Posted on 06/25/2013 5:39:36 PM PDT by BAW
Edited on 06/25/2013 6:13:38 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Because after Romney lost, you can tons of freepers claiming we would have won the election if only he had picked Rubio as his running mate instead of Paul Ryan.
Just a wild guess, but I’ll bet if the MA GOP had run a non-Communist Hispanic, they would’ve performed better. Probably a non-Communist of any skin color would’ve performed better. Too bad the state AND national party establishment has a disdain for non-leftists.
Gomez got 7% lower than Brown statewide, and 6% lower than Brown in Holyoke. So did the Spanish surname help Gomez underperform Brown by 1% less? We have no idea how each of Brown and Gomez did among Hispanic voters in Holyoke (or in Springfield, Lawrence, Chelsea, etc.), and it is possible that Brown’s margin over Gomez was even higher among Hispanics than it was among Anglos, but there certainly is no evidence of that.
If a FReeper actually had a theory that if a GOP candidate has a Spanish last name it will convince Hispanics to vote for him, that’s a pretty silly theory if you ask me. As I said to those who thought that having Romney pick Rubio as his runningmate would help us carry NM, CO and NV, there is no way that having a Cuban-American VP candidate is going to convince more than a small percentage of Mexican-Americans to vote GOP (although, sure, running ads in Spanish and appearing on Spanish-language TV might get more Hispanics to listen to the GOP pitch).
That does not mean, though, that it isn’t a good idea to run a Mexican-American military veteran in heavily Hispanic South Texas CDs, or a Cuban-American in South Florida CDs, or a Puerto Rican in the new heavily Hispanic CD in Central Florida.
And I still think that when Andy Vidak lost by less than 1% to the Democrat Costa in that Hispanic-majority Central Valley district in 2010, that he would have won had his last name ended in an L instead of a K. A Spanish surname might be worth 1% of the vote in a Hispanic-majority district, although, clearly, it is no substitute for being a good candidate.
To illustrate: it's been proven in Cook County that candidates from an Irish-Catholic background are far more likely to get nominated and elected to office (one of the reasons why I had a Republican State Senator for years in heavily Dem Cook County, is my Senator was Patrick J. O'Malley III). However, some random white guy named "Jean Pierre Le Blanc" is not going to be "electable" in Cook County and win over 60% of caucasians simply because he's white and a plurality of the voters are white.
And to illustrate further: the Irish-Catholic background is popular is areas of Cook County that fit that demographic: for example in Beverly-Mt. Greenwood where the southside Irish parade is held. Having an Irish last name if you were running in Danny Davis’ district wouldn’t do much.
If the Republican wins, there will be claims of
“election irregularities” and “disenfranchisement” along with interminable recounts.
If the Democrat wins, there will be gushing tributes to Democracy.
IMHO
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