Posted on 05/03/2007 3:01:49 PM PDT by Sleeping Beauty
In 1980, as he was preparing to run for president, Ronald Reagan asked Lionel Sosa, an advertising executive from San Antonio, to lead his outreach to the Hispanic community. Reagan told Sosa his job would be easy: "Latinos are Republican. They just don't know it yet."
On this, as in so many other areas, Reagan was a man who saw the future. In 1984, he made history, receiving 32 percent of the Hispanic vote. President George W. Bush achieved similar results in 2000, and in 2004 won a record 44 percent of the Hispanic vote.
They're not alone. Smart Republicans who have listened to, and offered solutions to, concerns of Hispanic-Americans have done even better: Sixty percent for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, 44 percent for former New York Gov. George E. Pataki and 46 percent for former Colorado Gov. Bill Owens in 2002.
Even in the tough year of 2006, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger collected 40 percent of the Hispanic vote, while Florida Gov. Charlie Crist pulled in 49 percent and Arizona Sen. John Kyl won 41 percent.
These numbers shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who has studied Hispanic voters. Hispanic-Americans tend to be conservative. Last year, pollster David Winston asked registered voters to rate themselves on a 1 to 9 scale from very liberal to very conservative. He found that, overall, the country was center-right and Hispanic-Americans viewed themselves slightly to the right of the country as a whole.
Hispanic outreach is not only natural for the GOP, it is crucial. The Hispanic community is the fastest growing segment of our country, and it is huge. There are 10 million more Hispanics in the U.S. than there are Canadians in Canada. If this population were a Latin American country, it would be the third largest. It would also be the richest. Salsa outsells ketchup and tacos outsell hot dogs. Univision is the channel where more Americans get their evening news than any other. In Nebraska, one out of every eight people under 35 is Hispanic.
Throughout our nation's history, majority political coalitions have been built around welcoming the newest voters into the political process. In 1896, William McKinley built a generational majority by reaching out to immigrants filling America's cities. Democrats built the New Deal majority around Roman Catholic and Jewish ethnics in northern cities who worshipped Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1980, millions of Evangelical Christians became more politically active and President Reagan welcomed them into a GOP majority. The majority party in the 21st century will be the party that reaches out to Hispanics.
There are several steps we can take to ensure that America's fastest-growing and most conservative voter bloc joins the GOP. First, good policy is good politics. To win Hispanic votes, the GOP must be the party of those who aspire to the American Dream. Our founding Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, defined the American Dream as the "right to rise." Most important is equal access to education.
The most direct route from economic struggle to middle class and wealth is through education. This will be even more important in the 21st century. When President Bush took office, two-thirds of black fourth-graders, 60 percent of Hispanic fourth-graders and one-third of white fourth-graders could not read at grade level. No Child Left Behind raised reading and math performance for all Americans and closed the majority-minority gap. We must reauthorize this important law, continuing to ensure that high standards benefit poor, minority and immigrant children who were too often left behind in the past. We must also increase pay for great teachers and those who teach in distressed areas, and empower parents with school choice.
Beyond education, the right to rise means all Americans have access to health insurance if they choose. Hispanic-Americans are, unfortunately, more likely to be without coverage. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 32.7 percent of Hispanic-Americans were without health coverage in 2004, a statistic that has not changed much since. Hispanic workers are more likely to change jobs often or be self employed, which is why President Bush's proposal for parity between workers who get health insurance from their employers and those who purchase it themselves would be helpful and popular in the Hispanic community.
Home ownership has always been an important element of the American Dream, and Hispanic-Americans have made enormous progress thanks to the hard work of many families and the innovative policies of the president. Hispanic home ownership is at an all-time high with 50 percent of Hispanics owning their homes. We must expand the ability of Hispanic families to earn and save more, which is why the tax cuts should be made permanent and why personal retirement accounts should be available to those who live paycheck to paycheck.
Second, good personnel are also critical to politics and policy. Catholic voters paid attention when the Democrats nominated Al Smith in 1928, becoming the Democrats' largest voting group. Lyndon Johnson's appointment of Thurgood Marshall as the first black Supreme Court justice made history and cemented African-American support for the Democrats. President Bush appointed the most diverse administration in history, with the first Hispanic attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, a Hispanic commerce secretary, Carlos M. Gutierrez, and other top officials including former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona, U.S. Treasurer Anna Escobedo Cabral and Israel Hernandez, one of the government's chief export promoters. The first Hispanic to lead one of the national parties is a Republican, Sen. Mel Martinez (Fla.), the GOP general chairman. We must work harder to identify and recruit future Hispanic leaders to run for office under the GOP banner.
Finally, on the critical and sometimes divisive issue of immigration, we should again follow the lead of President Reagan. One of his greatest gifts was to embrace "the politics of 'and.' " Before Reagan, those who favored peace with the Soviets argued with those who counseled strength. Proponents of controlling inflation debated those who argued for reducing unemployment. Reagan argued and showed that these zero-sum debates didn't have to be either-or. We had peace through strength. And through tax relief and sound money, we reduced unemployment and inflation.
On immigration, our nation should embrace "the politics of 'and'" by ensuring we develop a comprehensive approach that maintains the U.S. as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. We need to secure our borders for all Americans: Whether your family has been in the U.S. for five generations or five weeks, your life is at risk if a terrorist can enter. We need to establish workplace enforcement that is certain and fair, both for employers and employees. And America must always remain, as Reagan imagined it, "a shining city … teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports, … and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here."
Reaching out to Hispanics is critical to our future. The fastest-growing, and most conservative, segment of the population are natural Republicans. The question is whether we will reach out and welcome these new voters into our ranks. While I don't yet speak Spanish, there is one phrase I memorized as Republican National Committee chairman: "Mi partido es su partido." ("My party is your party.")
Only 2% of illegal aliens... that is TWO PERCENT... work in agriculture.
No. Apparently you don't want to respond because you can't support your contention. Big difference.
Thank you! More than half my living family is hispanic. They are disgusted with the state of things today, as are most good citizens.
You know, where I live (San Diego) each and every morning 60,000 of my (white) neighbors get in their cars and drive to Mexico every day to go to work.I live in San Diego also, and I notice more the tens of thousands of Mexicans that come over the border to work each day at jobs that used to belong to Americans. Go to any construction job; you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone white doing any job.
Well, we could put those 60,000 American electronic workers to work as construction laborers in the US.
Then, we can train the Mexican construction laborers to do electronic fabrication in Mexico -- inside of clean, air-conditioned factories -- so the whites don't collect those wages.
Then everyone will be really, really happy. (At least the Mexicans will.)
There are 600 year old Mexicans here?
THESE Mexicans are NOT AMERICANS. THIS is the U.S.A. and they have no claim to our land.
Are you a member of La Raza or something?
Honey, I don't know what you are referring to?
This thread is about Dan Mehlman suggesting that the GOP needs the support of Hispanic voters (who are traditionally conservative voters) in order to win the White House in 2008.
Dan Mehlman wrote this article. Not me. I don't even know if I agree with him.
From San Diego to where? Tijuana? I find that really hard to believe. Care to back it up?
If we compromise our sovereignty and our laws to win the Hispanic vote through favoritism, then no it is not worth it, it is pandering and can only lead to no good.
This pandering through favoritism toward Hispanics is already causing a great deal of resentment among citizens, and can only get worse if it continues.
He who has the most SPINE can win the next election. Americans respect integrity, and are craving it on this issue.
Yes, I said AMERICANS, i.e., U.S. citizens.
Statistics seem to indicate that the majority of “Hispanic” voters are not conservative voters.
Pandering to ILLEGAL ALIENS won’t win the WH in 08.
Just out of curiosity, what was the party affiliation of the president who twisted arms to get the necessary votes? And this was the same president who voted it into law?
Point is that this act and the affiliated party colored the voting behavior of minorities in this country.
Typically the immigrant population is very conservative but if the GOP seems hateful in its approach to immigration reform, the risk is the same.
Forcing Americans to do a job they don't want or can not do is entirely impractical especially when the job is as physically demanding as construction labor.
Then, we can train the Mexican construction laborers to do electronic fabrication in Mexico -- inside of clean, air-conditioned factories -- so the whites don't collect those wages.
Who is "we"? Let the employer(s) train them. And the reason the manufacturers moved their factories to Mexico is so they could pay less than America's minimum wage; it's not a wage 'whites' or anyone living in America with our cost of living would want.
Then everyone will be really, really happy. (At least the Mexicans will.)
Many display the same cavalier attitude toward ILLEGAL aliens right up until they lose their job to one. It's how we have gotten in the dire situation we are in now. The fact is they’re no longer coming here to pick lettuce. They’re coming here to take every American job they can. That includes yours.
It is? Since when... and since when has respect for law and order been viewed as “hateful”?
These people march in our streets with their country’s flag and DEMAND of us. They have “brown berets” and organizations like La Raza. That’s “hateful”, if anything is. Any political party that panders to illegal aliens is not a party I care to support.
Yeah...they're going to TJ every day to get in on the awesome wages paid at the maquiladoras.
Who is Dan Mehlman? At the top, it says that Ken Mehlman wrote the article...
My point was it is widely misconstrued that the demomcRATs passed the CRA when they did not. It was passed by Republicans in spite of the fact that it was filibustered by dems Al Gore Sr. and Robert KKK Byrd.
“WE ARE NOT A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS - WE ARE A NATION OF CITIZENS!!!
CITIZENS WHO ARE BEING THROWN UNDER THE BUS EACH AND EVERY DAY BY OUR ELECTED SO-CALLED “LEADERS”!!!”
Thank YOU, Sarge !!!!
Who is it that “hates” Hispanics? Let’s clear that up.
The truth is, that here in California, the Mexican/Salvadoran/Guatemalan/Honduran illegals are the most noticeable and prominent population explosion. No doubt, there are illegals from other countries, and that includes the Chinese, some of whom tried to sneak in via cargo ships. But you cannot deny that the easiest migration/invasion route is from south of our border and that masses have come in this way. And you cannot deny that they fill our hospital emergency rooms and delivery rooms... anchor babies.
I work in hospitals in L.A. and do not see Chinese in our ERs. I do see many Chinese here on student visas, filling the universities and as resident aliens, working in the hospitals.
However, the prevalence of the Spanish language is the giveaway here. You won’t like me saying this, but the Hispanic illegals are given preference over all others. We are fast becoming a bi-cultural and bilingual state. You do not see Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc., languages as available as Spanish.
Where can you call, in this day and age, and not have to “press 1 for English,” with Spanish being the other language that is accommodated. We are beginning to see billboards entirely in Spanish, ads on and in public buses, etcetera. Western Union now has convenient locations within our supermarkets for them to wire money to Latin America.
If we point all of this out, in addition to being aggravated by some of their “cultural” habits, are we “hating” or are we just being honest and un-PC...?
The “no holds barred”, draconian “reform” that some people are talking about means splitting up families and destroying the lives of many people whose only crime was coming here outside the process. The majority of illegal aliens in this country are otherwise law abiding and productive.
The borders have to be protected against enemies and more numbers then we can sustain but the idea of hunting down those who are here now, except felons, is unduly hurtful and unnecessary.
Given the grevious economic conditions and lack of opportunity in Mexico, a young father would be evil to allow a shallow river and paperwork keep him from feeding his family.
You certainly have all the ACLU/NGO talking points down pat.
Say, you wouldn’t be a retread or sleeper account of Dane, would you?
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