On MTP this Sunday, Republican Florida Sen. Mel Martinez said:
The fact of the matter is that Hispanics are going to be a more and more vibrant part of the electorate, and the Republican Party had better figure out how to talk to them. We had a very dramatic shift between what President Bush was able to do with Hispanic voters, where he won 44 percent of them, and what happened to Senator McCain. Senator McCain did not deserve what he got. He was one of those that valiantly fought, fought for immigration reform, but there were voices within our party, frankly, which if they continue with that kind of rhetoric, anti-Hispanic rhetoric, that so much of it was heard, we're going to be relegated to minority status.
This is no different than what Rove has been saying for years, and which led Bush (and a less cowed McCain) push for comprehensive immigration reform last year. Had that effort been successful, millions of immigrants would've taken the oath of citizenship with Bush's picture in the room. The GOP would've earned a reservoir of good will that would've served them well.
Instead, we know what really happened -- the GOP counterattacked their own president and defeated the bill. John McCain was forced to declare, in a primary debate, that he would now vote against his very own bill. Republicans got the blame and Latinos, Asians, and "others" (which include immigrant groups like Arabs) responded by punishing Republicans at the polls this year:
McCain Obama
White: 55 43
Latino: 31 67
Asian: 35 62
Other: 31 66
This, as you can imagine, is a real problem for the GOP. Check out the Census Bureau's population projections (PDF):
2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050
White
*: 69.4 65.1 61.3 57.5 53.7 50.1
Hispanic: 12.6 15.5 17.8 20.1 22.3 24.4
Black: 12.7 13.1 13.5 13.9 14.3 14.6
Asian: 3.8 4.6 5.4 6.2 7.1 8.0
Other: 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.1 4.7 5.3
(* Non-Hispanic whites. Hispanics can be of any race.)
Now it doesn't take a math genius like Nate Silver to see that Republicans can't win if they lose half the electorate two to one. Throw in the dramatic advantages Democrats have with young voters, and it's clear that the Democratic Party is the party of the future, while the Republicans are still playing as if it was 1980.
Yet watch in 2010, as an unreformed Republican Party tries to play off its old playbook of division and hate. The immigrant bashing was muted this year because of McCain's presence at the top of the ticket. Had Romney been the nominee (or pretty much anyone else), such restraint would've been thrown out the window. They won't have that problem in 2010.
That playbook led them to wage a hateful anti-immigrant campaign in 2006, to ill effect. Their one chance to pick off an entrenched non-freshman Democratic House incumbent this year -- Paul Kanjorski in PA-11 -- fell flat on its face after a practically one-note anti-immigrant effort. The strategy has had zero payoff at the polls, while ensuring that Latinos are an even bigger, more reliable Democratic constituency.
That won't stop some Democrats from freaking out. While I generally don't mind Rahm Emanuel as Obama's chief of staff -- I like his pugnacious partisanship, and I expect that to counteract Obama's tendencies toward conciliation and compromise -- fact is Rahm dedicated the last two years of his tenure with the House leadership fighting to push the Democratic caucus Right on immigration, even getting NC Rep. Heath Shuler to co-sponsor a bullshit anti-immigration bill with the anti-Latino bigot Tom Tancredo.
I know for a fact that prominent party Latinos are viewing Rahm's new perch at the White House with some healthy skepticism. But Rahm has proven that he's nothing if not practical. Hopefully the new data from this election proves to him the wisdom of pursuing a pro-immigrant policy as not just the moral course of action, but the most politically expedient for the near- and long-term health of the Democratic Party.
Comments are closed on this story.