Where Republicans Went Wrong With Hispanics

I have two friends, both of which were fiercely opposed to President George Bush because of illegal immigration. One was angry that Bush had not taken a hard-line against illegal immigration. The other was upset that Bush had not gone far enough in pushing immigration reform. Although I had many policy disagreements with President Bush over the years, one area I was very happy with Bush is his attempt to reach a reasonable compromise on the immigration issue.

There is probably no more disturbing election statistic from 2008 than the overwhelming way that Republicans lost the Hispanic vote. While Republicans usually lose the Hispanic vote in most states, they always carried a sizable minority of the vote, that in some places approached 50%. If Republicans continue to lose the Hispanic vote the way they did in 2008 by more than 2-1, then the future of the party is doomed.

I have always said that the problem was not necessarily the fact that the Republicans took on the immigration issue, but the "how" of the way they went about doing it. This morning, Ruben Navarrette has an excellent column explaining, better than I, what is meant by doing the right thing the wrong way. He says in part:

Let me be clear. The reason for the Hispanic exodus from the GOP is not because Republicans took a stand against illegal immigration. It's the way they did it -- or at least many of them did it. As always, the devil was in the details.

Since the election, I've heard from hundreds of Hispanics who are still steamed at the GOP. That is no surprise. Time heals wounds, but this is recent history. (Ask the Mexicans about the Spanish. My people have been known to hold a grudge for 500 years.) Hispanics tell me they're angry that the immigration debate became so nasty, that employers escaped most of the criticism, that the tone went from anti-illegal immigrant to anti-Hispanic, that Latino culture and bilingualism were attacked, and that some Americans made the same argument that was made in previous decades against the Germans, Chinese, Irish, Italians and Jews -- namely, that the real concern was about America admitting an inferior grade of immigrant.

Hispanics also resent the racism, the reluctance of many Americans to empathize with immigrants as similar to their ancestors, the assumption that anyone who looks Hispanic must have only recently arrived in this country, and the fact that opportunistic politicians proposed half-baked solutions for closing the border and getting rid of illegal immigrants.

Just look at Republicans in Congress who have put their weight behind efforts to declare English the national language, deny citizenship to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, and empower local police to enforce federal immigration law. All of these things are opposed by most Latinos.

Where the GOP went wrong was in letting the loudest and shrillest voices carry the party banner -- and to what end? To scare up a few votes from skittish Americans convinced that taco trucks cruising neighborhoods or the option to "press 2 for Spanish" meant the ruin of civilization. Instead of trying to convince themselves that they didn't do anything wrong in driving away Hispanics, Republicans should be thinking about how to make things right with this huge bloc of voters. And no, that doesn't mean caving in and giving up on core principles. All the right wing needs to do is to stay away from the vitriol, the racism and the centuries-old tendency to define newcomers as deficient, defective or dangerous.

As a history buff, I look at some of the rhetoric used in the debate and it sounds eerily like that used during 1920's Indiana and the high point of Klan activity in the state. The top target of the Indian Klan back then was not blacks, but instead immigrants and Catholics. Then you have attempts to demonize Hispanics, most of which are Mexicans, as disease carriers and violent criminals who threaten our way of life. Watch the propaganda films of Hitler's Joseph Goebbels and how he portrayed Jews during the 1930s. He tried to demonize them by portraying them as disease carriers (he compared them to rats) and highlighted violent crimes that certain ones committed, or allegedly committed, as being representative of the supposed violent nature of Jewish people as a whole. That is a typical hate group tactic.

As a history buff, I look at some of the rhetoric used by many in the illegal immigration debate and realize that it sounds eerily like that used during 1920's Indiana and the high point of Klan activity in the state. The top target of the Indiana Klan back then was not blacks, but instead immigrants and Catholics. Then you have attempts to demonize Hispanics, most of which are Mexicans, as disease carriers and violent criminals who threaten our way of life. Watch the propaganda films of Hitler's Joseph Goebbels and how he portrayed Jews during the 1930s. He tried to demonize them by portraying them as disease carriers (he compared them to rats) and highlighted violent crimes that certain ones committed, or allegedly committed, as being representative of the supposed violent nature of Jewish people as a whole. Trying to demonize a group of people as disease carriers and violent by nature is a typical hate group tactice. It was also a tactic that hate groups like the Klan used against African-Americans, particularly in the South.

The consequences of Republicans continuing to lose the Hispanic vote in the numbers they did in 2008 would be devastating. The population is expected to be 1/4 Hispanic in 30 years. Republicans are currently getting only about 10% of the African-American vote, a legacy that dates back to the harsh rhetoric used by Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater during the 1964 campaign. Republicans cannot afford to simply be the white person's party.