, are going to vote
for Democrats.
This was good advice. Don’t pander to Hispanics. Her advice,
however, to go and woo those who habitually do not vote in any elections, is
equally a catastrophically bad idea.
I know what she’s thinking. Here we have an untapped pool of
94 million voters who didn’t participate in the 2012 elections, and what better
place to go but to try and tap in to the White nonvoters among them. Who would
be more inclined than they to become proselytized as new TEA Party voters? They
are like a sea of delectable Godiva chocolates just ripe for the picking.
But Schlafly is woefully uninformed as to the nature of the
non-voters of America. Non-voters don’t vote because they don’t want to, don’t
feel the need or desire to, and generally feel like their vote doesn’t count.
The Electoral College has something to do with that.
But that’s for another time.
I never thought I’d find myself in agreement with Phyllis
Schlafly in anything, but in this we are agreed. Republicans are wasting their
time and money going after the Hispanic vote. And this is why I applaud them in
their noble effort.
2 comments:
Let's say that I disagree -- though I will acknowledge that she has a point. Romney underperformed McCain by several million voters, so she is correct that the GOP needs to work to get those folks back. But she is wrong about ignoring Hispanics. As I regularly tell my fellow Republicans, that is a demographic that shares a lot of GOP values and is a natural constituency to seek to recruit to our side.
You go right on ahead, Greg. I applaud you in your effort to get as many Hispanics to vote Republican as possible. Yes, they share some of your values by virtue of the fact that the Catholic Church has a 500 year old foothold on their culture - but only to an extent that one has to look the other way when they venture into nativistic rituals that are not found in the Roman play book. They can adapt. That's where GOPers will fail.
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