Latino voters abandon the GOP

November 18, 2006

Guest Post by Michael J.W. Stickings

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. (For the specifics, I wrote a post at The Reaction 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 is 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.

Amazing to me that people would make abortion an issue. The Dems position is if you don’t want to have an abortion you don’t have to. That should settle it, but people want to tell other people what they can’t do.

Since we’ve had to put up with Bush and Rove so long, hopefully they have screwed things up so bad that they have cancelled Jeb out of the presidential picture.

I wonder if Repbulicans will get all misty eyed about Bush in a few years like they did that overspending criminal, Reagon.

  • Hopefully Jeb’s out of the picture, Dale. I just don’t think American can afford another Bush in the Oval Office.

    I can’t see Bush being turned into a figure of Reagan’s stature, but with time (and if they succeed in blaming the Iraq fiasco on liberals), it could happen.

  • The GOP to minorities:
    1. We’ll pretend to love you. Until we need to hate you.
    2. Vote for us even when we hate you because you’re too stupid to remember what we said about you three minutes ago.
    3. Pay no attention to those voter intimidation tactics!

    I have no way of proving this but I wonder if the Evangelical/Republican made-in-hell marriage also helped turn off some Catholic Latino voters. Anyone familiar with the standard Evan. line on Catholics would want to take flee anyone associated with them (perhaps while firing over their shoulder).

    So long as ReThug leaders continue to see themselves as the natural masters of the universe they’ll continue to make the same mistakes and continue to wonder why almost everyone spits at them. Fine by me. Organisms that won’t learn and adapt belong in nature’s big ol’ graveyard, not in power.

  • It wasn’t just Latinos; Jewish support for Bush had dropped by about 14% this cycle, also. 87% voted for Dems, and I bet the numbers in CT skewed it for the rest of the country 🙂

    It was a comprehnsive “I do not like thee, doctor Fell”. In spades, since most people *could*, actually tell the reason why.

    And yes, I too am a night owl…

  • Karl Rove is not God; therefore, he cannot build the house-of-cards for his pet pachyderm, while the pachyderm bellows, bleats, and bumbles about….

  • “I wonder if [Karl’s] ever taken his party’s lingering bigotry into consideration.”

    Well, to be fair, the bigotry is limited to a few politicians (Allen maybe?) and a big chunk of THE BASE. What is immoral here is the politicians who aren’t bigots but who play to the bigotry of THE BASE (Mehlman, I talking about you).

    That’s what is particularly wrong and that is what should enlighten Catholics, Hispanics, Women, and African-Americans about the nature of the Republican’t party.

    Republican’ts, can’t restrain themselves from playing the race card.

  • Jewish support for Bush had dropped by about 14% this cycle, also.

    Not surprising with humanoids like Krazy Kat Harris praying that God bring the Jewish people “into alignment” (whatever the hell she meant by that) and all of the “Be a good Christian, vote Repulican” crap.

    I’m sure ShrubCo thought supporting Israel would be sufficient. No one would wonder if the “support” (words) had anything to do with the screwed up Evan. belief that the Biblical End Game will start there. “Psst! Hey Israel, when God shows up, tell Him we’re friends, so He’ll like us, ‘kay? Please? I was only kidding when I said you’ll go to Hell if you don’t accept Jesus…I’ll let you have the doughnut my mom packed in my lunch.”

    Gah! Politics as playground antics. Thank God recess is over and teachers Pelosi & Reid have their rulers out.

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