The Republican Party Is Just Not For Latinos

Today’s offering was supposed to be about what it would mean for the United States if we had a woman president and I was going to use Argentina as a model. But, after looking at several polls, op-ed pieces, speaking to my family, my editor and several of my attorneys (always need attorneys for this line of work), I decided I have not finished saying what I needed to say about Latinos and Republicans.

I know this is a broad topic, but it boils down to just a few related issues:

• Republicans claiming that Latinos are natural Republicans because we are conservative and believe in family values
• Republicans trying everything in their power to deny Latinos the right to vote and elect officials of their choice
• What the Republicans are doing to our democracy with all of their pandering to fringe, extremist, racist ideology.

First thing’s first, I guess. Latino Decisions recently published the results of a national opinion poll of Latinos that indicated that although religion and family values are important to our way of viewing the world these perceptions do not easily translate into the way we vote from a partisan perspective. I said that a long time ago, but Republicans either didn’t want to hear, or they didn’t think this was possible because they are too deeply ensconced in their ideological paradigms.

Latinos are conservative on a personal a level, but our lives are and have been heavily affected by racist state actions, i.e. lynchings in 19th Century, Mexican schools, and anti-language laws. As a result we generally align ourselves with politicians and political parties who don’t espouse such racist policies.

Some of the more enlightened Republican leadership — Presidents Reagan and Bushes, even Karl Rove (not sure I would call him enlightened he seems rather like a dark character to have too much lighting around him) — have tried to convince their party that they needed to bring Latinos into the party, to no avail. The Republican party is dominated by a very narrow ideological and small group that uses racism as an organizing tool to bring in the less-enlightened electorate. 

Hate to put it that way, but my travels and discussions with everyday, ordinary, Anglo Texans and Mississippians has led me to believe that those folks who fall for the Republican party’s racist rhetoric are just not very well-informed voters. Some are down-right racist but a lot are not, they just fall for simply stated rhetoric that makes sense in their cultural milieu. They also only watch Fox News. For these types of individuals, CNN represents the liberal establishment. When I do visit and I out myself for watching MSNBC, they are left with open mouths, yet like what they hear. As one of them once commented, “Shoot, these folks make a lot of sense!”

Thus I concluded a large number of these folks are either ill-informed, or politically naive.

The Republican party’s involvement in vote dilution strategies is well documented. They have at their disposal a covey of attorneys, technicians, operatives, and gofers that specialize in voting law, redistricting/gerrymandering, advertising, and dirty tricks all designed to minimize the vote. Historically, Republicans do better at the polls if they can keep voter turnout low. So they have become specialists in everything from voter intimidation to gerrymandering to legal opinion writing all designed to minimize the vote. As a result we currently have eleven states trying to pass or have passed restrictive voting laws, gerrymandering is rampant in many states having large minority populations and legal maneuvering is rampant and bringing chaos to the electoral process. Besides the confusion, it’s costing, or will cost, a great deal of money to manage the elections because of the confusion.

Whatever happened to Republican fiscal conservatism?

Finally, what can one say when you see the collection of Tea Partiers, anti-immigrant and racist groups that the Republican party appeals to in order to win elections? Like Ron Unz (a Republican pundit) put it recently, the party must face it, they are just a party for whites. In my  opinion, Abraham Lincoln would probably be ashamed of his modern day party and switch to the Democratic party — which is what rational Republicans need to start thinking about doing.