I know you’ll get flamed for saying that, but I agree with you. It wasn’t the substance of the debate that was unpleasant, it was the tone.
There’s a big difference between guys like Duncan Hunter, who can stand strong against illegals without alienating Hispanics, and guys like Tom Tancredo, who alienated a lot of Cuban-American Republicans with his stupid rant against Miami.
One of the biggest problems we have is the fact that this debate, the wider debate, is being held in the mainstream media. What do most people know about what “most” hispanics supposedly think, except as its presented by the mainstream media?
Who is Geraldo, for example, if not “mainstream media”?
The assumption that hispanics knee-jerk favor illegal immigration comes from, where? There have been polls that, in fact, tell us exactly the opposite, but they get filtered out by, who, the mainstream media.
Tancredo made the mistake of assuming that hispanics would by and large dislike what he was saying, assuming that they are a hegemonic voting bloc, when the truth is quite the opposite, they are not hegemonic, and many would be inclined to agree with him. He assumed it because he gets pounded daily in the press, and by the press’s chosen hispanic spokesmen.
Bush is right that more hispanic voters belong in the GOP. We are the rightful home for many more than there are in the party right now. He was right to make the effort. But he made the mistake of thinking that outreach to hispanic voters meant going easy on illegal immigration. The case for the GOP has to made as a moral one, but who in the media is capable of making the moral case for the GOP? Its usually boiled down to a soundbite about tax cuts, and if thats all you’ve got, you’ve lost the debate.
I have never had any trouble explaining GOP positions to anyone, foreign or domestic, hispanic or otherwise. But it is usually the first time they’ve ever heard Repub views from a Repub mouth. You can’t count on the press to communicate your views for you.
The “illegal” part of the discussion is normally fuzzed away by the media, until it sounds like you’re discussing all immigration, when most GOP’ers I know are very careful to make that distinction. But that never gets transmitted by the press.
For such a xenophobic country, how many legal immigrants do we admit each year? About a million a year. Of that million, xenophobes that we are, which country has pride of place as having the largest quota? Mexico.
You will never hear that in the press, and I doubt many people know that. And Repubs dependent upon the mainstream media to transmit their views are never going to be able to persuade anyone. If they make the mistake of thinking hispanic voters are forever lost to them, they’ll make the mistake Bush made of trying to pander, or that Tancredo made of not trying. Tancredo could have made exactly the case he made, directly to hispanics, and a fair number would have agreed, and most of the others would have respected him anyway.