Emailed excerpts from that article in
Time (which still exists, surprisingly):
Pollsters in both parties believe that just softening the tone could move GOP numbers dramatically. Most Latinos still point to bread-and-butter issues like jobs and the economy as chief concerns, and on the specifics of how immigration policies should be reformed, there is a diversity of Latino opinion. … Obama still faces his own climb back with many Latino voters. After promising to implement immigration reform in his first year in office—and winning 67% of the Latino vote in 2008—Obama opted instead to push health care reform and global-warming bills. At the same time, he has overseen a dramatic increase in deportations. … [A] January poll by Univision and Latino Decisions found that 37% of Hispanics said Democrats did not care about their vote and 9% characterized Democrats as hostile.”
It's true that there is a great deal of disenchantment among Latinos for President Barack Obama and his administration. The lack of progress on comprehensive immigration reform grates, but nothing like the bragging by Janet Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security about the
record number of deportations the last several years.
Now in campaign mode, Obama has taken some steps to ease those deportations, but people aren't forgetting that easily.
However, anyone interpreting that discontent as an opening for Republicans is seriously kidding themselves. Nine percent of Latinos are hostile to the administration? Heavens! Of course, those are Cubans in Miami, who live to hate on Democrats, so big freakin' deal. Fact is, Latinos continue to give Obama some of his best numbers.
More below the fold.
According to our most recent Daily Kos/SEIU weekly poll, African Americans give Obama an 85 percent approval, Latinos are at 66 percent, while whites are at 40 percent.
And those numbers don't represent some recent improvement. Here's the last few months of Obama's approval rating among whites, African Americans and Latinos:
Latinos may not be enamored with Obama, but there's no opening for Republicans. It's no different than the way many of us feel about the president—we think he could be doing better, but we're not about to vote Republican as a result.
And why would they? There's nothing that drives Latinos more nuts than Arizona's racist SB 1070, and the GOP rhetoric employed to justify it. And if there was ever any doubt about the ability of this current crop of Republicans to win significant Latino support, Mitt Romney eliminated it during last night's debate:
KING: [...] You've talked to the governor about self-deportation [of undocumented immigrants], if businesses do their job, asking for the right documents, the people will leave. What about arresting? Should there be aggressive, seek them out, find them and arrest them as the Sheriff Arpaio advocates?
ROMNEY: You know, I think you see a model in Arizona.
And if Santorum gets the nomination?
SANTORUM: [...] But I think what we need to do is to give law enforcement the opportunity to do what they're doing here in Arizona and what Sheriff Arpaio was doing before he ran into some issues with the federal government, which is to allow folks to enforce the law here in this country, to allow people who are breaking the law or suspicious of breaking the law to be able to be detained and deported if they're found here in this country illegally, as well as those who are trying to seek employment.
This is enforcing not just upon the employer, but on those who are here illegally and trying to do things that are against the law, like seeking employment here.
Obama will win 70 percent, if not more, of the Latino vote. McCain at least had some residual good will because of historical efforts to address immigration reform (which he dropped during the campaign, but like I said, "residual"). Neither Romney nor Santorum get those benefits of the doubt, and their rhetoric is far more overtly hostile and extreme than McCain's ever was.
And while that may make asshole Republicans feel smug and self-righteous, it means that Nevada will be out of reach for them, Colorado will be an uphill climb, Florida will be tougher nuts to crack, Arizona will be in play, and even states like Virginia and North Carolina—which should be reverting Red this year—will remain competitive because of explosive Latinos growth.
And that's just talking about 2012. The GOP's long-term prospects will look even worse. Because no matter how much they wish it was still 1950, that America no longer exists.
