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Latinos and President Huckabee
By Luke Visconti
January 22, 2008
We think a good case can be made that the very people who will decide the next election are only being addressed obliquely, and even then, only in a negative way.
According to a recent poll conducted by The New York Times, the No. 1 issue driving Republican voters in Iowa was, overwhelmingly, immigration. The word "amnesty," which Ronald Reagan used to describe his sweeping immigration reform in 1987, is now an epithet. The winner in Iowa, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, made a leap in one week from his righteous debate statement "In all due respect, we are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did" to announcing his plan to force between 12 million and 20 million undocumented workers to register within 120 days or face deportation and banishment for 10 years.
The growing virulence of the Republican talk about "walls" and "lawbreakers" has led to the GOP losing every bit of Latino support it benefited from in the 2000 elections. Documented Latino immigrants and their progeny understand that hate talk doesn't discriminate between those with documents and those without.
There's a lesson here for the Democrats. Although we do see a link between the good will generated by white voters in Iowa who supported Sen. Barack Obama and white people nationwide, there is no evidence that this translates in any significant way to Latino voters.
The Democratic Party, which could benefit from the negative feelings the Republicans have generated, doesn't seem to have either the conviction, the insight or possibly the courage to speak plainly about immigration. Perhaps they feel that the negatives outweigh the potential positives in this approach.
Bad idea: As is the case in selling any product, the absence of a negative is only a compelling case for commodity pricing. If Latinos come out and vote for president, it is likely we will see a Democratic victory. However, negative feelings for Republicans are not enough to get Latinos to take action and get off the couch to vote against them. Translating a web site into Spanish isn't going to move the needle.
That's why there may be a good case to be made for getting used to the concept of President Huckabee at the current juncture.
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