I couldn't help but admire the beauty of Harry Reid's frontal assault on the Republican party over immigration:
"I don't know how anyone of Latino heritage could be a Republican, OK?" Reid said. "Do I need to say more?"
This blunt language encapsulated the basic argument the entire Democratic Party has to make to Latino people: hostility to minorities is held by the far right majority of the Republican Party. No matter the group, one can almost feel the seething disgust the GOP has for people they don't like. This is obvious to people who can see it and are honest about it, including plenty of people in the Republican Party who are genuinely disgusted by racism. But those folks are increasingly being forced out of the party as it turns its moral center away from big business and Christian evangelicals in favor of white supremacists and extremists.
Harry Reid may have been speaking something that usually lingers just below the surface of political debate in this country. Simply put, there is one party that welcomes people of all colors and faiths, and there is one that does not. Therefore, it is a rather curious thing to find people of color becoming leaders of a party that is openly hostile to people of color. Despite the hostility, the GOP does produce them. Michael Steele, Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio come to mind. There is a strand of the GOP that puts ideology before all, even if the results of that ideology have negative effects on minorities. Still, it isn't difficult to join Harry Reid in asking why anyone of color would want to join the Republican Party.
The majority of the GOP is openly hostile to Latinos. The Arizona racial profiling law they passed is good proof. The reason for this hostility has many different causes. But regardless of motive, it is clear that when Republicans talk about border fences, troops on the border, crime on the border, securing the border, you name it on the border...they mean Latinos. They mistakenly believe that a large number of Spanish-speaking people with higher birthrates poses a threat to white supremacy. This is root cause of the hostility from radical new majority of the Republican Party. It shouldn't be any surprise that large numbers of Latino voters are turning to the one party that is not openly hostile to them.
I don't know why anyone of color would become a Republican either, but I do know that Harry Reid came as close to saying what Black Americans have known to be true: the Republican Party is, increasingly, a party of bigots. There may have been a near time when the GOP consisted mainly of people extremely hostile to government taxation and spending on behalf of the poor. The fact that the poor happened to be for the most part minorities was coincidental. They were just as opposed to taxation and spending on behalf of poor whites. Those folks are now the few in the party. This new GOP is becoming little more than a hate group. Muslims, people of color, gays, liberals...basically anyone not like them is an existential threat to their supremacy. The fact that Harry Reid was open about bringing it up is new. We should applaud him for courageously bringing it to the surface.
Politically, Harry Reid's frontal assault on the GOP is brilliant. While it may strike those who follow the conventional wisdom as costing him a large chunk of the white vote, Reid's move struck exactly the right tone for the majority of white voters in Nevada. A Pew exit poll discovered that Latinos made up 15 percent of the vote in Nevada in 2008. They broke overwhelmingly for Obama: he carried 78 percent of the vote. Combine that with the 10 percent of the Nevada vote that is African-American, and Harry Reid only needs 45 percent of the white vote to win Nevada 55 to 43 just like Obama did. That's a huge landslide. Therefore, if Harry Reid can limit Angle's playing field towards a smaller and smaller group of exclusively white voters, she is going to have a hell of a time winning. She's going to have to carry a huge majority of the white vote in a state that has a slight Democratic registration advantage. The Latino vote in Nevada has become indispensable.
Beyond the obvious political benefit of Harry Reid's attack, however, is the nerve this topic touches among Republicans. Smart Republicans like Karl Rove see the writing on the wall: without a significant Latino vote, the Republican party will be a permanent minority party. New York and California are gone for good. Florida is in the process of folding. Texas isn't far off. But because of their bigoted base, the GOP is forced into talking about altering the Constitution just to keep Latinos out. Deep down, they know this is a battle they cannot win over the long haul. That is what made Reid's words penetrating, controversial, and brilliant. If Democrats want to make a real fight to lock in the Latino vote for a generation, following Reid's lead is the way to go.
