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Republicans break up with Hispanics
The Hill ^ | 04/23/2014 | Fernando Espuelas

Posted on 04/23/2014 7:51:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

Breakups are rough — regrets, pain and bitter memories. As Republicans in the House block immigration reform time after time, American Latinos get the message: It's over, don't call me. Have a good life.

Incapable of producing even one GOP vote in favor of the Democrats' last-ditch gamble at forcing an open vote of the House, the message to Latinos is crystalline. Whatever goodwill the clutch of pro-immigration reform House Republicans won in the last year since the Senate passed its bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill has now evaporated.

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What remains are the weekly flip-flops by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the yelps of "amnesty" coming from a seemingly frightened Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the tiny fig leaf provided by Rep. Bob Goodlatte's (R-Va.) seven bills he's been talking about for a year and the shameful action to deport all Dreamers through the recently unanimous vote of the House Republican caucus's fantasy bill, the Enforce Act.

Some 15 months after former Gov. Mitt Romney's (R-Mass.) "self-deportation" turkey handed the Latino vote (not to mention the Asian-American electorate) to the Democrats, Republicans are still incapable of effectively dealing with an issue that commands big majorities of Americans – including Republicans.

Great analyses have been written by Greg Sargent, Charlie Cook, and Juan Williams, among others, about the "paranoia" inherent in the Republican Party's refusal put forward a coherent immigration reform policy. Setting the political calculus aside, most Republicans on Capitol Hill seem to have no clue about what immigration reform actually represents to Latino voters.

As I've written previously, immigration reform is not a policy debate for Hispanics. It stands as a proxy for societal respect – even though most Latinos are either American-born, naturalized citizens or have a green card and will not benefit from any reform. While it's not fair to judge the GOP based on people like Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and his anti-immigrant logorrhea, he and other anti-immigrant Republicans have become the effective spokespeople of the GOP on this issue.

Whatever good intentions may exist in the GOP House to move forward with a bill, the lack of any action by Boehner (not to mention right-wing extremists' wholesale rejection of a reasonable compromise) is now officially the Republican position.

This is what Latinos think.

On my radio show every day, and on social media 24/7, I am part of a conversation where responsibility for both the failure of comprehensive reform, and the acrid discourse surrounding it, is laid at the feet of Republicans exclusively.

New to American politics, organic groups of American Latinos have formed online with the express purpose of increasing Latino turnout in November and dealing the GOP a blow. No longer tied to the traditional activist organizations, still espousing 1960s tactics and attitudes, these new groups are savvy Facebookers and Tweeters that can spread a political message across the country with the click of the mouse – reaching tens of thousands of people in an instant, hundreds of thousands per day.

This political battle is now personal. Just like the Tea Party fervor of 2010, driven by a single-minded focus to oppose President Obama, these online Latino groups share a similar obsession with throwing Republicans out of office.

One such group, organized primarily through the hashtag #TNTweeters, has attracted thousands of active social media "warriors" that engage in a robust political debate – principally calling for a GOP defeat in November.

Will this new kind of political activists succeed in altering the electoral math in the midterms? No one can say, of course. Latinos have historically sat out non-presidential elections. But history is not always prologue. The level of frustration, even anger, now focused on the GOP, combined with the frictionless power of social media, represents a fundamentally new political dynamic in American politics.

Come this November 4, Republicans may just wake up to the ugly reality that breaking up with American Latinos over immigration was an easily avoidable and ultimately very costly divorce.

Espuelas, a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, is a political analyst on television, radio and in print. He is the host and managing editor of “The Fernando Espuelas Show,” a daily political talk show syndicated nationally by the Univision America Network.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2014election; 2016election; aliens; amnesty; demagogicparty; deport; deportjebbush; election2014; election2016; fernandoespuelas; hispanics; jeb4amnesty; jebbush; memebuilding; partisanmediashill; partisanmediashills; republicans
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To: SeekAndFind; All
Thank you for referencing that article SeekAndFind. Please bear in mind that the following critique is directed at the article and not at you.

As Republicans in the House block immigration reform time after time, American Latinos get the message: It's over, ...

Never accept the premise of your opponent's argument.

FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument

Regarding any official action by Congress, patriots always need to check if the states have delegated to Congress, via the Constitution, particularly Section 8 of Article I, the specific power to legislatively address a given issue. And regardless of PC interpretations of the uniform Rule of Naturalization Clause, Clause 4 of Section 8, Thomas Jefferson had clarified the following.

Jefferson had explained, in terms of the 10th Amendment nonetheless, that the states have never delegated to Congress the specific power to regulate immigration, immigration a state power issue.

“4. _Resolved_, That alien friends are under the jurisdiction and protection of the laws of the State wherein they are: that no power over them has been delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the individual States, distinct from their power over citizens. And it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” the act of the Congress of the United States, passed on the — day of July, 1798, intituled “An Act concerning aliens,” which assumes powers over alien friends, not delegated by the Constitution, is not law, but is altogether void, and of no force (emphasis added).” —Thomas Jefferson, Draft of the Kentucky Resolutions - October 1798.

So by repeatedly refusing to address immigration, it can be argued that congressional RINOs have inadvertently respected the fact that Congress has no constitutional authority to address immigration in the first place.

21 posted on 04/23/2014 8:48:38 AM PDT by Amendment10
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To: SeekAndFind

Assumes every “Hispanic” voter is in favor of amnesty and open boarders.

That is not the case.


22 posted on 04/23/2014 8:58:16 AM PDT by DManA
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To: SeekAndFind

Why are Hispanics as a whole defined by illegal activity?


23 posted on 04/23/2014 9:00:28 AM PDT by Moonman62 (The US has become a government with a country, rather than a country with a government.)
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To: Georgia Girl 2
The GOP needs to just concentrate on getting out the 6 million Republicans who stayed home in 2012 and geting the majority of the independent vote and they will be winners.

Right on. We lost in 2012 due to ignorance of the approximately 6 sat on their ars and elected King Obama. What the hell runs this bunch of idiots. Certainly not intelligence.

24 posted on 04/23/2014 9:15:36 AM PDT by Logical me
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To: SeekAndFind; 1_Inch_Group; 2sheep; 2Trievers; 3AngelaD; 3pools; 3rdcanyon; 4Freedom; 4ourprogeny; ..
Ping!

Click the keyword Aliens to see more illegal alien, border security, and other related threads.

25 posted on 04/23/2014 9:27:00 AM PDT by HiJinx (Bunkerville - where the government made the Government. back down.)
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To: polymuser
Hmmm. Latinos want work, so won’t like losing future opportunity. They’re very family oriented. They’re 70 percent of growth of US Catholics since 1960. They’re conservatives at heart, IMHO. The article is progressive cognitive dissonance on parade, yet again.

Your post is Conservative extreme cognitive dissonance on parade again.

26 posted on 04/23/2014 9:38:32 AM PDT by qam1 (There's been a huge party. All plates and the bottles are empty, all that's left is the bill to pay)
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To: SeekAndFind

Nice that this one guy can speak for all Hispanics.


27 posted on 04/23/2014 9:40:13 AM PDT by BRL
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To: qam1; polymuser
They’re conservatives at heart, IMHO

People that believe in government corruption as a norm, Banana Republic Strongmen as rulers, violence as a daily occurrence to be tolerated, laws that are meaningless, education as something to be ridiculed, and the lifestyle of the 14th century as a social goal are "Conservatives at heart"?

Guess so if by "conservative" you mean longing for the Stone Age as a happy time to regress to.

28 posted on 04/23/2014 9:57:42 AM PDT by Regulator
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To: Petrosius
first wave of an Hispanic invasion.

We are outnumbered in this hemisphere. Furthermore, were all Hispanic immigration to cease at midnight tonight, our United States will still become well within a century ... demographically speaking ... the hemisphere's northernmost Latin American country. Latinos are already about 20%+ of the overall population, far outnumbering African-Americans. That's the ones we can count. Soon they will be a solid third. The illegals? Who the Hell knows how many? Government says "11 Million?" That about covers LA County.

The only way out is to build viable, prosperous societies in Latin America. How do we, or they, or we and they actually do that? Got no clue. Move'em to Canada, which needs more people? Australia?

The many small improvements in Latin American life only mean an exploding population with nothing to do and only one place they want to go: here.

Borders are the only, if somewhat temporary, answer for us. The 'Know-Nothings' were worried about a few million Irish and Italians Catholics. I don't see how the arrival of a hundred of million Latinos would fail to revive some sort of similar sentiment!

Sleeper agents: Brazil, with a huge population.(200 Million?) and a huge underclass. If they ever figure out which way is "North," they will more than equal the Hispanics.

¡Bienvenido al mundo nuevo!

29 posted on 04/23/2014 10:25:59 AM PDT by Kenny Bunk ((GOP) ..... GIVE OBAMA POWER)
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To: RC one

In my view, many minorities are quite happy being members of the Democrat Entitlement Army.

We may view the total breakdown of the family structure and morality as a negative, but as long as the payments continue, they’re pleased.


30 posted on 04/23/2014 10:28:22 AM PDT by nascarnation (Toxic Baraq Syndrome: hopefully infecting a Dem candidate near you)
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To: SeekAndFind

“Let us break the law or we won’t vote for you...not that we ever would have voted for you, anyway.”


31 posted on 04/23/2014 10:33:37 AM PDT by Nea Wood (When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.-Sowell)
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To: DManA

I know a woman who is a very conservative evangelical Christian in Texas who is for amnesty because she is from a Mexican heritage and speaks Spanish and I assume cannot deal with the idea of all the illegals at churches - Catholic through Pentecostal being deported or not having the right to live in America. She is legal but sees no problem with allowing 30 to 50 million plus their families into this country. Pisses me off and she would otherwise be strictly law-abiding except for this issue. I admit I went with some people to a Pentecostal church in Texas for a worship training day a couple of my Mexican background friends asked me and their were 700-1000 people and I doubt many were legal as this was all young and recent sojourners with hardly any English being spoken or understood. A difficult situation - but why should America scuttle and destroy it’s culture and future to support the poorer and all people’s who would come here if they can get here.


32 posted on 04/23/2014 10:45:48 AM PDT by Sheapdog (Chew the meat, spit out the bones - FUBO - Come and get me)
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To: Sheapdog
Would the press would ‘look the other way’ if Republicans brought in 40 million (illegal) Chinese who agreed to vote Republican in exchange for full citizenship, food stamps, state care for their elderly parents, and free schooling for their children?

We need to give away citizenship in exchange for voters too.,.. it's a race to the bottom and bankruptcy but there's no reason for us to play by the rules. They sure as hell don't.

33 posted on 04/23/2014 10:52:48 AM PDT by GOPJ (Democrats are waging war on white middle class men...)
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To: GOPJ
Would the press would ‘look the other way’

If we brought in 20 million ethnic Ukrainians - the whitest of white people - yearning to be free of Putin's slave camp?

Or would they scream racism at the idea that - gasp - white people would be immigrating in the numbers they did in say, 1910?

34 posted on 04/23/2014 11:38:16 AM PDT by Regulator
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To: SeekAndFind

When the GOP stops playing the Progressive’s game of pandering to victim groups and stands on principles they might actually start peeling off votes from the Dems.


35 posted on 04/23/2014 1:32:39 PM PDT by TigersEye (Stupid is a Progressive disease.)
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To: SeekAndFind

su casa es mi casa.


36 posted on 04/23/2014 2:09:43 PM PDT by ckilmer
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To: SeekAndFind; Mouton; steel_resolve; Gaffer; duckworth; Cringing Negativism Network; Petrosius; ...

It is front page NY Times new today
The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3147346/posts

This is success for the democrats.

Why?

The democrat conscious is essentially atheist. That means that it cannot bear envy.

Therefor the democrat solution to the problem of wealth inequality between Mexicans and Americans is to make Americans poorer.

Republicans should take the opposite tack. That the foreign policy of the United States is dedicated to making Mexico richer.

This is the rhetoric. The democrats want to make America poorer and the Republicans want to Make Mexico richer.

Indeed Mexico’s current GNP is growing faster than that of the USA and their unemployment rate is lower.

But the pubbies can go one better or two better. There are two gigantic technological innovations coming within the next ten years. The first is thorium lftr reactors which will collapse the cost of energy.
http://bit.ly/1jCHuV7

The second is graphene membranes which will wildly increase the efficiency and decrease the cost of water desalination.
http://bit.ly/1igmSRe

Taken together, the two technological developments will mean that it will be cheap to desalinize and transport water from the oceans inland 1000 miles. So that desert farming will be economical anywhere in the desert. This will effectively turn the worlds deserts green, increase the size of the USA by over 1/3—but triple the size of Mexico. And make that country rich.

(Oh also, Mexico just happens to be sitting on the southern extension of the Eagle Ford formation. It wouldn’t be too much trouble to help the Mexicans exploit that deposit.)

All that, taken together— stops what in 1992, Ross Perot called the giant sucking sound that we now hear.

Try to understand the vision thing here. We’re not talking about a chicken in every pot. We’re not talking about Ronald Reagan’s star wars.

We’re talking about turning the deserts green and thereby making Mexico Rich. (All the illegals won’t have to ship home to Mexico 20 billion annually anymore—nor will more Mexican have the incentive to come north.)

Remember, this also works rhetorically as well by re framing the argument to say that the democrats want to make the USA poor and the republicans want to make Mexico rich.


37 posted on 04/23/2014 2:46:22 PM PDT by ckilmer
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To: Sheapdog
I admit I went with some people to a Pentecostal church in Texas for a worship training day a couple of my Mexican background friends asked me and their were 700-1000 people and I doubt many were legal...

Maybe the pastor should have told them, "You're not being in submission to the authorities over you, as the Bible says to do. You are engaging in dishonesty, theft, and covetousness. Go back to your home countries and apply to live in the USA legally. While you're waiting, do what you can to improve your home country."

38 posted on 04/23/2014 2:51:59 PM PDT by Nea Wood (When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.-Sowell)
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To: Mouton

My oh my. The media is really on message.


39 posted on 04/23/2014 2:56:00 PM PDT by Delta Dawn (Fluent in two languages: English and cursive.)
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To: SeekAndFind

How about if Republicans simply let Amnesty DIE ON THE VINE this year.

Let’s make this 2014 election ONLY about OBAMACARE. We can get back to Amnesty next year.

Needless to say, Karl Rove, or his paid enforcers will NEVER agree to that (i.e., they will call us out of touch with Hispanics)...but ask yourself, why the hurry to naturalize some 30,000,000 Hispanics, nearly all of which will vote DEMOCRAT?

Unless you HATE the Tea Party more than you oppose the Democrats.


40 posted on 04/23/2014 4:22:27 PM PDT by BobL
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