Hispanic Fanatic

I’ve written before about the Republican Party’s image problem with Hispanics. For the most part, conservatives are content to appear as unappetizing as possible to Latino voters. It’s almost as if the GOP is saying, “We’re not really a bunch of redneck nativists who despise your culture, but you’ll just have to take our word on that. Now, who’s up for some stereotyping and deportations?

Perhaps many Republicans are afraid of offending their hardcore base, which is, let’s face it, not the most open-minded group. Or maybe conservatives were heartened by their “shellacking” of the Democrats in the midterms. Or possibly they’re feeling no pressure because U.S. Census figures indicate that red states are growing much faster than blue ones.

But wait — upon closer inspection, maybe that last one isn’t so uplifting to conservatives after all. As Fox News Latino points out, “the irony is that many of these growth centers … are the beneficiaries of population growth due in large part of immigration and brisk Latino birthrates.” In other words, one reason that the red states are bursting is because Hispanics are moving in. As such, these states have “a strong Republican Party presence, and an increasingly unsympathetic Latino electorate to counter that party’s influence.”

So if anything, conservatives should be bending over backwards to attract Latino support. At least a few Republicans know this.

Among them is our old friend Newt Gingrich (!), who recently admitted the truth about immigration reform when he said, “We are not going to deport 11 million people. There has to be some zone between deportation and amnesty.”

Gingrich’s surprising statement got the Washington Post’s attention. The newspaper opined that “making nice with Hispanics has become an incipient Republican cottage industry” and expressed “hope it grows enough to shut down the hateful rhetoric and demonizing of Latinos by too many Republicans in recent years.”

Well, let’s not get carried away. As the Post makes clear, nativists “have cowed the Republican Party with a message of rejection and hate that most Latinos take personally.”

And here is where the GOP fails to understand a basic truth: Slamming immigrants doesn’t just offend undocumented people. It also pisses off Latino citizens, many of whom are naturalized immigrants, have family members who recently arrived here, or just don’t like to see people who look like them get blamed for everything.

Indeed, as the National Council of La Raza states, the recent elections brought to power “some of the most extreme members of the House who are going to be the calling card of the Republican Party to Latinos.” This doesn’t really help conservatives, who “need to rebuild their relationships with Latinos.”

Still, it’s not all bad news for the GOP when it comes to Hispanics. There is one group of Latinos who are positively giddy about a significant part of the Republican platform. Unfortunately, these Hispanics are not citizens, or even residents.

It seems that the GOP insistence on making guns readily available is a big hit with Mexican drug cartels. Yes, although the right to carry a firearm is supposed to deter crime, the truth is that “Mexico’s most violent drug cartels are exploiting U.S. guns laws to acquire massive quantities of assault rifles and other firearms for use in their war.”

Ouch — somehow I doubt this fact will help win over Latinos in 2012.

Wow, you would think that I know better at this point. After three years of writing this blog, I still make the mistake of saying, “I’m not going to write about this topic anymore” and then promptly turning around and writing about it (whatever the specific “it” might be at that moment).

In this case, I intended to let my recent post on the midterm elections be my final word on the subject. After that, I was going to let the bitter results speak for themselves. Yes, I planned to ignore the horrific stench rising from Washington DC as Tea Party activists climbed up on the furniture and howled their nativist agenda.

But that was before I was surprised, and a bit amused, to discover that a GOP Latino group called Somos Republicans has written an open letter to Republican leaders.

The group expresses concern that some of the incoming GOP leadership has “repeatedly engaged in rhetoric that is aimed negatively toward Hispanics” and has “used defamatory language that is extremely offensive to Hispanics.” Somos Republicans says that certain GOP leaders — guys who will soon be calling the shots in Congress — have “engaged in an ill-advised platform… that has been perceived as insensitive” and “inflammatory.”

I have to wonder why Somos Republicans is only noticing this trend now. After all, the fear-mongering was pretty well publicized, advertised, and encouraged during the election season. How could they have missed it?

In addition, Somos Republicans seems less upset about the dehumanizing of their fellow Latinos, and more worried that the image problem will hurt GOP chances in 2012.

By the way, they are correct to be concerned.

Now, some will argue that Somos Republicans are nothing more than sell-outs. As I’ve written before, I don’t advocate for litmus tests about what constitutes a “real Latino.” Sure, denying your heritage might qualify one for fake-Hispanic status. But short of that, I believe that a person does not have to adhere to a strict political agenda to be considered part of la familia.

Still, it’s difficult to reconcile the self-loathing that many Hispanics have for their immigrant origins. So it’s good to see that at least some conservative Latinos are disturbed by the flagrant xenophobia being peddled as a patriotic value.

But really, somebody has to tell Somos Republicans to change the name of their organization. Don’t they know that English is under constant attack from people who deny that it is our official language? I mean, you would think Republicans would know that.

Now that we’re past the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, one hopes that we can look at the so-called Ground Zero mosque in a clear and logical manner…  Actually, who are we kidding? People are still freaking out about this imaginary threat, even as the headlines have died down. In any case, I can assure you that the planned building will look nothing like this:

Recently, the New York Times released a poll showing that about half the city’s residents opposed building the community center, while a little over a third supported it. But the Times poll went a little further than most questionnaires on this topic, as it broke out the respondents by race or ethnicity.

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The Dream Act may not be dead. But it is most certainly on hold, and no one is sure for how long.

The U.S. Senate did not directly kill the bill. Rather, Senate Republicans filibustered the defense authorization bill. The reason was that the Dream Act, as well as the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal, were amendments to the legislation. These two bits of conservative wolfbane were too much for Republicans to stomach. So they voted, en masse and without exception, to deny the bill’s passage.

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