The GOP and Latinos
By Max J. Castro
Caught between a rock and a hard place is a lousy position to be in whether we are talking about life in general or any of the games people play: love, chess, war, or politics. Right now that is the exact political location of the Republican Party on no small a matter: its survival as a national party capable of winning the White House.
The problem for the GOP has just reared its for-them-ugly head once again, as Republicans try to wrestle with their response to the Obama administration’s just-announced off-the-record disclosure that it plans to push Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform, including a to citizenship for most undocumented immigrants.
The trouble for the Republicans comes down to a single plural noun: Latinos. There are several ways to gauge the severity of the Republicans’ dilemma beyond the evident fact that the Latino vote is already big and growing fast.
One way is to think about the remarkable Latino voting behavior in the November 2012 election. In his first run for the presidency, Barack Obama promised to make comprehensive immigration reform a top priority during his first year in office. He did no such thing. In fact, on this issue Obama expended precious little of the generous fund of political capital he acquired by virtue of badly whipping John McCain.
It gets worse. A record number of undocumented immigrants were deported under Obama’s watch. And, the straw you would think would have broken the camel’s back – high unemployment, especially among Latinos – did not.
It all sounds like a guaranteed political disaster for the president and a slam dunk for his adversary. Yet, after all the votes were counted, Obama received 71 percent of the Latino vote, a landslide by any measure. How did it happen?
The fact is that while Latinos were disappointed with Obama, they were livid with the Republicans. The Republican primary campaign was a circus, and one of the main rings of that circus was a contest around which of the contenders would, as president, take the harshest line against “illegal aliens.”
The biggest clown of the lot, Herman Cain, who led the race for the briefest of times before imploding, even proposed an electrified fence on the U.S.-Mexico border. But the contest for top immigrant basher did not end when Cain and the other total buffoons were out of the game.
The winner of this sorry competition, the man who topped all the survivors in the category of “I will be more xenophobic than thou,” was none other than Mitt Romney, the eventual Republican candidate. Romney even managed to make Texas Governor Rick Perry, nobody’s idea of a bleeding heart liberal, sound soft on “illegals.”
It’s one thing to decline to fall on your sword for me. It’s another to spit in my face, promise to electrocute my cousin, or to make life for millions of my people so miserable that, in the Orwellian words of Mitt Romney, they choose “self-deportation.” Read opting for purgatory over hell.
In the 2012 campaign, the Republican Party held a clinic on how to piss off the brown vote – big time. It cost them.
Moreover, Latinos didn’t swing to the Republicans out of frustration over Obama’s failure to deliver on immigration because they knew the reason: Republicans in Congress were adamantly against what they call “amnesty.” Even during the two years Democrats held a majority in both houses, Republicans in the Senate had enough political will and votes to block any such legislation through their favorite obstructionist tool, the filibuster. Heck, Republicans in Congress even killed the Dream Act, a bill that would have helped only the most sympathetic category of immigrants, those brought here as children by their undocumented parents.
Now, according to news reports, the Obama administration is set to try in earnest to pass comprehensive immigration reform. It’s a good move whether you look at it from a policy or a humanitarian lens. It’s also a great move politically because it puts the Republicans between the rock of their rabidly anti-immigrant base and the hard place of the fury of the fastest growing constituency in the country.
It couldn’t come at a worse time, just when Republicans are desperately trying to figure out how to prevent receiving in future elections the kind of political punishment Romney took from the Latino electorate last year.
Republicans have a critical Latino problem, one they may not be able to solve. Republican Latinophobia is in large part a reflection of one of the GOP’s worst vices –racism. Because of it Obama now has them in a vise.
The Republican strategy for wriggling out of their predicament can be charitably described as lame. Instead of a single immigration reform law covering everybody who has kept his or her nose clean while in this country, as Obama reportedly will propose, they want to break the whole thing into many little pieces, each covering only one type of immigrant. That’s like offering someone a set of tires while the other guy is selling a whole new car for the same price. Latinos won’t have to think twice to see which deal is better.
As miserly as is the Republicans’ best bargain, many in the party oppose even this piecemeal approach. So it’s really a contest between the fellow with a car to sell and another who maybe, doubtfully, will sell you four tires for an equal price.
It is evident that far too many in the GOP, for the party’s own good, were not chastised by the drubbing Latinos delivered in 2012. That probably means that Obama’s ambitious plan won’t make it through Congress. But at least it will have the virtue of unmasking the Republicans and totally fouling up their fantasy of kissing and making up with the Latino community on the cheap. It couldn’t happen to a nicer group of folks.
