Jeb Bush thinks the “harsh and inexcusable” language used by Republicans to talk about immigration causes Republicans to “risk alienating Latino voters”. Too late:
I was only able to stomach the first few minutes of Thursday’s debate, but the outreach to Latinos that I saw was Newt trying to articulate a slightly compassionate immigration policy and getting smacked down, and an argument over whether Newt actually said that Spanish was the “language of the ghetto”.
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capt
I live in NM and cannot understand how any Latino or Hispanic could vote GOP yet they do.
It reminds me of Gay or minority GOP groups – oxymoronic is the foundation.
c u n d gulag
Maybe it’s me, but I prefer ‘the language of the ghetto’ over the one in the f*cking trailer park.
America’s demographics are changing, so they’re running out of time to try to gain total control of the government.
Do everything in your power to make sure there are less and less Republicans in government.
Because, when they show their inner racist, xenophobe, misogynist, homophobe, it sure seems like that’s what they really want. So, let’s give it to them.
JPL
How long before Mitt says, I didn’t say that and politifact scores it as true.
Sly
No one I know who is a Republican is cognizant of the fact that the Republican Party has sunk like a stone among Latino voters. They seem shocked and dismissive whenever I assert that Obama will win reelection handily, which I always counter by asking “what kind of electoral math will put a Republican in the White House with sub-30% approval among Latinos, when George Bush narrowly won reelection in 2004 with 45%?”
And then they feign ignorance as to why it has sunk that low, or they just don’t believe me because all Latinos vote the way the Pope tells them or some other rubbish.
Omnes Omnibus
@JPL:
Isn’t that in a footnote on all his press releases?
BO_Bill
Republicans will never get a large Latino vote because the average Latino IQ is in the low 90s and therefore Latinos are the group beneficiaries of a powerful redistributive government. The best bet for the Republican Party is to openly become the Party of white and Asian Americans.
Linda Featheringill
I’ll give Newt one thing. He did refer to illegal immigrants as human beings, with much in common with other human beings. That is pretty rare in the GOP.
RossInDetroit
Republicans don’t worry about alienating Latinos because in their eyes every Latino is already an alien.
schrodinger's cat
Its not just the Latino immigrants the GOP is alienating with their crude behavior.
Omnes Omnibus
@Linda Featheringill: I am not sure we should be giving points for acknowledging baseline facts. OTOH, it is worth noting that such a thing is worth noting.
Cat Lady
The last sentence of the Guardian article:
I guess it’s too much to ask them to show their work given the GOS polls, and I’m guessing disillusionment doesn’t mean they’re going to vote for the Republican who wants to see them all self-deport.
capt
@Omnes Omnibus:
Only on even numbered days = the opposite on odd numbered days. So he can be consistent. . .
RSA
This article, which appeared a couple of days ago, describes some interesting correlations:
http://www.livescience.com/18132-intelligence-social-conservatism-racism.html
MattF
Republicans have lost Latinos, one by one, for many years now. Remember McCain’s ‘Complete that damned fence’? There’s slow, long-term damage there and a quickie smooch from Noot or even Jeb isn’t going to fix it.
beltane
To problem for the Republican party is that the average Republican voter does not want to belong to a party with significant non-white membership. If Latinos started voting Republican, the wingnut base would have to go start their won, all-white party.
Jay C
“Too late”? Not that it’s ancient history or anything, but two of the three polls you cite here mm are three months old@: which can be an eon in political terms. I see the WaPo numbers are more recent; but is there any more-current data?
@Sly:
Isn’t this the standard wheeze we get from the GOP every election cycle: “Latinos blah-blah conservative Catholic, blah-blah pro-life, blah-blah small-business, blah-blah“; almost always followed by shocked amazement that Republicans, on a national level, are about as popular as The Plague. And almost always clueless as to the actual reasons….
Linda Featheringill
@Sly: #4
Wow. They think they won’t have to court Latino voters? That would explain some of the ongoing insensitivity of many Republicans if they think they don’t have to be nice.
c u n d gulag
@BO_Bill: FTW?
I guess that a low 90’s IQ is probably an aspirational goal of yours.
I think it’s out of reach, though.
Shoot for a half-a-buck, first, and then see how far you can climb up from there.
CarolDuhart2
And the numbers are likely to drop even further as more conservative generations pass on, and the remainder vote more like African-Americans. 90% Democratic habits among them and Asians are likely to make the White House impossible for at least a generation until the racists leave us.
CarolDuhart2
@c u n d gulag: And BO, those votes count too, which is politics 101.
Those are ominous numbers among the fastest growing group in the United States. And neither Newt or Mitt are likely to court them out of fear that their white base will desert them, especially not Mormon Newt who needs every white vote he could get.
Omnes Omnibus
@RSA:
From the article. Complexity and ambiguity can be difficult. This much, I am willing to accept. Beyond it, however, I am not willing to go. One ends up in toko-ville.
p.a.
when o when will minorities understand the deep concern Republicans have for their well being?
I love the previous point that if minorities voted R the majority of white Republicans would form a new party.
JD Rhoades
I live in NM and cannot understand how any Latino or Hispanic could vote GOP yet they do.
Abortion. Next question.
JD Rhoades
Republicans don’t worry about alienating Latinos because in their eyes every Latino is already an alien.
Oh, well done. WELL done.
RSA
@Omnes Omnibus:
Great summary. I gave the link without much comment for a similar reason and because I haven’t had time to look at the primary sources–it’s very tempting to accept research results that line up with my own views of the world, but these are the ones that need to be looked at the hardest.
c u n d gulag
@CarolDuhart2:
Carol,
Thanks, I know that.
I doubt that the average real IQ of Latino’s is in the low 90’s. So, I call BS on BO_Bill.
And that “BO” part is right, ’cause he stinks.
And I wonder where he got that information about Asian Americans?
The ones I know are all Democrats. But, then, I live in New York state, so wtf do I know?
bob h
Anybody know how “self-deportation” translates in Spanish? Deportation is “deportacion”, but I don’t know how to construct the reflexive verb. Romney is going to be hearing about this for a long time.
Steve Crickmore
Recall that Ronald Reagan, called the violent, thuggish and coccaine smuggling Contra leaders “the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers”, and executed his Latin American foreign policy, including “Guns for Contras” accordingly. Does the GOP have any idea of what goes through the minds of Latinos, when the GOP candidates try and outdo themselves, by invoking Ronald Reagan as their patron saint and touchstone, every five minutes they speak?
Omnes Omnibus
@c u n d gulag: Whether BO Bill is a spoof or not is open to question. The fact that BO Bill is a racist, misogynist idiot is not. He isn’t worth the time and effort to figure out.
c u n d gulag
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thanks for letting me know that.
Life’s too short to waste on “people” like him.
gvg
I think Bush knows perfectly well too much of his party is actually racist and that he phrased it that mild way because he was aiming his words at the less invested in racism ones who might be influenced by self interest (wanting to win elections) into trying to change the direction. In other words his warning wasn’t aimed at this audience. It was aimed at republicans, and its hard to influence people if you start off calling them idiot racists, so you use soft language. Bleh….
I have very little good to say about Bush but he wasn’t racist himself. He was however surrounded by a party that was pretty full of it.
The problem is that many of the most sensitive to racism former republicans have left leaving the most invested in it more concentrated and if the leadership actually did anything substancial to show they were different, I think they would still lose more current republican voters than they could gain by less racism. If I were a minority I would take my time about believing any reform was sincere which means it would take some time for any real benefit. In the mean time they would still lose elections. I think for a period of time they can’t win with either strategy so they are stuck. Breaks my heart. If we actually reach a point where the hispanics and other minorities are big in numbers enough to be worth more than the bigots, then the republican party will change. that period in between where they can’t win has dangers to the democrats getting too complacent or fracturing over different prime interests of course.
kay
I’d love to know why the GOP thinks this works.
They’re demonizing Latinos to increase their share of the white vote, to take white voters from Democrats.
But they’ve been using this strategy since 2006 and it hasn’t worked. Democrats are holding their white voters and the GOP are bleeding Latino voters.
So why are they so attached to this “demonize Latinos, attract white voters” strategy?
I wonder if they’re in a box, and now they’re HOLDING their existing white voters w/ this rather than increasing their share.
In other words, the original strategy failed, and now we’re just looking at desperation.
WereBear (itouch)
you dance with the racists that brung ya.
Omnes Omnibus
@kay:
It’s all they have. No positive ideas, no vision for the future, just bile and nostalgia for a past that never existed. It really no way to live.
GregB
I can’t understand why so many Hispanics would be turned off by the party that equates them with welfare cheating criminal boarder jumpers who should be executed on the spot or shocked to death on an electric fence.
Also too, outreach to many in the GOP consists of them talking about eating a taco.
Benjamin Franklin
“If we want to be in the majority, we have to stop being the Old White Guy Party”
Jeb Bush.
Benjamin Franklin
So why are they so attached to this “demonize Latinos, attract white voters” strategy?
It’s always worked before. The word conservative, as part of the definition, includes resistance to change.
WereBear (itouch)
Also, too, it speaks of an automatic assumption that all white people are racist.
Josie
@kay: I don’t think they are doing it for any intellectual reason. I think they are just mean enough to actually believe in what they are doing.
harlana
Newt’s “compassion” appears to be limited to grandfathers and grandmothers who are church members (it goes w/o saying that means a Christian church).
according to those standards, if i were an immigrant, i would be royally fucked.
Chris
@Jay C:
LOL, yes, because there are no religious conservatives or small business owners anywhere in the black community, if there were, that would be all it takes to put the entire demographic in play!
@Steve Crickmore:
This. A really good point, can’t believe it never occurred to me. Especially when you consider the number of Central Americans who came to the United States to escape the fallout from civil wars like that.
HRA
Of course, the harsh language against Latinos would alienate them and certainly Jeb would be the one to speak out about. His wife is Latino and his children are half Latino.
A lot is spit out by Willard about wanting the new and old illegals sent back and allowing those brightest highly educated waiting in line to come to the US. IOW is he saying Latinos are not bright and highly educated? Yes, he is saying it. Too many nasty adjectives to pick from to say what I think of him.
Chris
@gvg:
Well, as was discussed here yesterday, the distinction between being racist yourself and only using racism for political purposes is… far more theoretical than real.
I’ll grant that Bush wasn’t nearly as far out there as the current crowd – I was grateful that he actually tried to reach out to Latinos like they were something other than lepers and scum (both as governor and as president) and I was grateful that he made the distinction between fighting Islam and fighting terrorism, and said so early and often.
That said, his campaign won South Carolina in the primary by calling McCain’s daughter “an illegitimate black child,” and Florida in the general because of a sizable purge of black voters who were “misidentified” as felons. It’s not like he was above using racism when it was convenient for his purposes.
Chris
@kay:
That’s largely because there are no white voters left to bleed out of the Democrats. Demonizing minorities to attract white voters has been their SOP since 1966: I’m not going to say there aren’t still white racists in the Democratic Party, but almost all of them, and certainly most of those who care enough to vote on that, left for the Republican Party long ago.
I suppose the Repubs are afraid that if they let up on the racism, some of those voters will go back.
Chris
@HRA:
I’m really puzzled by their “we need more rocket scientists and brain surgeons!” attitude – whether it’s what Mittens just said there, or that other guy from a day or two ago who was saying that the American working-class was over and done for and that was okay because we could always get jobs from China.
You can’t run a country with nothing but rocket scientists, no matter what Philosopher-Queen Ayn Rand may have told you in a dream. Somebody needs to assemble the rockets, somebody needs to load them onto the trucks, somebody needs to drive them to their destination, somebody needs to do the cleaning and maintenance on them, somebody needs to fuel them, somebody needs to guard them, etc etc etc. Without all those “useless” “parasites” doing the sweaty work, your rocket scientist is as useful as a bottle of dried glue.
Same goes for immigration. It’s great Mittens wants their Ivy Leaguers to immigrate over here, and we already get plenty of them. Doesn’t mean the less-well-educated don’t have stuff to contribute also. (Ask the Georgians, the Texans and anyone else who uses manual labor from south of the border).
kay
@Josie:
There is an intellectual reason for it, IMO.
There’s two basic theories on voters. One can either expand the electorate or one can look at the electorate as fixed and move numbers from column to column.
Republicans have never relied on expanding the electorate. They don’t do any of the voter outreach necessary to expand the electorate. Their approach to election law reveals they never plan to expand the electorate. Their biggest electoral success came with “Reagan Democrats” who were by definition already voting, they were just voting for Democrats.
When Jeb Bush (or any conservative) says he wants to “attract voters” he means “pull Right leaning Latino voters from Democrats”.
Democrats have their own battles with this. I would argue that the Clinton Democrats took the conservative approach. They looked at the pool of existing voters and said “how do we put some of their voters in our column?”
Obama, and earlier, John Kerry, said something different. They said “how do we hold our voters and make brand new voters”? New voters aren’t reliable, so the Kerry-Obama approach is more difficult, and riskier. They’re not pulling from the GOP-leaning column. They’re making a new column.
It really is two different worlds. It’s two fundamentally different ways of looking at “the electorate”, but I do think the conservative approach fits quite well within their ideology, while the “new voters” approach fits quite well into liberal ideology.
I’m wondering if conservatives made an error in 2006. They thought they could pull white voters from the “leans Democrat” column by demonizing Latinos. What they found out is their base is now insisting they demonize Latinos. They can’t go back, because they’ll enrage the white voters they have.
I think this is why liberals (not Democrats) are often baffled by conservative strategy. Conservatives start with “who are the existing voters who might vote for us?” and liberals start at a different, broader place, with “who in the whole universe of people might vote for us?”
Benjamin Franklin
@Chris:
I’ve heard those things about Bush and Reagan, as well as Joe Paterno.
The inability to see racism, or other social crimes, actually makes the Stain greater for them. IMO.
cmorenc
@Sly:
Ironically, one of the Republicans who did seem to have major clues about Latinos and tried (but not nearly hard enough, because also didn’t want to unduly upset his xenophobic nativist base over immigration issues) was George W. Bush. I’m not defending Bush here against his many grave sins that enormously outweigh this, including the fact that he only tepidly and intermittently pushed back against the xenophobes in his base. But this was one of the few less dark spots in Bush’s character.
jomike
@Sly:
If Ruy Teixeira at TNR is anywhere near correct, Republicans might already have adios mofo’ed themselves:
cmorenc
@gvg:
First, we’re not nearly there yet (reaching a period where demographically, the GOP cannot win); 2010 is a painful reminder of that stark fact. Second, this “GOP demographically can’t win” is a problem that frankly I’d like the democratic party to have for a few election cycles to undo the grave damage the GOP has inflicted since 1980, or 1968 even. Third, if Obama doesn’t win in 2012 and the GOP succeeds in taking the Senate and retaining the house, then the GOP is going to use its guaranteed two to four year period of dominance to aggressively try to achieve on the federal level what GOP governors and legislators have done at state levels since 2010: not merely demolish every progressive legacy down to its foundations, but erect durable structural obstacles both to attempts to rebuild them, and to the ability of democrats to even retake majorities. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, appointment of far-right ideologues to the courts, etc.
kay
@Josie:
I’m just wondering what they do now. Do they continue to demonize Latinos, knowing that they are alienating Latinos they might have pulled from the “leans Democrat” column, in order to hold their base, or do they switch tactics and take the risk that they’ll enrage their base but pull voters from the “leans Dem” column?
Right now they’re trying to do both, by having the candidates pander to the base while hacks like Jeb Bush, who don’t have to get elected, “reach out” to Latinos, by apologizing for the candidates.
Conservatives don’t have a new voter strategy, so they only have those two choices. Their world doesn’t include “expand electorate”. It stops at “existing electorate” and they’re doubling down on “existing” w/voter suppression.
It’s not my ideology, so I’m curious where they think they’re going with this.
Elie
The reason I believe that the Republicans find themselves in this dark place is because they are too cowardly to try to engage voters with valid conservative ideas. They have put themselves in the position of standing on the most extreme, race/ethnic baiting — appealing strongly to white fear and hatred because they truly have no belief that they can capture votes any other way…. they don’t believe in their own hearts, the value of conservatism or else they would not fear engaging that debate fair and square without using race/ethinic baiting and hatred. They have no belief in their own message — remember that. It infuriates them because they know it, they know that Obama knows it and that many of the electorate are waking up to that big time. In other words, they are losers. No one likes losers. No one wants to carry that standard anymore.
dogwood
This is all just so confusing to me. I mean in 08 guys like Tweety and Chuck Todd told me that Latinos wouldn’t vote for a black man. How could they be wrong? They have their fingers on the pulse of real America. I’m sure in this election they’ll tell me that Mitt will do smashingly well among Latino’s because his father was born in Mexico.
Quincy
@kay:
There’s also a bit of a collective action problem on their end. Republican presidential candidates have to worry about winning the primary. In Romney’s case, he had to stake out a hard right position on immigration because it was the only issue he wasn’t already on record opposing conservative orthodoxy. Individual Republican congress members and state office holders mostly represent constituencies where the racism plays well, and are more in danger of primary challenges from the right then left. The only Republicans with luxury of taking the long-term, national view are the Roves and Jebs of the party who aren’t currently running for office. They can plead all they want, but they’re not going to talk all the individual candidates out of acting in their own short-term self interest. Thus, voter suppression becomes the backup plan.
Elie
@Quincy:
What you say makes sense, but doesnt it anchor the party to futility? When do they look to the future of this nation and to getting represented nationally, which will shrink more and more over time? They let the ugly racism beast out of the bag and now it owns them in a way they can’t easily adapt…
I do admire the few republicans who have tried to gently start at least talking in a more moderate way… they are definitely lone voices …
Omnes Omnibus
@Elie:
Feature not a bug, from my POV.
MildlyAmusedRainbowPerson
@efgoldman:
INSRIYAR.
Chris
@Elie:
Well – what valid conservative ideas are there?
There’s a reason they’re standing on “the most extreme, race/ethnic baiting.” There’s a reason identity politics have consumed the entire party. No one actually believes the “valid conservative ideas.” When they’re up front, straightforward and run on the issues alone, they lose. Every. Single. Time. The last one who did that was Goldwater, and look where that got him. Yes, there were a lot of things that contributed to his defeat and to the scope of it, but the bottom line is that the country isn’t interested in going back to the Gilded Age.
Realistically, there’s only two ways to deal with that: one, you do what Eisenhower did, forget the Gilded Age, accept that you live in a post-19th century country, and govern as a moderate, or two, you do what the party’s been doing since Nixon/Reagan, forget “the issues” completely and run on identity politics. The Reagan wing of the party won that argument years and years ago (1994 at the absolute latest). This is the result.
Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937
To be fair to Newt, he didn’t say Spanish is the “language of the ghetto”. He was making the point that immigrants that don’t learn the native language become ‘ghetto-ized’. That’s a common immigrant and human experience. Newt is a racist for attributing it to Latins as if only they would experience it.
Josie
@kay: Thanks for the explanation. I see the point you are making and why they have a decision to make. At this point, it looks like they will pander to both sides when it suits them (neglecting the existence of video evidence) and suppress votes when they can. If what you say is true, they are pretty well screwed by demographics, if not in this election, then in the next 5-10 years.
Cacti
So, the best case scenario for Mittens is he’s polling anywhere from 2-9 percent below McCain’s performance in 2008.
Me likey.
SiubhanDuinne
@kay:
Jeez, Kay, you are so brilliant. I know you’ve said repeatedly that you’re not interested in running for elective office, and I’ll take you at your word, but I would love to see your thoughtful analysis get out to the public in a regular major platform. When John Cole made you a front-pager it was a genius move, and we know that Krugman and TNC and other heavyweights follow this blog at least occasionally, but I want you to be famous. I want you on TV. I want Rachel Maddow to phone you once a week for expert commentary. I want you to write a book that zooms to the top of the NYT best seller list. I want John Kasich and his ilk to quake in their boots at the very sound of your name. In short, I would vote for you, donate to your campaign, and do whatever else might be required to get you a national profile.