GOP 'Outreach' to Hispanics Won't Work

It’s funny watching all the Bush administration alums on Fox despairing over the necessity of outreach to the Hispanic community. (Also at PJ Media, “Yes, George W. Bush Might Well Be the Last Republican President.”)  These were the same people who refused to “dignify” the rabid coordinated leftist attacks on President Bush with a response. It would “just prolong the story,” they told us.

We are still suffering from their failure to understand the left and fight back, as seen by the fact that Ohio exit polls showed voters still blamed Bush for the bad economy. That’s what I call prolonging a story.

All the talk about “appealing” to Hispanics by rewarding the lawlessness of illegal immigration is another example of some Republicans failing to understand the enemy on the left.  Racial interest groups beholden to the Democrat Party will not stand down simply because the Republican Party endorses a form of amnesty.  To hope that Hispanics will politically drift to the GOP after immigration concessions overlooks the racial stranglehold groups like the NAACP and La Raza (yes, “The Race”) have over political dialogue and organizing.

I saw the same Bush-era racial naivete play out in 2006 when Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was up for renewal.  Many in the GOP viewed the renewal as a “chance to reach out to minorities.”  Sound familiar?

The Bush administration and the then-chairman of the House Judiciary Committee deliberately decided to give the NAACP and the other racial groups whatever they wanted in the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act.  The offer was accepted and the NAACP and MALDEF asked for the reversal of two Supreme Court cases by statute that had the effect of allowing “any” discriminatory effect to justify an objection to a law under the Voting Rights Act. (I have written about the complicated legal changes extensively here at PJ Media and will not do so again in this post.)  This 2006 change was directly responsible for blocking voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina in 2010 and citizenship verification laws in Georgia in 2009.

The Republicans were proud of their minority outreach in the summer of 2006.  President Bush signed the law in a White House ceremony with the race hustler Al Sharpton and other familiar faces in attendance. Surely this “outreach” would buy peace for the Republicans, right?

Voting Rights Act signing ceremony

Wrong. No sooner had the ink dried on the paper than all of the race groups turned on President Bush. The next two years heard a constant drumbeat in the media and from some of the same people invited to the signing ceremony that Bush was an “enemy of minority rights.” The racial groups were particularly venomous toward the administration.

Voting Rights Act signing ceremony

The same thing will happen if the Republican party compromises on amnesty. The GOP will think they have bought peace and will use the concession to “outreach” to Hispanics, but the multi-million dollar interest groups won’t abide.

Understand something — I have been ambivalent about the immigration issue for many years.  But the vote this week was extremely racially polarized, and deliberately so. Sixty-two percent of whites voted for Romney.  Ninety percent of black voters and 71% of Hispanic voters went for Obama.  That’s how the race groups working for the Democrat Party want it. They are very very effective at keeping the races politically polarized.

Those numbers are frightening, and no amount of traditional “outreach” is going to change them, even a new-found acceptance of illegal immigration. Those calling for outreach to minorities are only half right. Something needs to be done, but they naively prescribe the mistakes of the past that will forever alter the demographic character of America, without altering the vote totals for the GOP. In time, the electoral percentages will actually grow worse for the GOP after concessions on immigration.  More drastic and daring efforts are needed.

There is only one way to obtain the support of Hispanics and other minorities eventually.  Conservatives must first confront and destroy the credibility of the racial interest groups that serve as the gatekeepers to these communities. Once-relevant and noble groups like the NAACP, and others less noble such as LULAC and MALDEF, must be exposed as the frauds that they have become in 2012. Their finances and racialist agenda must be revealed and lampooned. Their racial extortion of corporate America must be confronted. The entire political operation of these groups must be vivisected by some of the brightest investigative and journalistic conservative minds.

Otherwise, the skilled and experienced racial-antagonism operation of these racial organizations will keep the herd together, voting in solid blocks no matter how much “outreach” the GOP conducts after agreeing to amnesty.

Here is the problem: few in the Republican Party have the guts to do it. They fear being called racists more than they fear losing elections. They would rather suffer a dozen defeats like Tuesday night than be called racist for going after the corrupt racial groups that prevent GOP outreach to minorities.

In fact, many elected Republicans, including some governors, fear the wrath of these organizations as much as the arrival of the pox. Nothing terrifies them more than an NAACP press conference.

So the talking heads and bloggers can moan about the need to “reach out” to minorities. But until Republicans find the guts to go after the well-funded groups that churn racial antagonism and keep minorities politically in line, nothing will work.  You can’t appeal to minorities when a thick fearless establishment funded with hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate and foundation money is working to preserve the status quo, and nobody has the guts to fight them.