Some too eager to ignore modern reality

What may well be hurting Republican efforts to gain a significant share of the Latino vote is that some people are just determined to believe that Latinos only live in certain areas.

ROMNEY: Conflicting campaign strategies

They want to envision “el barrio” as being a lighter-complexioned take on an African-American ghetto, except that the people “talk funny.” In short, they want to isolate us into certain areas that they can then ignore – while focusing on the rest of the country where “real” people live.

TAKE MITT ROMNEY, who has a campaign strategy that is reaching out to Latinos with Spanish-language advertising these days in anticipation of the Jan. 31 primary.

But in South Carolina where the primary is scheduled for Saturday, Romney is touting his alliances with individuals who are perceived by the growing Latino electorate as hostile toward our existence.

Apparently, somebody hasn’t given the numbers “211” and “148” to the Romney campaign.

Those numbers are percentages – as in the size of the growth of the Latino population in South Carolina between 1990 and 2000, then between 2000 and 2010.

NOW, IN ORDER to get such sizable increases during the past two decades, South Carolina would either have had to have increased overall to such a size that it could rival the Californias or Texases when it comes to population.

LINCOLN: Is GOP ashamed?

Or, it would have had to have had such an insignificant number of Latinos to begin with so that ANY increase would be a significant percentage boost.

That is what has happened to South Carolina, where 5.1 percent of the overall 4.63 million residents (as of the 2010 Census Bureau population count) was Latino. Which means going from about 1 percent to 5 percent overall during that two-decade time period.

That is why South Carolina gets the designation as having the “fastest growing Latino population” of any state in the nation.

IT REALLY IS evidence that Latinos are going everywhere – even into South Carolina. Heck, even Alaska has a 5.5 percent Latino population these days.

And the Romney camp seems determined to appeal to the people who want to view this as a problem to be overcome – instead of the potential for rejuvenating our society with a jolt of fresh labor.

In short, running Spanish language campaign ads in South Carolina might make just as much sense in that southern state. It would be a realization of our expansion, rather than thinking that my ethnic brethren are confined to a few select neighborhoods in Miami.

It is going to be the reason that Republican officials are going to have some serious problems in this election cycle – even though they want to believe that a national discontent with Obama will take them to victory. It’s really a national discontent with political people of all kinds – themselves included.

IT ALSO IS the reason why I find rather pathetic such attempts by ideologues to toss out the names of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan as examples of Republicans who did things to benefit non-white people, compared to Democratic Party rhetoric without action.

REAGAN: Ignoring 'amnesty'



Lincoln may have “freed the slaves,” but I see way too many ideologues these days who want to downplay the Lincoln involvement in their political party’s creation when it doesn’t fit their ideological hang-ups (which is all too often). It really seems that the one-time “Party of Lincoln” is ashamed of that label.

And as far as Reagan’s attempt at immigration reform that gave the “amnesty” to long-term residents, the very ideologues who like to worship at the “Temple of Bonzo” are usually quick to denounce that 1986 action as Reagan’s one “mistake.”

Those aren’t the attitudes that are going to sway many Latinos over to their side come Nov. 6.

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