When All You Have Is a Hammer
Via Pat Dollard, a Washington Post story you can’t afford to miss:
President Obama and his political aides privately acknowledge that the government’s decision to sue Arizona over its new immigration law is helping to fuel an anti-immigration fervor that could benefit some Republicans in elections this fall.
But White House officials have concluded that, over the long term, the Republicans’ get-tough message is a major political miscalculation. They predict it will ultimately alienate millions of Latinos, the fastest-growing minority group in the nation.
I’m not sure this will work out the way Obama expects — unless he and the Democrats (and a few select Republicans) get amnesty-plus-citizenship for millions and millions of illegals. I’m also not sure this is the best week for the Administration to be playing the race card, especially so explicitly and provocatively in a lead story in one of the nation’s most important newspapers.
And further along in the story:
“Look: The Republicans, if you do the math, cannot be successful as a national party if they continue to alienate Latinos,” said one Democratic strategist familiar with White House thinking on the issue.
The Democrats, if you do the math, cannot be successful as a national party if they continue with policies that have Latinos unemployed at a rate nearly 30% higher than the national average.
“in one of the nation’s most important newspapers”…
Point taken. But fortunately (or unfortunately?), this is getting less true every day.
Are they correct in their assumption that the way to win the Latino citizens is to cater to illegal aliens? To some degree, yes. But that degree is more limited than they imagine and it’s doubtful this strategy will win enough extra votes to overcome the voters they alienate.
I’m often amused by those Democrat political experts who see “Latinos” as some monolithic bloc, rather than a vastly varied set of cultural heritages, which aren’t all southern US Mexican. My South American wife gets REALLY annoyed when someone assumes that she is Mexican because she has brown skin and speaks Spanish. Cubans aren’t Mexicans aren’t Puerto Ricans aren’t Hondurans aren’t Bolivians aren’t Chileans etc.
Secondly, there’s the presumption that this monolithic Latino bloc is all pro-illegal. Not so for many who came here the legal way, and resent the assumption that they also came illegally.
Thirdly, they tend to ignore the fact that, outside of Chicano Studies majors, Aztlan dreamers, and Che admirers, most immigrants from Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and South America are generally religious, family-oriented, and desire to make it on their own, and for their children to have opportunities they didn’t. In addition, many of them are here because they desire to live in a country without political repression, corrupt law enforcement, flawed economic policies, and one party politics. That makes them decidedly NOT fans of socialist smelling schemes.
Having said that, there IS a danger that Republicans will alienate many of these folks by doing the same – lumping everyone into the same basket. I think an immigration reform policy that makes it easier to immigrate legally would be seen as a positive step, after which turning the screws on illegal immigration would be less contentious (except for Chicano Studies majors, Aztlan dreamers, Che admirers, drug smugglers, and the coyotes who prey on decent folks just looking for a better life)
Good points, Gil! I learned the first one from watching Carlos Mencia. Haven’t caught the recent shows, but he used to crack on how Mexicans can’t stand Salvadoreans, and so on.
One thing that bugs me is that the Republicans are dumb enough to allow cracks like “anti-immigrant” by every single day. Except for the rare genuine bigot, very few border activists (it’s better than “anti-immigrant”) are opposed to legal immigration.
Maybe we should highlight Democratic Party abortion policies for those groups.
What isn’t helping are folks like Michelle Malkin, who sounds completely unhinged when it comes to immigration policy.