The Problem with Republicans

Despite the avalanche of bad news for President Barack Obama, and the decline of his popularity in polls, he remains the most likely winner of the 2012 election.

This is the conclusion that I reached after having observed Republican hopefuls for the presidential candidacy in recent weeks. They lean so far to the right on topics of interest to Latinos that I do not see how any of them could win 40 percent of the Hispanic vote that, according to pollsters, the Republicans will need in order to reach the White House.

The most recent Republican president, George W. Bush, won 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004, and since then, this vote has only gained greater importance. The former Republican candidate in 2008, Sen. John McCain — who ran on a moderate position on immigration — lost in part because he won only 31 percent of the Hispanic vote, pollsters say. How could any of the current Republican candidates reach the percentage of Hispanic votes they would need in order to win the election when all of them are embracing a much harder stance on issues, such as immigration, than did McCain back in 2008?

None of the major Republican candidates during Thursday’s televised debate of Republican candidates in Iowa supported the idea of a comprehensive immigration reform such as the one that McCain supported during his 2008 campaign, which would tighten border controls while at the same time offering a path to legalization for millions of undocumented immigrants willing to comply with requirements, such as paying fines and learning English.

Republican pollsters say that their party will gather a significant part of the Hispanic vote because the economy — and not immigration — will be the key issue in next year’s election. They point out, according to their surveys, that Hispanic voters put the economy, education, health [care] and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ahead of immigration on their list of priorities.

Democratic pollsters, in turn, insist that Republicans will find it difficult to campaign on the subject of the economy as their candidates are calling for deeper cuts in social programs that almost all Hispanics want preserved. In addition, even if immigration is not their main concern, it bears a profound influence on the decision making process of Hispanics at the time of voting, they affirm. “Immigration is an emotional issue,” said Democratic pollster Sergio Bendixen. “It indicates to us which candidate likes us, and which one doesn’t.”

Several top leaders of the Republican Party, headed by Florida’s former governor, Jeb Bush, and former secretary of commerce, Carlos Gutierrez, among others, have created a group called the Hispanic Leadership Network in an effort to attract Latinos to their party. I asked Gutierrez in a phone interview how his party could win a significant share of the Hispanic vote with its current anti-immigration rhetoric and its embracing a position in favor of further budgetary cuts. Gutierrez, who supports the former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, in the Republican primary and believes that his candidate is a “pragmatist,” admitted that Republicans will find it difficult to win in 2012 with a candidate that Hispanics perceive as hostile. “The Republican nominee will have to be someone who is a moderate,” said Gutierrez. “We have to embrace immigration: If we are the party of prosperity, we have to be the party of immigration.

In my opinion, Republicans will have a serious problem with the Latino vote in 2012. It is true that Obama will have to deal with an economic slowdown that affects Hispanics more than other Americans. And it is also true that the president has not fulfilled his campaign promise to push the approval of immigration reform. In addition, the Obama government will have to explain to Hispanics why it has deported nearly a million illegal immigrants in the past three years, more than former President George W. Bush did in his eight years in office. Nonetheless, Republicans will not be able to criticize Obama on any of these issues because the measures that their candidates propose are even more extreme in terms of cutting social programs without imposing new taxes on the wealthy, as well as increasing mass deportations.

Unless Republican candidates make a turn toward the middle, allowing them to regain something of the Latino vote, or the situation with our economy worsens, causing Hispanics to not come out to vote on election day, all signs point toward Obama being re-elected in 2012.