Some good news but mostly bad news for Romney on immigration and the Latino vote

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Given his recent dithering, and more so given his sucking up to the jingoistic, xenophobic right during the primaries, it's good news for Romney that immigration isn't the #1 issue. (A new Gallup poll places it well back of health care and various economic/fiscal issues, at least among registered voters. Latinos generally have it tied for first alongside health care and unemployment.)

The bad news for Romney is that President Obama commands a huge lead among Latinos. The same poll has him up 66 to 25 among registered Latino voters.

In other words, Obama is way up among Latinos even though immigration, an issue on which he has a huge advantage over Romney, isn't a dominant priority for them.

On the one hand, Romney could take comfort here. It likely won't get worse for him on immigration, and so he can try to work to narrow the gap with this key demographic by continuing to blame Obama for not doing enough to fix the economy and by stressing what he claims are his economic bona fides, specifically his business record.

On the other hand, it very well could get worse for him on immigration, not least given the Supreme Court's decision to uphold perhaps the most egregious part of Arizona's draconian anti-immigrant law even as it struck down most of the law on jurisdictional grounds. In response, Romney may not have gone the extremist right-wing Scalia route and railed against illegal immigration (proving that he is fully ideologue and partisan, not dispassionate jurist), but his refusal to take a stand on the ruling, similar to his refusal to take a stand on Obama's executive action implementing the DREAM Act, was telling. He wants nothing to do with immigration as an issue because he knows it's a losing issue for him, but he likely won't be able to avoid it. At some point, he'll have to side with the right-wing extremists who dominate the issue in the Republican Party or take a more sensible approach and alienate Republican voters.

Add to this the fact that most people aren't paying attention (and won't until the campaign gets underway in earnest later in the summer) and Romney's "support" among Latinos could very well go down once Romney's dithering/pandering is contrasted to the president's strong, sensible positioning (and clear personal views), including on yesterday's ruling.

But even if the numbers stay roughly the same, that would mean Obama winning this demographic by an overwhelming margin, putting even more pressure on Romney to pick up even more support among white males, his core demographic. He's well ahead among white males, to be sure, but the question is whether he'll win by enough to offset his losses elsewhere.

Perhaps it won't matter in 2012. Perhaps the Latino vote won't be the difference one way or the other. For Republicans, though, the fact that this fast-growing demographic is overwhelmingly Democratic spells electoral disaster in elections to come. And, Romney's dithering aside, it won't get any better for them if they continue to insist on taking extremist positions on immigration, as well as on other issues that evidently matter a great deal to Latinos, as to so many Americans, like health care.