Al’s Loupe

Romney could care less about elderly Cubans who will vote for him

By Alvaro F. Fernandez
alvaro@progresoweekly.com

MIAMI – Let me start by pointing out that 58% of Miami-Dade voters cast ballots in favor of Barack Obama in 2008. I mention this to demonstrate that Cuban Americans don’t necessarily control South Florida voting, as some would have you believe. That a large number of them – mostly elderly – vote as a republican bloc, especially in a presidential election year, now that’s another story.   

Allow me to break this down a bit more and then I promise to get to my point. As of August 1, 2012, there were 1,247,495 voters in Miami-Dade. Of those, 51% or 673,120 were classified as Hispanic. Among the Hispanics, 267,861 (or 40%) were registered republicans. And of the republicans registered in the county, 72% were Hispanic.

Let me unpack that further. Fifty-six percent, a majority, of the registered Hispanic republicans are over the age of 61. And I don’t have the exact numbers on how many of those are Cuban American, but I’d wager an expensive lunch wherever you’d like that a great majority of those 56% are Cuban Americans. It’s a fact of life in this town.

As a side note, and interestingly (at least I find it so), although Hispanics in the U.S. are a booming population with a very low median age, the only subgroup within the Hispanics that does not abide by that rule are the Cubans. The census tells us that the Cuban American numbers are waning – especially compared to other Hispanic sub groups. And compared to those other sub groups, Cuban Americans are the oldest with a median age around 40, as compared to the 20s among the others. Which does not bode well for this group going forward as a political force.

So what’s my point. Simply, that a great number of the Cuban American elderly in Miami who plan to vote for Mitt Romney in November are either badly informed or perversely affected by voting against their own interests.

Let us not kid ourselves. The Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan Republican ticket is out to slash Social Security and use that money to keep financing even more wars. They’re out to privatize Medicare by way of vouchers assuring greater profit for their friends in the insurance industry while creating a third world medical system that caters to the rich and those who can afford to pay astronomical prizes for health care.

As for the poor and Medicaid, “screw you!” they’re saying behind close doors. The poor don’t count and they vote in low numbers, say Romney-Ryan. Don’t believe me? Read closely at what is being said. I am not making this up.

Cuban American elderly republicans will lovingly cast their votes for Romney in November because he promises (like 10 others before him) to take care of the Castro problem down south. All the while ignoring the fact that they expect their Social Security check on time; complain when they’re so far down on the Section 8 housing list; are insulted by the high price of their blood pressure medicine; and patiently wait for the bus that takes them to their free lunches Monday through Friday in one of the many comedores (or public lunch rooms) for the elderly around Miami.

All federally, subsidized programs with a great big bulls eye in the Romney-Ryan plan, which hopes to create greater opportunity in the near future – for the very wealthy, like them.

But don’t take my word for it. What follows are comments candidate Romney made in private before a group of persons who each paid $50,000 to have lunch with him this past May during a fundraising party in Boca Raton, Florida:

“All right, there are 47% who are … dependent upon government, who believe they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. …

“An so my job is not to worry about those people … they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives…”

Yes, that was Mitt Romney earlier this year.

As for my Cuban American brethren who plan to vote for the Romney ticket in November, there’s only one message for you: “Go ahead, shoot yourselves in both legs!”