Latino voters abandon the GOP
By Michael J.W. Stickings
No surprise here:
Okay, but let’s get something straight. Republican candidates didn’t just run “tough-talking campaign ads”. Many of their ads were blatantly racist and hateful. (I wrote a post on these ads before the election — see here.) Not all Republicans are racist and hateful, but how exactly were Latinos to take these ads? They may be socially conservative on some issues, like abortion, but why would they continue to support a party that scapegoats them when it’s politically necessary to find some evil Other to run against? Considering that many Latinos are themselves recent immigrants to the U.S., I suspect they didn’t take too well to these grotesque characterizations.
Certainly there were other reasons for so many Latinos to vote Democratic, just as for other Americans, including Iraq, the incompetence and injustices of the Bush Administration, and the corruption of the Republican Party. But then there was also the Democrats’ emphasis on economic populism. While Republicans were busy targeting Latinos with their racist ire, Democrats were calling for an increase in the minimum wage and for efforts to deal with the negative impacts on domestic labor from the forces of globalization.
The Latino vote has been a cornerstone of Karl Rove’s ongoing effort to build a long-lasting Republican majority in America. And the numbers looked pretty good in ‘04. I wonder if he’s ever taken his party’s lingering bigotry into consideration.
No surprise here:
Two years ago, Latino voters gravitated in larger-than-ever numbers toward President Bush, the former governor of Texas, a Mexican border state, and his brother Jeb, the loquacious Florida governor who speaks fluent Spanish…
How times have changed.
Pollsters generally agree that the same voters abandoned the president’s party in droves during last week’s elections, with Latinos giving the GOP only 30 percent of their vote as strident House immigration legislation inspired by Republicans and tough-talking campaign ads by conservative candidates roiled the community. It was a 10-point drop from the lowest estimated Latino vote percentage two years ago, and a 14-point drop from the highest.
Okay, but let’s get something straight. Republican candidates didn’t just run “tough-talking campaign ads”. Many of their ads were blatantly racist and hateful. (I wrote a post on these ads before the election — see here.) Not all Republicans are racist and hateful, but how exactly were Latinos to take these ads? They may be socially conservative on some issues, like abortion, but why would they continue to support a party that scapegoats them when it’s politically necessary to find some evil Other to run against? Considering that many Latinos are themselves recent immigrants to the U.S., I suspect they didn’t take too well to these grotesque characterizations.
Certainly there were other reasons for so many Latinos to vote Democratic, just as for other Americans, including Iraq, the incompetence and injustices of the Bush Administration, and the corruption of the Republican Party. But then there was also the Democrats’ emphasis on economic populism. While Republicans were busy targeting Latinos with their racist ire, Democrats were calling for an increase in the minimum wage and for efforts to deal with the negative impacts on domestic labor from the forces of globalization.
The Latino vote has been a cornerstone of Karl Rove’s ongoing effort to build a long-lasting Republican majority in America. And the numbers looked pretty good in ‘04. I wonder if he’s ever taken his party’s lingering bigotry into consideration.
posted by Michael J.W. Stickings at
6:00 PM
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