Associated Press
Jose Fuentes, a co-chairman of Mitt Romney's Hispanic leadership team, recently established a specific goal: the Republican campaign intends to "hit 38 percent with the Hispanic vote."
Under the circumstances, that's almost comically ambitious. Romney intends to do significantly better than McCain/Palin, which won 31% of the Latino vote in 2008, but recent polling suggests the former governor will do far worse.
Romney still hopes outreach will help turn things around, but there's a lingering problem: his message hasn't changed at all.
Mitt Romney will seek to bolster his support among Latino voters Monday with an address to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles, hitting President Obama on the economy and vowing to reform the nation's "broken" immigration system.
"No one is exempt from the pain of this economy, but the Hispanic community has been particularly hard hit," Romney will say, according to excerpts from his address. "While national unemployment is 8.1 percent, Hispanic unemployment is over 10 percent. Over two million more Hispanics are living in poverty today than the day President Obama took office."
Romney will tout his economic plan, repeating pledges to "create 12 million jobs by the end of my first term" and vowing to balance the nation's budget.
In other words, Romney intends to go to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, delivering the same speech he delivers everywhere else, pushing the same dubious talking points, and hoping Latino voters don't know the difference.
Indeed, the Republican campaign released extensive advance excerpts of the speech, and there doesn't appear to be anything new at all.
Why does this matter? Because Romney has already delivered plenty of speeches to Latino groups and organizations, and he won't address what's kept his support so low with the community in the first place.
There's no great mystery here. Romney has gone out of his way to deliberately antagonize Latino voters -- endorsing "self-deportation," vowing to veto the DREAM Act, palling around Kris Kobach, using "illegal" as a noun, describing Arizona's SB 1070 as a "model" for the nation, etc.
Unless the Republican is prepared to change his mind (again), and completely reinvent his entire worldview (again), reminding his audience today about high unemployment doesn't seem like a winning strategy.
In fact, in an amusing twist, Romney intends to condemn Obama today for failing to approve comprehensive immigration reform. Why is that amusing? Because Romney opposes comprehensive immigration reform.
There's nothing wrong with Romney reaching out to constituencies that generally support President Obama, but he shouldn't expect new results unless he's prepared to offer a new message.
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Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
38%. OMG. And they are serious about that.
When I was younger, I would to to Open Mic nights at a local comedy club hoping to become the greatest comic the world has ever known (Disclaimer: I failed)
One thing I noticed in all my time there was that the audience was comprised mostly of the same people week after week. There were the comics themselves, honing material, but the group who'd come to hear them - friends of the comics, young people taking advantage of the free admission and no minimum, locals just getting a drink - on any given week, at least 75% of the people listening to the jokes were there last week, the week before...
But the comics, those who were trying to be good, were trying out new material AND finesse the material they had. And it was difficult, if not impossible, to gauge if your delivery of one joke made a difference week after week when everyone already knew the punchlne. Especially if the joke wasn't all that great in the first place.
And some comics didn't even bother trying to hone their material, working under the assumption that "if I just keep doing the same thing, the same way, eventually it'll work!"
I don't know why stories of Romney trying to appeal to Latino voters (or back voters or young voters or women voters) reminds me of those desperate comics doing the same thing over and over again hoping for a different result. It just...does.
For bullshhitters such as the likes that run Team Romney it's all about the packaging, the message and nothing about the product. These dipsticks think exposing the turd that is Romney-Ryan for more sniffing will convince Latinos it doesn't smell like shhit.
I recently attended a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood where Destiny Lopez spoke to audience about the reality of the needs of Latino youth and all people. There is a great appreciation in the Latino Community for advice to teens on how to say no and be properly informed about sexuality and all the consequences.
Parents are very appreciative of schools teaching accurately about sexual and reproduction health, provide phone numbers, websites, text chats, etc. for youth to get answers.
http://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/get-involved/latinos-planned-parenthood-1021.htm
This is something concrete that Rmoney would be against that most Latinos would agree is good for their community.
This particular fundraiser luncheon was for a conference for young teens to attend to assist them in an extremely meaningful way.
http://www.adayofqanda.com/workshops.html
All of the "English only" advocates (and the "English is the official language..."), as near as I can recall, are Republicans, too.
After a while, my husband didn't want to let me watch the Republican convention anymore, because every time they trotted out someone to say a few words, phrases or sentences in Spanish, I'd start hollering at the TV -- English only, English only! I'm surprised we didn't hear that from any of the delegates.
Definitely the way to win amigos and influence votantes, si?
I think there was a translation error. They say "outreach" but all they seem to be offering is a reach-around.
Nah, this is more of the fake-handshake type of "outreach" i envision when the Repubs do s--- like this...
Yeah, going to people and telling them what they should be concerned about is always such a winning strategy. But I suppose it's really the culmination of the movement conservative mindset that if reality conflicts with ideology, reality must be wrong.
Oh, are they going to parade Mitt's Mexican descent? Because that seems to be their whole Latino-voter strategy. Mention that he's of Mexican descent then proceed to talk about things that have nothing to do with Latino interest
By all means, make another speech to a subset of a population that ALREADY SUPPORT YOU (i.e. if 24% support you, stop preaching to that same 24%)...
God forbid you solicit the opinions of ALL of that subset of the public and find out what it is they ACTUALLY wants done in the next 4 years... You might be surprised...
The GOP are trying to lure Hispanics into their car with candy. Unfortunately for Mitt this does not work as well with informed adults.
via teagan goddard comes this news...
The latest impreMedia/Latino Decisions tracking poll finds President Obama solidifying his lead over Mitt Romney among Latino voters by a whopping 68% to 26%.
Also interesting: "Latina voters plan to vote for President Obama by a margin of 74% to 21% for Romney -- a 53 point gap."
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obviously the gop's hispanic outreach plus their decision not to wage war on women has paid massive dividends
whoops..i see steve covered this is the previous enrty
I can almost sympathize with the Romney campaign for thinking the way they do. Outreach without deeds is just lip service, and the GOP has done that successfully for years. Evangelicals got nothing but lip service. The middle class, blue collar workers, emergency responders and educators have all gotten nothing but lip service. The working poor have barely even gotten lip service, but they certainly haven't gotten any deeds to help them. And yet, all these groups still vote for Republicans in non-significant numbers.
Republicans pay lip service to these groups because it works. Why should they think Latinos would be any different?*
*(The answer, of course, is that conservatives have been demagoguing against brown-skinned people for multiple generations now, but nobody ever said self-awareness was one of their strong points.)
Romney is reaching for the sky when he is all the way down at the bottom of the barrel.
Romney will say, "Maybe you don't know this, but my father was born in Mexico...blah blah blah."
Haha. Very clever Steve. Shades of Sarah Palin. Kris Kobach = Terrorist.
I was wondering how Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan think they will help the Economy by slashing all these Government Programs and Jobs ( Teachers, Law Enforcement, People who work in the Social Services Departments etc. How is that creating more jobs, I see Cuts as eliminating Jobs not creating more. Where do these men come from Mars? My God they are naive to think we believe what they are trying to sell us. They have disdain for Women, minorities and anyone that is not Rich like them. Romney tells something different to each group he speaks to depending on what he thinks they want to hear. Today he insulted people on public assistance, the very people who lost their jobs due to the outsourcing he started with The Bain Co.. Apparently he joked about Latino's at a speech as well, this man really needs to think before he opens his mouth. He goes overseas and insults them, does the same here, do we Trust him to not get us in a major war with his lack of candor?