Political Ticker is reporting that Latino voters in California are annoyed with GOP front runner Mitt Romney over his ads attacking rival Rick Santorum for voting in 1998 to confirm Sonia Sotomayor for the district court. That vote, the radio ads allege, put her on the way to becoming a justice of the Supreme Court.
Romney’s people say the ads target Sotomayor’s liberal stances. But first of all, she isn’t that liberal. And second, it is impossible to complain about Santorum helping Sotomayor’s career without appearing, at least, to be anti-Latino/ Latina.
In opinion polling last fall, Obama led his Republican rivals among Latinos by a factor of 2.5 to 1.
Latinos could provide the margin of victory in the 15 crucial swing states of: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.
I read somewhere that if a presidential candidate doesn’t get 40 percent of the Latino vote nowadays, he or she cannot win.
Romney hasn’t started out on the right foot.
Romney just doesn’t miss a chance to shoot himself in the foot. You would think that Romney’s Mexican heritage might give him an in with hispanics, but then bringing up his connections with Mexico might not sit well with Sheriff Joe Arpaio constituency.
One Republican candidate may have a Mexican heritage, but they all are human beings (or at least have a human-being heritage), and the anti-people, anti-women, anti-poor, etc. attitudes — proudly trumpeted — seem to me as contrar7y to THAT heritage. But, then, I am an old guy who grew up when FDR was a fairly people-friendly Democrat 9even tho rich himself — showing it could be done if the politician were humane).
In a declining country it looks easier to push people out of the lifeboat.
Romney’s Mexican heritage has little to do with Mexican’s and has all to do with following orders from Brigham Young to colonize the large swatch of land from upper Canada, America and into Mexico for the country Young wanted to carve out of America and call it Beehive, under Young’s rule. Brigham Young declared War on the United States shortly after the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
Romney’s settled in an all white, Mormon polygamist colony to continue practicing polygamy. So no Mexican/Latino’s involved in Romney’s Mexican heritage.
Latino voters are not monolithic. 70% of Latinos in the US are of Mexican or Mexican American origin. They could care less about Sotomayor who is of Puerto Rican origin. For all they care, she could be Chinese American.
Both Democrats and Republicans make a grave political error when they lump all Latinos together. In addition the largest concentrations on Mexican Americans are in Texas (a settled red state) and California (a blue state).The only states where they can really influence the elections are Colorado and New Mexico, the rest are just wishful thinking.
Caring about Sonia Sotomoyor, and caring about racially-charged attack politics, are two different things.
It’s true that different Latino groups have different organizations and issues, but none of them are cook with anything that looks like Latino-bashing.
It’s similar to the occasional attempts by Republicans to appeal to black voters with anti-immigrant appeals. It might be true that a certain set of black voters don’t like the Central American immigrants who have begun moving into their neighborhoods and “taking their jobs,” but you know what those black voters like even less? Some redneck conservative campaigning on a racist platform. Whatever his target that day, anyone who has been or who can imagine himself being in the cross hairs of that type of rhetoric knows what it sounds like, and doesn’t take kindly to those who employ it.
Funny you should say that Joe. Just this past Wednesday I had a back and forth on FB about a prejudicial comment directed towards Muslims. It was written by a black man.
Also, just recently in Tel Aviv, the grand chief of the assembly of first nations as well as representatives from other aboriginal victims of colonialism put their stamp of approval on Israel’s colonization of Palestine.
I think what is at work in both cases is a desperate attempt by the people involved to be seen as one of the “in” crowd maybe, certainly seems counter intuitive but I have observed the anti Islam sentiments among African Canadian people for some time now.
I think a more likely explanation, Yusuf, is that you are seeing the politics of other people through the lens of your own political orientation, and reducing the complexities of what other people are saying by looking at them only in terms of a thumbs up or down for your own politics.
Yeah, yeah, Mexican Americans don’t find Puerto Rican Jennifer Lopez sexy at all. Too racially different. If Rush Limbaugh called her a slut Californian and Texan Hispanics wouldn’t come to her defense at all. Sure.
If you haven’t noticed, they’ve all got the same cable TV stations now. They watch shows from South America. They hear the same pop songs. Some of them even know that the people of South America kicked out almost every US-backed neoliberal regime in a wave of radical discontent against the rich and now enjoy an economic renaissance.
Where does identity come from, anyway?
Here is an article on the subject.
In the Spring of 1966
Romney protested in favor of Vietnam War, yet took deferment to French mansion by Timothy Whiteman from the Wilmington Political Buzz Examiner
Photo of Mitt Romney located on the article.
link to examiner.com
Romney has never been on the right foot. Like Mitt’s dad George Romney, Mitt has a knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
At least when George said the wrong thing about being deceived by the Administration about Vietnam, it was an honest truth.
I read where Mitten’s protested FOR the Vietnam war while at Stanford, where Mitt was a poor student. I am checking the source to see it they are correct. At any rate. Mitt had a low draft number and successful avoid going to Nam by going on his mission to France ( living in the mission presidents mansion staffed with a chef and housekeepers.). After his mission Romney married quickly-
That definitely qualifies him to be a Republican presidential candidate.
I believe the judge’s first name is Sonia, and she was confirmed for the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit after a long drawn out process in the Senate in October 1998.
The “Fox News Latino” news website has a poll (*I have not read the internals*) that says 73% of Latinos approve of Barack’s performance in office. The most approved of GOP candidate if Mr Romney (35%) and the least is Mr Santorum (9%). Of the 31% of Latinos who voted for Mr McCain, only about 1/2 would vote Repub again.
And ditto what Mr RW said above.
Think RW needs to update his database. The percentage of New Mexico’s population that was Hispanic in 2009 was 47%, the highest of any state. Hispanics also made up at least one fifth of the population in California and Texas, at 37 percent each, followed by Arizona (31 percent), Nevada (26 percent), Florida (22 percent) and Colorado (20 percent).
It’s all about turnout. RW may not be aware of the use of Voter ID (overtly) and voter intimidation by flyers and poll watchers (covertly) to drive away Hispanic citizens. The states with the most Hispanics have the whites who most want to intimidate them, ergo Arizona. Texas Hispanics have been very conservative (watch John Sayles’ movie “Lone Star”, which pokes fun at Rio Grande Valley 2nd-generation immigrants who despise 1st-generation illegals). But when I look on the streets of Houston, I see Latino kids who entirely rely on African-American pop culture as their guide into America. Combined with the above-mentioned Spanish-language tv, they inhabit a very different cultural space than the GOP wishes to enforce.
Ultimately, the only solution for the threat of non-whites that serves both the corporate wing and “cultural” purity wing of the GOP is mass disenfranchisement, followed by not deportation but permanent serfdom in privatized labor prisons, etc. That would be as great a disaster for free labor in America as slavery was, so it will be interesting to see how ALEC’s attempts to covertly enact the legal foundations for this atrocity will develop.
Some more current stats, Melissa: the 2010 Census gives NM’s breakdown as
Anglo 40.5
Hispanic 46.3
Native American 8.5
African American 1.7
Asian 1.3
Other 1.8
In New Mexico, Hispanics make up a significant part of the government – and are, in fact, the primary ethnic group!
Census numbers are of no use for Hispanic populations in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. There are so many Mexicans, both legal(green carders) and illegals counted that they distort the voting numbers. Instead look at the numbers from voter registrations. You will find the percentages much lower.
As I understand it, in New Mexico, Mexican-Americans are very active in the Republican party as well as the Democratic party. I think the current governor of NM is Hispanic woman but I am not sure.
RW, you are missing the larger point of the Hispanic spread throughout the Midwest, Deep South and eventually everywhere, which is built into the structure of capitalism:
1. Right-wing states cater to corporate demands.
2. Corporations and executives want employees to get subhuman wages.
3. The Red states look the other way as employers bring in thousands of legal and illegal Hispanics for that purpose.
4. When these new residents show up on the Census, it gives the Red states more representation even though it’s still the same old whites picking racist representatives.
5. When the number of Hispanic babies being born in the Red states (meaning citizens) becomes so large that whites are clearly going to lose control of the state some day, suddenly the whites pass harsh anti-immigrant laws and talk about taking the babies’ citizenship away.
6. Then when the Red states try to enforce these laws, like the embarassing detainment of German car execs in Alabama, the states find that their use of cheap brown labor to attract union-busting European and Japanese capital puts them in an impossible situation.
Tactically, there’s no difference in attracting Mexican immigrants to inflate Red State numbers in Congress than there was in slaveowners desperately building up the number of slaves they had to preserve Southern dominance in the pre-Civil War Congress; either way the increased numbers are of non-voting people who are the sworn enemy of those who “represent” them. How tenable does this sound in the long run? South Africa, anyone? Israel?
In all those cases, the longer the deformity between democracy and demographics grows, the more impossible it is for the whites to compromise. 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants tend to be a lot more liberal than 1st generation. They must become a majority in Red states to preserve the race to the bottom of wages, but if they actually vote, those aren’t Red states anymore.