John Harwood interviewed Marco Rubio for CNBC today and asked him whether or not all this Latino bashing, including the use of derogatory terms like "anchor baby" were dragging down the Republican Party:
Rubio: It's not the Republican Party. It's individual candidates who are responsible for their own rhetoric and ...
Harwood: It's the face of the Republican Party to the whole country right now
Rubio: Well, the face of the Republican Party is going to be our nominee
Ok. Tell it Mitt Romney. Or the California Republican Party.
There were obviously many factors that contributed to California’s evolution into the deep-blue state it is today, from demographics to the culture war. But none of those things come close to the damage that then-Governor Pete Wilson did to the longterm interest of the California Republican Party in 1994, when he scapegoated Latino immigrants as the cause of all the state’s woes.
Wilson was running for re-election, and as part of his campaign to distract from the economic failure of his first term and increase turnout among his base, he ran on a platform promising to crack down on undocumented workers, and enthusiastically supported the infamous Prop 187, which set up a statewide system designed to deny any kind of benefits to undocumented workers, including K-12 education and all forms of health care.
(He also supported a constitutional amendment to repeal birthright citizenship, currently guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.)
Here’s the famous “they keep coming” ad the Wilson campaign ran that year:
Unfortunately, they apparently didn’t know how to count. They failed to recognize that Latinos were the fastest growing ethnic minority in the state, and knew very well that all this “concern” about undocumented immigration stemmed from a nativist impulse that had little to do with economics and everything to do with bigotry.
The reaction was swift:
The Rev. Jon Pedigo remembers he was so angry that he instantly started planning a march from his parish in Morgan Hill to St. Joseph’s Cathedral in San Jose.
“I said, ‘I’m going to take that frickin’ cross from the church and I’m gonna walk to the downtown cathedral and demand that something be done,'” said Pedigo, now pastor of East San Jose’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. The next morning he led 250 people on the 21-mile walk.
“We filled the cathedral. We filled the park. It was amazing,” he said. “We said, ‘We will not put up with this, and we want God on our side.'”
I don’t know if God was on their side, but Latinos certainly did not put up with it. The Republicans lost the Hispanic vote in California and have almost zero chance of getting it back. The Hispanic population saw the ethnic hatred on display during that period, hatred which was enthusiastically stoked by the Republican Party of California.
The demographic trends in the state guarantee that the GOP will be in the minority in California for a very long time to come. And needless to say, if anyone thought that after 20 years a younger generation might forget why their parents rejected the Republicans and give them another look, the primal scream we are currently witnessing in the 2016 presidential primary is giving them quite a refresher course.
This story is almost a political cliche, repeated so constantly in the media that it has the taint of a moldy morality play rather than a true political lesson. Certainly it’s been an article of faith that the Republican Party simply cannot win nationally if they don’t find a way to attract some Latinos. This is what they themselves wrote in their post 2012 "autopsy" report:
If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States (i.e. self-deportation), they will not pay attention to our next sentence. It does not matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies. In the last election, Governor Romney received just 27 percentof the Hispanic vote. Other minority communities, including Asian and Pacific Islander Americans,also view the Party as unwelcoming. President Bush got 44 percent of the Asian vote in 2004; our presidential nominee received only 26 percent in 2012.
As one conservative, Tea-Party leader, Dick Armey, told us, “You can’t call someone ugly and expect them to go to the prom with you. We’ve chased the Hispanic voter out of his natural home.”
We are not a policy committee, but among the steps Republicans take in the Hispanic communityand beyond, we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we do not,our Party’s appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only. We also believe that comprehensive immigration reform is consistent with Republican economic policies that promote job growth and opportunity for all.
Unfortunately, their base doesn’t care about their models and their projections; they are convinced that immigrants are the source of all their troubles. And that’s a huge problem. A recent analysis by Latino Decisions shows that Republicans need to get at least 47 percent of the Latino vote in order to win in 2016. (For reference, Mitt Romney won 23 percent.)
I’m going to take a wild guess that Donald Trump and the cowardly clown car that’s chasing him have just made achieving that 47 percent figure impossible.
The GOP political establishment that wrote that "autopsy" can't control their base or their candidates even though they know very well that they are signing the party's death warrant as a national party. It will catch up with them congressionally as well --- it did in California. These candidates are political suicide bombers, even Jeb! who is obviously getting so nervous that he's out there saying "anchor babies."