Hispanics, except for Cuban exiles, have NEVER looked to the GOP for ANYTHING. They've always supported the Democratic Party, to get FREE STUFF promised them by "Landslide Lint'n" Johnson and others -- straight quid-pro-quo vote-buying. That's why Johnson and Ted Kennedy labored so strenuously to tear down the dam holding back illegal Mexican immigration.
LBJ didn't want immigrants from Vanuatu or Thailand or Peru or southern Europe. He wanted Mexicans because he knew they were pickled in communismo and trabajadores militantes, state-supported market subsidies and price controls on staples and all that Frida Kahlo crap down there. That is exactly and pure-dimensionally LBJ's motive for breaking the border.
And true to form, Mexican and Mexican-American voters have never given the GOP more than about 30-35% of their votes.
Central Americans and South Americans are another story -- they split their votes, and when someone like George W. Bush gets 40% or better Hispanic votes, that is where they're coming from, not from Tejano Democrats or California Aztlanists charmed by George P's Mexican mom.
It really is bizarre how so many Republicans and alleged conservatives believe this utter nonsense that Hispanic immigrants are natural Republicans. You hear it all the time, from dolts like Sean Hannity or people capable of interesting insight like Charles Krauthammer. They persist in this fantasy despite no evidence to back it up.
Republicans always lose the Hispanic vote, and they always have. Reagan (amnesty, romantic rhetoric), Bush I (signed legislation increasing legal immigration, including the absurd Diversity Visa), and Bush II (tried to pass amnesty and massive increase in legal immigration, plus nauseating leftwing rhetoric) were all liberal on immigration, yet Hispanics voted against them all.
You’d think actual voting results would convince them, but believers of this myth say the voting is a result of insensitive and harsh rhetoric from Republicans, and their pursuit of ‘anti-immigrant’ policies. Apparently they also ignore polling data about the views of Hispanics on specific issues. If they bothered looking, they’d see that Hispanics profess liberal views on a whole host of issues. Whether its Obamacare or gun control, they are left of center. And on social issues like gay marriage they are moving left like the rest of society.
I think some of them, deep down, must realize the terrible truth, that it was a huge mistake for the country to ever let Ted Kennedy rewrite immigration policy in the 1960s. And the mistake was compounded by Reagan’s amnesty and the Bush I’s expansion of immigration. They must know that mass immigration was always going to favor the Democrats. But now it seems nothing can be done to stop the flood, so they lash out at those who have spoken the truth and blame them for an inevitable result of mass immigration.