As Latinos tilt Democratic, can Texas stay ‘red’?

The Christian Science Monitor ^ | 2008-11-25 | Michael B. Farrell

[rabscuttle385]

The Lone Star State is the last big GOP bastion where Hispanics are a sizable voting bloc.

Houston

When President Bush says so long to Washington on Jan. 20, he’ll return to a much different Lone Star State from the one he left eight years ago.

Pickup trucks, Big Oil, and barbecue brisket still reign supreme, but this red state that helped deliver the presidency to Mr. Bush twice and his father once, and that catapulted GOP strategist Karl Rove to the national stage, is suddenly spotted with big pockets of blue.

Dallas is controlled by Democrats; Houston is in their hands, too. It’s all largely because of the state’s growing Hispanic population, which overwhelmingly sided with Democrats this year.

“The tide of demography in Texas is moving against the Republicans,” says Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “All the major cities are Democratic and are likely to become more so over time.”

[davek70]

Living here in Harris Co, this is truly a very depressing article. I know most people on here have their issues w/ Pat Buchanan, but I would strongly recommend his book, State of Emergency. It pretty much backs up a lot and exposes many details in this article regarding the major immigration issues in the SW US. He also gives several practical solutions to the immigration problems facing the US.

As stated above in the thread, the cities are sink holes and we should forget about them. The key is suburban voters and once the big O puts them into generations of debt, they’ll come around. As for immigration, I’m tired of the pandering to these minorities as many on the GOP side say we should do. Many of the LEGAL immigrants come here to live the American dream and want to be integrated into our society. Stick with conservative and family values principles and many of these groups will come around.

However, on the flip side w/ looming amnesty from Dems and RINOs, that part does not look good at this point. I believe if we articulate a clear message as to why many conservatives oppose amnesty and how not having it could benefit legal immigrants, maybe some of this will turn around.

Not to mention maybe enforcing some of the immigration laws already on the books would be nice.

[Le Chien Rouge]

.......adding a bunch of Transplants from California and Michigan doesn’t help the conservative cause in Texas .....they are everywhere in Austin

[Crapgame]

We have a winner. My father came across the border in 1928, legally with his mother. He went right to work in California, and later joined the Army for World War II. Mom was from Texas and the nine kids they produced assimilated. We run a cross section of America in our family from staunch conservatives to moonbat lib’ruls and the ill-informed tweeners. The point is that we assimilated and in this Second Generation Hispanic family, more conservatives voted than moonbats. As I raise my own family, I will ensure that my kids also maintain that worldview. My 9 year old son is already proud to announce that he is a conservative.

Beyond assimilation however, there are things that Republicans can do to ameliorate the problem with Hispanic voters. First of all, don’t pander. The border needs to be controlled and Hispanics may disagree but they will respect the forthright nature of a reasoned argument. The lib’ruls go to every new citizen swearing in and register voters, have you ever heard of Republicans doing this? You can bet ACORN or LULAC is there. We need Spanish speaking Republicans hitting those citizenship ceremonies as well. So many Freepers have pointed out that immigrants are often steeped in family values and maintain a hard work ethic. These are valued traits and conservatives are ceding the political playing field by not emphasizing that our philosophy is one of opportunity to the new immigrants and citizens.

Finally we need to retake the schools. Part of the reason we managed assimilation so well is I suspect the result of the America my family grew up in. We respected God, the flag and our elders. We said the Pledge of Allegiance every morning at school and had morning prayer. The schools are now a cesspool of multicultural programming that accomplishes nothing in preparing students for real life, unless of course thier objective in life is to become a dependent of the state. Lastly, I pray God that Texas doesn’t succumb. As the birthplace of my mother, the blood of the Lone Star State runs in my veins. As a former resident of that state myself, I am looking forward to retirement there someday, the moreso since my current state of residence went hideously blue on November 4.

[MaineConservative]

Retake the schools -—??? No, why not HOMESCHOOL your kids!! Yes, you might have to sacrifice, bur you can know what your kids are learning!!

[kabar]

We need Spanish speaking Republicans hitting those citizenship ceremonies as well.

This strategy reminds me of the factory owner's response when told that he was losing 5 cents a widget, i.e., "Don't worry, we will make it up in volume. When have the Reps received the majority of the Hispanic vote?

The Republicans’ Hispanic Delusion

So many Freepers have pointed out that immigrants are often steeped in family values and maintain a hard work ethic.

Hispanic Family Values?Unless the life chances of children raised by single mothers suddenly improve, the explosive growth of the U.S. Hispanic population over the next couple of decades does not bode well for American social stability. Hispanic immigrants bring near–Third World levels of fertility to America, coupled with what were once thought to be First World levels of illegitimacy. (In fact, family breakdown is higher in many Hispanic countries than here.) Nearly half of the children born to Hispanic mothers in the U.S. are born out of wedlock, a proportion that has been increasing rapidly with no signs of slowing down. Given what psychologists and sociologists now know about the much higher likelihood of social pathology among those who grow up in single-mother households, the Hispanic baby boom is certain to produce more juvenile delinquents, more school failure, more welfare use, and more teen pregnancy in the future.

[napscoordinator]

If we lose Texas, can we ever win an election again? I think we need to start looking at blue states we can pick up since we lost Virginia, North Carolina, Nevada and Colorado. There has to be some Blue states we can turn.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

Do not be afraid —the Latinos will come around to our way of thinking. We have more in common with them than they have with the Democrats. The Prop 8 vote in “Liberal” California is a signpost of the future. We must reach out to them and they will embrace Family values, and American patriotism. They can be our future.

[kennedy]

The only way the Hispanic tide can be stemmed is by closing the border and assimilating the Latin Americans as the children and grandchildren of the Eastern and Southern Europeans who immigrated en masse from 1880 to 1920 were. However, there is no political will to do so.

Particularly with the Democrats in complete control of the federal government for at least the next two years. The Democrats want open borders and to give citizenship (and the vote) to illegal aliens as soon as possible, so that they can continue to boost their voting base.

Clearly, pandering to Hispanics on immigration is not the answer for Republicans, or McCain would have done much better than he did. Neither is simply ignoring the fact that demographics are now running against us. Frankly, I don't know what the answer is.

[douginthearmy]

Great post.

[Liberty Valance]

Kerr County turned out a 75% GOP vote. If we’d had a solid conservative to vote for at the top of the ticket it would have been 80 to 85%.

[Crapgame]

Nice sentiment but it is not practical for all conservatives to homeschool. Instead of ceding the public schools why shouldn’t conservatives become active agitators in them? I plan on retiring from law enforcement and using my MA in History to teach when I do. You can bet that my classes will not be full of one-sided anti-American tripe. If not teaching, how about running for school board, or even attending council and commission meetings where education is a topic. “All politics is local” as Johnson said and he was right. We’ve had our asses handed to us because Conservatives generally eschew the activist streak necessary to infiltrate all political arenas. Well that is going to have to change. We have to become more activist and take the fight to the libs rather than letting them dictating to us and we must do so while maintaining our ideological integrity.

[Wallace T.]

The problem with taking public schools back is twofold: liberal activism, driven to a great extent by teachers unions, and Federal and state mandates and court decisions that deprive local school boards of autonomy. Local activism by conservatives can turn the former problem around, though not always successfully. The problem at the state and Federal levels is more intractable, however. Even states dominated first by conservative Democrats and then by Republicans, as is the case of most Southern states, have not been successful in breaking the stranglehold of liberalism over state education bureaucracies and teachers colleges.

[Crapgame]

You bring up an excellent point, maybe Education should be tackled from the top down instead. Reagan talked about abolishing the Department of Education, we need a President who would do exactly that, or at least a committee chair in Congress who could make life miserable for them. The control over education needs to be fought on all fronts and the dismantling of the Federal Dept. of Education would then throw that control back to the States. Then we could exercise more control over the content of the curriculum. Local control in this instances is infinitely better than direction from Sodom-on-Potomac.

[MaineConservative]

Conservatives generally eschew the activist streak necessary to infiltrate all political arenas.

True...As I say in my TAGLINE Lets go and get busy to bring back the USA from SOCIALISTS!! We need to be ACTIVE!!!

[dbz77]

When “La Amnestia” comes...and it will now...it’s all over but the shoutin’.

How would that affect the campaign for same-sex "marriage"?