Ideologues ought to look more closely at Latino GOPers

I’m not a regular reader of the City Weekly newspaper. But the Salt Lake City-based publication came up with a piece of reporting that ought to be read by anybody who is gloating these days because of the failure of the DREAM Act to advance in the Senate.

The publication came up with a profile of the new head of the Utah chapter of Somos Republicanos – the group that is trying to bolster the Latino presence in the Republican Party.

WE’RE TALKING ABOUT that one-third of the Latino population that is politically active and willing to align itself with the party that openly demonized our ranks when looking to take pot shots at the DREAM – whose real goal was to allow these youthful newcomers to the country a chance to advance themselves so as to benefit our society.

Antonella Packard is the new head. And as is so appropriate for Utah, she’s a Mormon (she converted after coming to this country from Colombia). She considers herself fully in line with the GOP agenda, except when it comes to all the immigration talk.

It’s not so much that she’s sympathetic to any newcomers. It’s that she hates the way her so-called political allies are willing to use cheap-shots, and she is indulging in what could be the ultimate weapon – voter registration.

She is trying to get Utah’s Latino population (which is growing, no matter how much anyone wants to believe that Latinos don’t live in such places) registered to vote. While she wants them to vote for Republicans, she’s not going to have them voting knee-jerk for the politicos who are more than willing to appease the nativist element of our society (the ones who want the Republican Party to “protect” them from Latino growth).

SHE EVEN TALKS in religious terms when it comes to talking about Republican officials who provided the overwhelming majority of the votes earlier this month against the DREAM.

“They actually want to punish the children for the sins of the father,” Packard told the publication, while also saying that Republican officials seem to have forgotten parts of scripture that say, “Every man may be accountable for his own sins in the Day of Judgment.”

It sounds to me like the share of Latinos who do wind up siding with the Republican Party (some will have their own hang-ups) are going to create a force that could wind up pressuring the GOP to moderate its own views. Which is pleasing to me in that the element that thinks it accomplished significant victory in the most recent election cycle probably did nothing more than shoot themselves down for the long-term.

Despite such efforts by Republicans to include some Latinos in their ranks, I am inclined to think that the “ball” is really in the court of the Democratic Party these days. They do have the bulk of the Latino voter bloc, which is going to grow as the Latino population becomes older and even less immigrant-oriented than it is now.

MAKING AN EFFORT to push for serious action now could be what persuades those now-non-voters to ultimately align themselves with the Democrats. If there isn’t such action, then it will be people like Packard who wind up getting them for the GOP.

Which would go a long way toward reducing the number of nitwits who insist on using the “A” word every time immigration comes up.

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