Latino GOP Conference: A Love-Sick Second Date
According to Fox News Latino,
The battle for Hispanics’ hearts has begun in earnest.
The Merced Sun Star had a slightly different perspective on the same story:
A Republican group formed last year to woo more Hispanics to the GOP will hold its second conference in Albuquerque next month.
I’m not sure if I should get a gun license or a bottle of cologne.
On the other hand, I understand how wooing can be a battle. My father-in-law put up a pretty good defense when I came calling on his youngest daughter. No one had ever slammed a door in my face, so when he did it – twice – I reacted more with curiosity than anything else. I persisted through phone call denials and the like until he relented (I like to think it was my persistence, but his youngest girl is a feisty Latina who more than likely had a face-off with her dad and that was that).
The Republican group that’s doing the wooing, Hispanic Leadership Network, has interesting Latino bona fides.
- It’s backed by the American Action Network, which in turn is backed by former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman
- It was created, according to what Coelman told the Merced Sun-Star, to “engage the country’s growing minority voting block as the group builds a ‘center-right’ agenda on issues like the economy, jobs, education and immigration reform.”
- It’s first conference was held last year in Florida and co-chaired by former U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
- New Mexico was chosen for the second conference because “it has a new Republican Hispanic governor, Susana Martinez.”
Republicans insist that Latinos are conservative at heart, and the implication is that Latinos just don’t know it. So these conferences seem to be designed to tell Latinos (GOP-ers prefer the term “Hispanic”) “you’re really one of us.”
Democrats, on the other hand, like to say the opposite: “we’re just like you.” And that sounds like a protracted engagement that’s lost it’s luster.
If this is the second HLN Conference, I’m curious as to how this second date will go. There should be a little more familiarity, a little more getting-to-know-you, a little more frank conversation. Latinos lost 66% of their wealth during the past recession, their unemployment sits at around 12%, they have been the hardest hit by the economic downturn that can’t seem to turn the corner, their political power is under attack by redistricting schemes that defy federal mandate and by voter ID initiatives that hinder their participation in the political process; there better be more to this wooing than a conference and a handful of flowers. But I doubt that’ll be the case. So far what the GOP has to offer is an insistence on a litany of drastic budget cuts that will affect Latino jobs, education, and well being.
The GOP is acting like the love sick teenager that spends hours getting ready for a date, trying to look like he doesn’t care how he looks. But what the GOP hasn’t taken into account is that they’ve come calling at election time, just like the Democrats have time and again. Latinos have become a hardened love interest that has seen it all and is no longer impressed. Promises are met with skepticism, attitude is measured against past performance. The people on the blue side of the aisle have ruined it for the folks on the red side.
A LULAC spokesperson put it this way in the Merced Sun Star article:
“It’s very interesting that center-right groups always want to engage Hispanics during election years,” said Paloma Zuleta, spokeswoman for the League of United Latin American Citizens in Washington.
Jennifer Korn, HLN executive director, pushed back:
the long-term goal is to become a voice for Hispanics, “to formulate policies that will help the Hispanic community educate and engage our leaders across the country and to then really bring those to the decision makers. … It will be a long-term sustained grass-roots effort.”
Yeah, that’s what they all say.
Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda
[Illustration By News Taco]
