The
group came out with a new study that says the 2012 election cycle is the first
in which the Latino vote can claim to be “decisive’ in determining the outcome –
although I found it laughable in their statement that we’d be inaugurating Mitt
Romney as president if Latinos had voted for him as strongly as we did for
George W. Bush in 2004.
THE
BUSH SUPPORT, under current circumstances, was the anomaly. It ought to be the
goal that all Republicans strive to achieve – although way too many seem to
want to have as little Latino support as possible.
That
attitude has to change is the GOP wishes to remain politically relevant.
Although
the Latino Decisions study seems to think there is room for change, if the
Republican Party gets serious. And that is where those two numbers come into
play.
Specifically,
they are 31 percent and 11.1 million.
THE
STUDY FOUND that 31 percent of all Latinos who voted last year said they would
be willing to consider Republican officials in the future if the GOP winds up
taking the lead in trying to implement serious immigration reform – not just
something that calls for more deportations.
Something
that acknowledges that most of the people now in this country without a valid
visa are not a threat, and that there’s no legitimate reason they should not
have been able to get a visa – except for the bureaucratic nightmares that
occur both here and in their home countries.
Which
is the reason why those ideologues who say they support immigrants who do
things the “right” way don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. But back
to the numbers.
So
far, we have some Republican leadership lip service to trying to accomplish
something, while also getting some screams and rebel-type yells from those
GOPers who want nothing to do with the issue and want to erect a stone wall
against all those “foreigners” whom they desperately want to believe don’t
belong here.
WHICH
MEANS THERE may well be a bloody civil war in the works within the Republican
ranks. The prize could well be relevance amongst the Latino population – which steadily,
but surely, is working its way up to being nearly one-third of the nation’s
population.
The
other number I noticed was 11.1 – as in million people.
For
while there were 12.2 million Latinos who bothered to show up at the polling
place on Election Day last year (with nearly three-quarters going against
Romney to vote for Barack Obama), there were 11.1 million Latinos who are
eligible to vote – but didn’t bother.
That
is a lot of people whom Republicans could theoretically reach out to – since those
individuals are not tied into any sense of a political establishment.
IN
ALL HONESTY, most of those people are likely to turn out to be apathetic. They’re
not going to bother to cast votes for anybody of any political persuasion.
Which
means they’re fully assimilated into our society with all the other masses who
take the “Archie Bunker” attitude toward voting – Carroll O’Connor’s character
on “All in the Family” would say that his vote was so sacred that even he
rarely used it.
But
Republicans do have a significant sum of people they could reach out to –
which, if they get them, could cut into that overwhelming lean toward the
Democrats. Even though much of that is people who are “Democrats by default.”
There’s no one else to seriously turn to (unless you want to be like comedian
George Lopez and make jokes about “Tequila Parties”).
Which
means the bottom line is that the Republican Party’s chance to appeal to
Latinos is largely in the GOP’s own hands. We’ll get to see in coming months if
they have any desire to grasp it, or let more support flow to the Democrats.
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