Is the Republican Party poised to turn off MORE Latino voters? It certainly sounds that way. It’s clear Republican branding, no matter what the RNC says, is in big trouble. (How do you spell rebranding problems? C-P-A-C). But now it sounds as if GOPers — hard-line conservatives, of course — are about to do more damage to tattered GOP imagery. To wit:
This morning the Republican National Committee released a report that purports to examine everything that’s wrong with the GOP, one that has a heavy emphasis on repairing relations with Latinos. “By 2050, the Hispanic share of the U.S. population could be as high as 29 percent, up from 17 percent now,” the report laments, adding that unless Republicans “get serious” about tackling their minority outreach problem, “we will lose future elections.”
Only a few hours later, it is now clear that some Republicans will do all they can to block Obama’s first Latino pick for his second-term cabinet — and the right is gearing up for a campaign against him that will make the effort to block Chuck Hagel look like a knitting seminar. Given Thomas Perez’s background as the son of Dominican immigrants, plus his role running the Justice Department’s civil rights division, this isn’t going to make the RNC’s “outreach” to Latinos any easier.
The problem is: part of the party (those who value winning and adapting the party to the 21st century) want serious outreach. And part of the party (who still believe the Dick Morrises and others who think the country really is totally with them by the mainstream media is in a conspiracy with Democrats to make people think they don’t have the country’s overwhelming support) doesn’t really seem to care, or think it’s pandering (which suggests that the “real” voters, they feel, are non-Latinos).
Senator David Vitter announced today that he will put a “hold” on Obama’s nomination of Thomas Perez as labor secretary, partly on the grounds of his work on … the New Black Panther case. Other Republican Senators plan to paint Perez as a “radical legal activist” who has “tried to help illegal immigrants avoid detection,” as the New York Times puts it.
To be clear, it is fair game for Republicans to use the nomination process to ask legitimate questions about a nominee, and to raise substantive objections to that nominee. But if the attacks on Perez veer into the lurid and racially charged, it will be very interesting to see how Republicans who agree with the RNC’s analysis of the GOP’s problems handle it.
The usual way: Fox News and talk show hosts and some new media writers will play defense attorney. The problem is if the GOP wants to w-i-n o-v-e-r parts not already in its niche 2012 coalition it doesn’t matter how choir leaders direct the choir.
As Greg Sargent notes in this above Washington Post piece, Republican conservatives have good ideological grounds to oppose Perez.
But the problem in American politics today is not opposing someone on policy.
The problem is a style of hateful, spiteful, mocking, snarky disrespectful opposition that turns off people who are not in a left and right choir.
For instance, Sarah Palin sure wowed people at CPAC with her jokes about a backtround check for Obama and a teleprompter.
But such jokes push independent voters away and are — at best — tiresome political jokes, akin to what a hack comedian will say at a comedy store. (“Hey, where are you from?” “I don’t come down to where you work and…” Etc. Etc.) It is so tiresome and OLD.
Attention Republican Party: an overall image matters. All the money you spend on outreach, ads, all the rip-n-read GOP defending Sean Hannity may do — in the end, its the overall image. And the image the country’s Hispanic population has gotten of the Republican Party of the last few years has not been good.
If opposition to Perez is indeed angry, raging, etc it won’t help your outreach.
It’ll help you be on the political outs.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.