Trump’s card

Say what you will, Donald Trump was on to something when he launched his blatantly racist and fact-free attack against Mexican immigrants. For the record, Trump’s claim that Mexican immigrants come here to commit rape and other crimes is a damnable slander. Research shows the overwhelming majority of Mexicans come here to work incredibly hard in order to support their family.

But truth be damned. Trump detected the dirty little secret that establishment Republicans try to hide with empty talk about “outreach” to Hispanic voters: a xenophobic heart beats strongly among the core of the Republican party.

This hard-line sector represents the kind of voters who often decide GOP primaries and always show up to vote for the party in the general election. Republicans thus cannot ignore this basest part of their base. Catering to them too much, however, risks turning the anti-Republican wave among Latinos that helped Obama win two elections into a devastating tsunami.

But Trump doesn’t care about the larger, long term implications of his odious demagoguery, and his cynical reading of the attitudes of many rank-and-file Republicans was proved right. His poll numbers shot up dramatically right after he delivered his vicious anti-Mexican broadside. He was instantly transformed from a contender who few people took seriously into one of the two or three frontrunners among the grotesquely swollen and growing Republican field.

By exposing this ugly facet of the GOP electorate, Trump put other Republicans aspiring to the nomination between a rock and a hard place. That explains the initially weak or non-existing reaction from almost every other Republican candidate.

Only Marco Rubio–a politician I have never praised before–stood up quickly and criticized Trump’s diatribe. Give the devil his due. Kudos to Marco Rubio for this for him rare display of decency and courage. As for the others, Jeb Bush, who should know better, at first limited himself to saying Trump was wrong. And Ted Cruz, the only other candidate of Hispanic descent went out of his way to praise Trump. To say Cruz’s reaction was shameful is an understatement. Despicable comes closer. Then again, what else can one expect from Ted Cruz.

The tepid  GOP response contrasted sharply from the tough response of the likes of NBC, Univision, and Macy’s, among others, which quickly cancelled various business deals they had going with the Donald. That hurt Trump where it hurts him most, his pocket book and his gigantic ego.

The no-nonsense response from these big corporate players signaled they thought cozying up to Trump would be a bad business decision. It also implied Trump had stepped too far out of the mainstream for comfort. This seems to have emboldened and embarrassed other Republican candidates, including Texas governor Rick Perry and Jeb Bush, into taking harder shots at Trump.

Trump seems relatively unfazed by the backlash. Indeed, he has counterattacked, threatening law suits and stooping as low as denouncing the reigning Miss Universe, who hails from Colombia, as a hypocrite because she criticized Trump’s words but declined to give up her crown.

It doesn’t get much lower than that. No wonder several celebrities announced as judges or performers have dropped out of the pageant. Trump has become toxic and we can expect other Republicans to run the other way as fast as they can.

They can run but they can’t hide. The 2012 Republican primary debates were open season on Latino immigrants, with one fringe candidate proposing an electrified fence on the Mexican border and the eventual nominee, Mitt Romney, coming out for self-deportation as an alternative to comprehensive immigration reform. Self-deportation? Read making the life of undocumented immigrants so unbearable they would pack up and go home. Politically, that flew like a lead balloon with Latino voters.

The dye was cast at that juncture, or probably even earlier when Republicans in Congress refused to go along with President George W. Bush’s and  Senator John McCain’s immigration reform proposals. The 2012 primary added insult to injury. The 2016 primary season has already heaped on an additional dose of abuse thanks to Donald Trump.

The Republicans’ Latino problem goes far beyond one bombastic millionaire with bad hair, however. The disconnect is on several levels–demographic, racial and ideological. Demographically, the base of the Republican electorate is older than the general U.S. population and predominantly white. These groups are declining steadily as a proportion of the total. The Latino population, in contrast, is significantly younger than average and rapidly growing.

The political implications are clear. The majority of Latinos have voted for Democrats for decades. But Republicans like George W. Bush once were able to capture upwards of 40 percent of the Latino vote. No more. Even if the most Latino-friendly of the candidates–Jeb Bush–were nominated, it’s very doubtful as many Latino would gravitate to him as they did toward his older brother.

That’s largely because since the late 1990s the Republican party as a whole has become more xenophobic and anti-Latino. A president who speaks fluent Spanish is not going to persuade fellow Republicans in Congress to offer undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. And the Republicans have wounded and alienated the Latino community too deeply and repeatedly for all to be forgiven. Donald Trump–and the day late and  dollar short reaction of the other contenders–demonstrates the tiger has not changed its stripes.

The Republican party has also become more reactionary. Ideologically, polls have shown Latinos believe government should fund public education, health care and social services. These are the very things Republicans have been defunding and destroying. Class plays a role in the disconnect too. Most Latinos are on the lower end of the income distribution while Republicans are richer than average. Republicans want to pay the least possible in taxes. Latinos want a government that collects enough taxes to help level the playing field through such things as educational grants. Thus different ideological beliefs and class interests reinforce each other and deepen the breech between Latinos and the Republican party.

Republicans need to get a decent percentage of the Latino vote–around 40 percent–to regain the White House. They will need a miracle to do it.