GOP gambles with Latino support

GOP gambles with Latino support
By Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
Published September 26, 2006

I grew up in the suburbs, and I never thought of Republicans as gamblers. They were the solid types, reassuring with their button-down shirts and wingtips, square-and-steady guys just taking care of business.

Times change.

Marshall Field's is now Macy's, Carson Pirie Scott is closing on State Street and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has become a wild-eyed gambler, willing to bet the future of the Republican Party on an anti-immigrant card dealt from the bottom of his deck.

When President Bush and U.S. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) tried for a bipartisan compromise to fix our broken immigration system, Hastert and the National Republican Congressional Committee said no. Their decision instead was to whip up anti-immigrant sentiments a simple, cynical political calculation.

Hastert used the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks of Sept. 11 to excoriate immigrant terrorists, illegal immigrant gang members and Democratic leaders in almost the same breath. The House held "get-tough" hearings on immigration this summer. The hearings were ostensibly bipartisan but were targeted to political swing districts, such as the 7th Congressional District in Colorado.

This scenario is playing out across Illinois. The NRCC sent out a series of nasty anti-immigrant mailings hyperventilating about the threat of "another wave of immigrants" (as if that were a disease) to support state Sen. Peter Roskam's bid to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde.

Republican candidate David McSweeney attacks U.S. Rep. Melissa Bean for not being "anti-immigrant enough," although she voted for the most Draconian anti-immigrant legislation put forth last year. Republican Andrea Zinga, seeking the seat of retiring U.S. Rep. Lane Evans, justifies racial profiling of Middle Easterners. U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk says he "is OK with discrimination against young Arab males from terrorist-producing states."

Scapegoating is a tried-and-true recipe in the cookbook of political action. Previous right-wing frenzies against "welfare queens" and "homosexual marriage" have been whipped up, so why not aim the venom this year at "illegals" and "Islamo-fascists"? Nasty, racially charged attacks may be divisive, but what matters in politics is winning and losing and nothing else.

Here is where Speaker Hastert and the NRCC are true gamblers. They bet that they can galvanize resentful white voters and keep control of the House without destroying the long-term prospects of the Republican Party. The problem for Republicans is that the Hispanic and immigrant electorate is growing at a spectacular rate. Moreover, they live in key presidential swing states, such as Florida, Arizona and Nevada. And increasingly, immigrant voters are populating key swing suburban areas.

In just the last five years, the number of naturalized immigrant citizens in DuPage County jumped to 91,000, a 49 percent increase. That's precisely where the NRCC is wallpapering communities with anti-immigrant mailers. In Lake County, there was a 56 percent increase in naturalized citizens.

Recent polls show that Republicans are losing serious ground among Hispanic voters--especially among those who are evangelical and socially conservative. A July poll by the non-partisan Pew Hispanic Center showed Republican support among Hispanics dropping by 40 percent, with almost the entire loss coming from foreign-born Hispanics.

Rev. Luis Cortes Jr., the evangelical leader who hosted the first National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast with President Bush in 2002, stated that Republican House leaders "should be ashamed, and as a person of faith I have to believe that this will backfire, as it is clearly an act of cowardice."

Playing the anti-immigrant card is a losing proposition for the Republican Party in Illinois. Rancid anti-immigrant rhetoric not only motivates immigrants to naturalize and vote Democratic, it also turns off the big-hearted people in our moderate state.

But there are gambling riverboats aplenty in the Fox River. Before Hastert and the Republicans bet the future of the Republican Party, they may want to consider the advice of Republican political strategist Grover Norquist, who said: "We can't afford to do to the Hispanics what we did to the Catholics in the late 19th Century: tell them we don't like them and lose their votes for 100 years."