Quote:
Originally Posted by FlyWf
The idea that they can flip flop on immigration to court Latinos doesn't make a lot of sense.
1) It presumes that Latinos are single issue voters on the issue of amnesty. But they aren't? This is the big Republican problem. Man, Latinos are PEOPLE. Just like whites they hold a variety of values and interests and balance them. Also, P.S., it's pretty racist and insulting to think that just because someone's family comes from Puerto Rico or whatever they care a lot about Mexican illegals.
2) But OK, let's pretend it's true, so the GOP flip flops here. Will they get the Democrats to start talking about building the dang wall? How do you frame this flip flop to get voters? "We grudgingly accept that there are enough of you dirty ******** around that we can't publicly support SB1070 anymore, and my opponent has been right on immigration all along. Rand Paul 2016!"
The idea that Latinos vote D because Rs oppose amnesty is getting the causal relationship all twisted. Anti-immigration laws are symptoms of GOP racism, actual voters are already citizens. Latinos vote D because they know the Rs are the party of white people, and they ain't white. They aren't Real Americans.
I like how you start off by pointing out that Latinos aren't single-issue voters on immigration, but end up concluding that they're actually single-issue voters on the issue of Republicans are Evil. I don't think it's racist to suggest that immigration is important to many Latinos (either because they have family who would like to come over, because they bear the brunt of immigration paranoia, because they would like to see a more-developed Latino-American culture, etc.).
It's unclear to me whether Republicans can actually pursue meaningful immigration reform. But one of the points of the OP is that, to the extent the Republicans have totally lost the ability to appeal to minorities and progressives,
it's very bad for minorities and progressives. On immigration, the Obama presidency has resulted in record deportations and a token sop to the liberal conscience. I don't know how Obama the man feels, but in the current environment, Obama the politician simply does not care about minority issues, civil rights issues, foreign policy issues, environmental issues, etc., because his base will fire themselves up enough on GOPhate to hold their nose and vote for him no matter what he does on those issues.