Murchison (2011) “Sí, es un problema — y una oportunidad muy grande. Muy, may I affirm? That’s provided you’re conservative and hopeful of swinging America’s fast-multiplying Hispanic population your way. Not for the cynical, self-serving purpose of stroking Hispanic sensibilities vigorously enough to capitalize on Hispanic votes — the preferred Democratic approach, as we know, regarding black voters. The main idea here for conservatives, I think, is to integrate as many Hispanic Americans as possible into the conspiracy to keep America free of suffocating government regulations and disintegrating cultural norms. As Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor whose sensitivities proceed partly from his relationships with the state’s large Hispanic population, has put it: “If you believe in the conservative philosophy as I do, it would be incredibly stupid over the long haul to ignore the burgeoning Hispanic vote. They will be the swing voters in the swing states.” The job as described by Bush, speaking in January at a conference for Hispanic conservatives, should be doable: hardly a piece of Mexican pastry but doable, not to mention logical as all get-out. We recall, do we not, Sen. Harry Reid’s immortal words to a gathering of Nevada Hispanics in August 2010. Getting right in the audience’s face, El Señor Reid shared what he took to be a common understanding. “I don’t know,” he confided, “how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican, okay? Do I need to say more?” It is not reported whether the senator winked or not. He might as well have. We likewise remember President Obama’s contribution to the dispiriting debate concerning Hispanic political participation. In a Univision interview last October 25, he enjoined viewers to remember that “If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re going to punish our enemies,’… then I think it’s going to be harder.” What a droll way of according conservatives a pedestal in the Hall of Ill Fame! Republicans jumped on the slur, and Obama had to back off slightly, but as we all know, the breeding of racial rivalry is a well-vetted Democratic campaign tactic.The m yth that Reid and Obama both seek consciously to perpetrate and perpetuate is of the poor, downtrodden Hispanic, his hands wrinkled with care and toil, his shoulders bent to the ground, awaiting the upward tug of a Democratic hand. In the end, Senator Reid procured 63 percent of the Nevada Hispanic vote — enough to dispose narrowly of an erratic Republican opponent, Sharron Angle. Yet, irony of ironies, Reid’s son Rory, running for governor, lost to Brian Sandoval, who, with nearly two-thirds white support, became one of three conservative Republican Hispanics elected in high-profile races last year. The other two: Marco Rubio in Florida and Susana Martinez in New Mexico. Meantime, Idaho, Texas, Florida, and Washington sent to the U.S. House a total of five new Hispanics who also happen to be conservative. The outlook for Hispanic embrace of conservative ideas and candidates seems brighter than ever before — in part because relatively few Anglos have troubled to look behind the stereotype of the smoldering-eyed Latino labor agitator; partly because there once seemed better payoff in strategies to lure evangelical Christians than in plans for the political seduction of foreigners or first-generation Americans. NO MORE, ONE HOPES. Some 47 million Hispanics now live in the United States — almost 15 percent of the total population. Of these, a survey by the Pew Hispanic Forum in October 2010 estimates 38 percent to be immigrants. Of this latter category, an estimated 19 percent (something over 11 million) are what we once called illegal aliens but now generally refer to as undocumented workers — accent perhaps on the word “workers.” Work they do — in factories, on construction sites, in homes and hotels and offices, on lawn-cutting crews, on hog and poultry farms. They work because America has more work to be done than is available in Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, or Ecuador, with native-born Americans more indisposed than formerly to low-paying trades and occupations. The work ethic, in other words, informs the Hispanic voter, actual or potential. A building contractor with whom my wife and I were recently discussing the integrity of construction workers told us, “It’s whites who steal from you on the job site. The Hispanics have their heads down working to make money to send somewhere or the other.” I wouldn’t call that a dispositive observation on the Hispanic orientation toward work, but it gets you to thinking. A willing worker, conservatives tend to understand, is susceptible to opportunities for pay and reward such as the free market provides out of all proportion to those occurring under government auspices and control. This understanding, one might well deduce, gives conservative candidates a leg up in the quest for private sector growth.”
Posted on: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 03:41:43 +0000
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