Attempting to stop Hispanic population growth = electoral doom for GOP

[joebuck20]

@scabpicker

This is one of the things that GWB actually had some kind of handle on, it seemed. His party did not agree.

I agree. For all his faults, I do give GWB credit for not pandering to xenophobic fears or anti-Hispanic sentiment.
I think he actually did have a sensible plan for immigration reform, and even if a lot of it was a sop to big business, many Hispanics probably would have been happy with it. But then Lou Dobbs, Tom Tancredo and their ilk hijacked the debate, and this essentially became the first issue on which a large number of Republicans openly defied Bush.
As other people have mentioned here, immigration reform is not a make or break issue for a lot of second or third generation Hispanics, who may have little close family in the old country, and many are willing to overlook it altogether if they agree with most of the rest of a candidate’s platform. They’re just bothered by the GOP’s fear mongering.

[ElvisL1ves]

@puddleglum

Identity politics cuts both ways, the more hispanic the Democrat party becomes the more white the GOP will become.

Can you point to any evidence of the GOP’s attracting white voters away from “the Democrat party” other than in the South, i.e via the Southern Strategy?

[Sage_Rat]

@Huerta88

http://funderscommittee.org/resource/obama_first_democrat_to_win_floridas_hispanic_vote

Pointing out that they historically voted Republican is evidence that they’re secret Liberals? Obama won several states that generally lean right. That’s how a Democratic President wins. Republican presidents win by winning over historically Liberal states. This doesn’t mean those states are secretly batting for the other side, it means that the last president ran up a huge debt, squandered our military in the middle of the desert, and sent us into a recession.

[Huerta88]

@Sage_Rat

Pointing out that they historically voted Republican is evidence that they’re secret Liberals? Obama won several states that generally lean right. That’s how a Democratic President wins. Republican presidents win by winning over historically Liberal states. This doesn’t mean those states are secretly batting for the other side, it means that the last president ran up a huge debt, squandered our military in the middle of the desert, and sent us into a recession.

I cited that for the portion that discusses how non-Cubans, and latter generations of Cubans, skew much more liberal/Dem than the legacy Cuban generations.

[Huerta88]

@ElvisL1ves

Can you point to any evidence of the GOP’s attracting white voters away from “the Democrat party” other than in the South, i.e via the Southern Strategy?

Sure. Reagan Democrats.

[JRDelirious]

@joebuck20

I agree. For all his faults, I do give GWB credit for not pandering to xenophobic fears or anti-Hispanic sentiment.

Indeed.

In one of the examples of the paradoxes of this political line, here in Puerto Rico a majority of the supporters of Statehood identify themselves as Republican when it comes to Federal politics. As of the current electoral term, two thirds of elected officials (reflecting a large plurality to a slight majority of actual voters) are pro-statehooders and* a majority of those self-identify as Republican in national politics*. The national Republican Party had expressed in its platform support for statehood for Puerto Rico, IF there was a vote to that effect, ***since the early 20th Century. ***

Yet today, 2010AD, at the National level the political faction most opposed to a move towards statehood for Puerto Rico are… the conservative Republicans. Because of course being 'Ricans, we’re just guaranteed to elect only democrats :rolleyes:. And because of course if we are admitted as a State, then the Federal government will have to print versions of its documents in Spanish ( :rolleyes::rolleyes::mad::mad: NEWSFLASH, DUDES, IT ALREADY DOES THAT!!!:mad::mad::rolleyes::rolleyes: )

[BrainGlutton]

@LonesomePolecat

An increase in political power for Hispanics necessarily means a decrease in political power for middle and working class whites. Expect greater racial tension, and more political instability.

Or “demographic panic,” as Michael Lind calls it – “Why Republicans Want Gridlock”:

Having lost much of the white professional class to the Democrats (perhaps temporarily), the Republican Party is increasingly the party of the declining white working class. Non-Hispanic whites are shrinking as a percentage of the U.S. population. Meanwhile, the traditional skilled working class and lower middle class are shrinking as a proportion of the workforce, while the service sector proletariat and college-educated professionals increase their share.

To add insult to injury, the Democrats, instead of reaching out to white working-class voters, often have snobbishly dismissed them, as Obama did with his patronizing discussion of the “bitter” people.

In these circumstances, the American white working class quite naturally is experiencing “demographic panic.” Declining groups experiencing such anxieties generally focus on blocking adverse change, using the political institutions they still control. Apart from hanging on to their power as long as they can, they usually do not have programs for governing the country, something they do not expect to be able to do in the long run.

This was the strategy of the antebellum Southern planter class, beginning in the 1820s. As immigrants poured into the North, where native white farmers also had high birthrates, Southern whites were increasingly outnumbered. By threatening to secede in 1820 (the Missouri Compromise) and 1850 (the Compromise of 1850), Southern politicians forced the rest of the country to acquiesce to the rule that slave states and free states must be equal in number in the Senate, even though slave-state whites were a shrinking minority of the population. When the rise of the Republican Party convinced them that this delaying tactic was doomed, the Southerners tried to secede and form a smaller union they would forever control.

Demographic panic also afflicted old-stock British Protestants in Northern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their fear that they would be displaced socially and politically by European immigrants, particularly by hated Irish Catholic immigrants, inspired Protestant nativism as early as the 1840s.

The Protestant nativists, like the Southern planters, sought to booby-trap Congress to maintain their political power in spite of their dwindling relative numbers. From the founding onward, after every census the size of the U.S. House of Representatives was adjusted upward, in order to accommodate the growing population. However, after the 1920 census, rural Protestant representatives in Congress prevented an expansion of the House that would have increased the influence of European immigrants and their descendants in the big cities.

In 1929, the size of the House was capped at 435, the number it reached after the 1910 census. Many democracies have lower houses of 600 to 800 members. The Anglo-Protestant nativists long ago lost their battle against Euro-Americans, but the small size of the U.S. House of Representatives is the legacy of their struggle to maintain their status and power.

This history underscores the irony that yesterday’s ascending demographic force often becomes today’s declining minority. The Anglo-American Protestants in the North and Midwest who crushed the Confederacy and dreamed of sending colonists to demographically and culturally Yankeeize the defeated South were themselves panicking half a century later over the prospect of becoming outbred and outnumbered by Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans in New England itself.

Many of the children of the European immigrants whom the old-line WASPs feared and despised moved up and moved west to California, where, assimilated and affluent by the 1970s, they pulled the plug on the funding of public education, once black and brown children who did not look like their kids began to fill California classrooms.

In a hundred years perhaps the relatively declining descendants of today’s growing Latino constituency will unite with other groups to oppose the empowerment of 22nd century immigrants from other parts of the world.

So it goes . . .

[ElvisL1ves]

@Huerta88

Sure. Reagan Democrats.

Something more recent than 30 years ago? Or even some actual data?

[BrainGlutton]

@jsgoddess

And you can’t realistically halt the growth of the Hispanic population through legislation.

I think that, in particular, is the part the anti-immigrationists simply will not accept.

[BrainGlutton]

@puddleglum

Identity politics cuts both ways, the more hispanic the Democrat party becomes the more white the GOP will become.

The GOP will become whiter as everyone nonwhite moves away from it, certainly; but the white American population will not necessarily become more Republican. As pointed out in post #27, the GOP’s base is increasingly the white working class and lower-middle class, which is a shrinking sector of the white population.

[wonky]

@puddleglum

Identity politics cuts both ways, the more hispanic the Democrat party becomes the more white the GOP will become.

I’m not sure if you mean that the Rs will simply be whiter because there are fewer non-whites in it or if you think that whites will flock to the Rs to escape the Latinos in the Ds.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@LonesomePolecat

Hispanics are never going to go for the Republican party. Courting them makes no sense for the Pubs, and pandering to the Hispanic vote will only cause resentment middle and working class whites who increasingly feel alienated from the government and the upper classes without giving them any real gains. Hispanics alos expect the Dems to dole out a lot of goodies to them, courtesy of the taxpayers. The Pubs would be doing extremely well to consistently get as much as a third of the Hispanic vote.

An increase in political power for Hispanics necessarily means a decrease in political power for middle and working class whites. Expect greater racial tension, and more political instability.

I disagree, a lot of Hispanics are social conservatives and could be successfully wooed by Republicans if they were a little less militant about illegal immigration and focused more on border violence.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Sage_Rat

No idea, but it’s almost certainly been historically true or else we wouldn’t have ended up with the income<->party relationship that we have. Minus any reason to think it would go differently with Hispanics, I’d presume it would stay the same.

I don’t think this has been true for Asians. 32 percent of all Asian Americans identify themselves as Democrats; 14 percent as Republicans. This doesn’t correct for income but Asians have only slightly less income than their white counterparts so if it was just income, you would expect a lot more parity.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Huerta88

I was going to mention Asians.

Most of this has to do with perceived racism.

Just personal anecdote but do [Republican] white folks really think they can tell black jokes around Asians without Asians assuming that they tell Asians jokes around the Jews? True story.

[The_Second_Stone]

@Rhythmdvl

Right. There are very few Hispanic conservatives out there. The OP might as well have suggested something as ridiculous as a Hispanic, conservative, lawyer. Bah, never happen.

Alberto Gonzales.
Personally I think the GOP is doomed for a generation at least, if not going to be replaced outright, because of two decades of blatant race politics based around Latino baiting. And good riddance to bad rubbish.

[E-Sabbath]

Psst. There’s a hispanic conservative lawyer a lot closer than that, Stone. Hint: username sounds like ‘Bicker’?

[The_Second_Stone]

@E-Sabbath

Psst. There’s a hispanic conservative lawyer a lot closer than that, Stone. Hint: username sounds like ‘Bicker’?

He whose name we shall not mention? C’mon, he voted for Obama. He only pretends to be a conservative nowadays. Once you go Democrat, conservatism will fall flat.

[Simplicio]

@jsgoddess

I’m not finding a huge amount of data. I found this:

Thanks for looking, anyways. I’ll see if I can find some exit polls broken down by income and race.

In anycase, I think the GOP’s main danger from their anti-immigration schtick is that they’ll end up not just chasing away hispanics (who are going to remain a small part of the voting public for at least another few decades), but the xenophobic language a lot of their politicians use regarding immigration will gross out many white voters.

It was before my time, but I’ve heard that a large reason for the decimation of the GOP in CA was due to a anti-immigrant ballot proposition 187, which even though it passed by a sizable margin, managed to associate the CA GOP tightly enough with a type of unpleasant xenophobia that even whites that had voted in favor of the ballot proposition shied away from them in subsequent elections. A similar mess for the national GOP doesn’t seem impossible.

[BrainGlutton]

@Simplicio

Thanks for looking, anyways. I’ll see if I can find some exit polls broken down by income and race.

In anycase, I think the GOP’s main danger from their anti-immigration schtick is that they’ll end up not just chasing away hispanics (who are going to remain a small part of the voting public for at least another few decades), but the xenophobic language a lot of their politicians use regarding immigration will gross out many white voters.

It was before my time, but I’ve heard that a large reason for the decimation of the GOP in CA was due to a anti-immigrant ballot proposition 187, which even though it passed by a sizable margin, managed to associate the CA GOP tightly enough with a type of unpleasant xenophobia that even whites that had voted in favor of the ballot proposition shied away from them in subsequent elections. A similar mess for the national GOP doesn’t seem impossible.

It’s not just immigration and xenophobia . . . The GOP’s increasing reliance on its Tea Partiers/“Real Americans” base is associating it with a lot of things almost everyone outside that base finds abhorrent. Chiefly, stupidity. Even fiscal responsibility sounds like a monumentally stupid idea when expressed through Tea-Party-picket-sign language. Or by Glenn Beck in any language.

[jayjay]

The GOP’s dependence and deference to its extra-governmental pundits is also something that’s distorting their message and causing them problems. Limbaugh, Beck, Coulter, Hannity, Buchanan, etc., are way too influential.

The Dems don’t do that. If a lefty pundit wants to have actual influence on legislation, s/he has to pull a Franken and actually RUN FOR OFFICE. The Dems don’t listen to Olbermann, Maddow, or any other left-wing pundit. No Dem has ever apologized to Rachel Maddow the way that Republicans have had to kneel at the altar of Rush Limbaugh if they said something he didn’t like. The Republicans have subsumed real political action to the oversight of a bunch of entertainers who know that the more outrageous they are, the better their ratings will be.