After insulting and ignoring ‘Mexicans’ throughout the 2012 election, and before, the GOP have themselves a pair of problems: defeat and Mexicans. Let’s start there. And let’s dismiss that ‘racism’ is a problem because problems are things that should go away.

We’ve seen Republicans make fledgling efforts. Some have tackled the offset by trying to be nice. This was under the assumption that the Mexicans were pissed about the heat coming from the right side. Which is a fine assumption. Marco Rubio demonstrates:

“What I think will honor our legacy as a nation, is if we can do something that respects the rule of law, but also treats these people in a humane and respectful way,” Rubio said.

If the deployment of “humane and respectful” doesn’t throw you, you haven’t been listening. This is a leap forward in discourse. It had previously been a habit to speak of Mexicans in terms like “criminals” and “parasites.” As it was with The Heritage Foundation who claimed they were lousy with stupidity:

The statistical construct known as IQ can reliably estimate general mental ability, or intelligence. The average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations. The consequences are a lack of socioeconomic assimilation among low-IQ immigrant groups, more underclass behavior, less social trust, and an increase in the proportion of unskilled workers in the American labor market.

Jason Richwine lost his job with that. After it became a controversy, but still. Progress.

Or not. It seems with every creep forward one of the Daddies feels the need to step up and unburden his mind. Many Republicans are neither intellectually nor viscerally comfortable with being nice to Mexicans.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said Thursday that President Obama would not be president if it weren’t for the 1986 amnesty bill that Ronald Reagan signed into law.

Recall that Obama has damaged America beyond hope.

He said conservative estimates show that, on average, each of these people brought in five others, leading to 15 million more people in the country, most of whom voted for Obama.

“[T]hey have to admit that Ronald Reagan’s signature on the ’86 amnesty act brought about Barack Obama’s election,” King concluded on the House floor.

“[I]t’s clear to anybody that can do any kind of statistical analysis that Barack Obama wouldn’t be President of the United States without Ronald Reagan’s 1986 amnesty act.”

Here’s to the chance they swallow that. Then they’ll be forced to face the issue on King’s terms: Should the Democrats keep winning? Or should America become North Korea? Tough choices.

The way out involves accepting immigrants. Once Republicans try that, the Mexicans will listen to the pitch. Don’t bet it will happen soon.

Is there anything that whines more gratingly than a Mark Steyn? He is the annoying power tool. You’d think the man had been bashed in a Rangoon prison or something, and now he’s wildly out of balance, chattering and over-heated. So disappointed. Thanks very much for the state of things. Not even the ants can manage properly, what a nauseating display. Then there’s you, could you be any dumber? (idiot.)

Mitt Romney lost the election. (jerks.) Can you believe how it happened? (Salvadorans.) What a stupendous country we’re living in, huh? (Mozambique.)

Tribal America

To an immigrant such as myself (not the undocumented kind, but documented up to the hilt, alas), one of the most striking features of election-night analysis was the lightly worn racial obsession. On Fox News, Democrat Kirsten Powers argued that Republicans needed to deal with the reality that America is becoming what she called a “brown country.” Her fellow Democrat Bob Beckel observed on several occasions that if the share of the “white vote” was held down below 73 percent Romney would lose.

As if these racial hugs weren’t bad enough. This was Fox News! Behaving like a melange artisan down at DeAundray’s Halal Shack. Good lord. But I’m no bigot, he whispered.

In the end, it was 72 percent and he did. Beckel’s assertion — that if you knew the ethnic composition of the electorate you also knew the result — turned out to be correct.

This is what less enlightened societies call tribalism . .

You’re Bushmen of the Kalahari, I tells ya. This is what clueless people do, lob ‘tribalism’ at things that disappoint. Not racist! The browns are predictable as fuck, and predictability is for insects. You ethnic-voted for the black fool so Romney lost. Take a bow or a rumba or whatever.

That same year America held an election, and Ronald Reagan won a landslide victory. Nobody talked about tribal-vote shares back then, but had the percentage of what Beckel calls the “white vote” been the same in 2012 as it was in 1980 (88 percent), Mitt Romney would have won in an even bigger landslide than Reagan.

Back when America was great, 88 percent of the voters were white and Ronald Reagan was king. Just saying! You get the point, though. White people vote for whites because of political intelligence, national identity and a none-too-disagreeable dash of élan. But now — have you seen California?

If one were informed that, say, the population of Nigeria had gone from 80 percent black in 1970 to 40 percent black today, one would suspect something rather odd and unnatural had been going on. Twenty years ago, Rwanda was about 14 percent Tutsi. Now it’s just under 10 percent. So it takes a bunch of Hutu butchers getting out their machetes and engaging in seven-figure genocide to lower the Tutsi population by a third. But, when the white population of California falls by half, that’s “natural,” just the way it is, one of those things, could happen to anyone.

White people are being harvested. It’s true! From the next few paragraphs: Habsburgs, Romanovs, Balkans, Western Hemisphere, Anglo-Celts, Hallmark Cinco de Mayo card, Latin American society, Jason DeParle, the aura of Central America, laundromats, money-transfer stores, jobless men, drink and sleep in the sun, no city government, little community. (utopia.)

Bleh bleh my final point: Or as Peggy Lee sang long ago in a lost land, “Mañana is soon enough for me.” And ‘Adios,’ suckers.

If you act like an ass while you’re running in the western states, you suffer the consequences. Hows about you Republican fools getting a healthy dose of rebound messaging? They may not make up their political minds quickly, but — when they do?

. . do not fuck with Latinos:

1.) Early Sharron Angle campaign messaging:

2.) October polling:

TCJ Research 10/7-10/9 Polls Analysis: Angle Expands Lead, O’Donnell Still Behind
Monday, October 11, 2010 | Rick @ The Conservative Journal

Nevada Senate: Finally for my favorite Senate race of this election cycle, the Sharron Angle v. Harry Reid contest. Our numbers show Angle (52%) widening her lead to 6 points, largely due to Reid’s numbers falling a bit to 46%. With only 2% undecided, Angle looks to be in good position for this race. The only remaining variables are: How many people will vote none of these, and who, if anyone, will vote for 3rd party candidate Scott Ashjan?

3.) Latinos’ concerns:

October 16th . .

4.) Result:

Latinos made up 12 percent of Nevada voters, with 90 percent of them supporting Reid. Angle got only an 8 percent sliver of their support, according to a Latino Decisions poll.

90% to 8%?! Are you kidding?! You might have gotten 3-4% of WWII Jews to vote for Hitler.

Next: Meg Whitman vs. Jerry Brown, Governor of California.

1.) Early Meg Whitman campaign messaging:

Meg is ‘tough as nails’ on illegal immigration
May 14, 2010

SAN DIEGO –Meg Whitman says she’s got the guts and determination to stand tough on illegal immigration, and she won’t back down.

And she told a crowd of nearly 175 at a stop Thursday in San Diego, “I am 100 percent against amnesty, no exceptions.”

2.) September Polling:

SurveyUSA Poll: Whitman Leads Brown By 47%-40% In CA-GOV Race
Eric Kleefeld | September 3, 2010, 11:14AM

The new SurveyUSA poll of the California gubernatorial race gives Republican Meg Whitman an expanding lead over Democrat Jerry Brown . .

3.) Latinos’ concerns:

Former Whitman housekeeper alleges she was treated like ‘garbage’
September 29, 2010 | 12:10 pm

The California governor’s race took on a circus-like atmosphere Wednesday as a former housekeeper for Meg Whitman alleged the Republican gubernatorial nominee employed her for nearly nine years, even though Whitman knew the housekeeper was in the country illegally . . “I felt like she was throwing me away like a piece of garbage,” Diaz said.

. . Whitman continued: “As required by law, once we learned she was an illegal worker, I immediately terminated Nicky’s employment.”

4.) Result:

White hypocrisy + nasty boss = familiar insults. Latinos aren’t stupid.

ADD:

Did Polls Underestimate Democrats’ Latino Vote?
By NATE SILVER | November 3, 2010, 9:33 PM

. . “There is one overarching reason why the polls were wrong in Nevada,” Mr. Barreto wrote in an e-mail to FiveThirtyEight. “The Latino vote.”

His firm, which conducts interviews in both English and Spanish, had found that Latino voters — somewhat against the conventional wisdom — were relatively engaged by this election and for the most part were going to vote Democratic. Mr. Barreto also found that Latino voters who prefer to speak Spanish — about 40 percent of Latino voters in California meet this description, he told me — are particularly likely to vote Democratic. Pollsters who don’t conduct bilingual interviewing at all, or who make it cumbersome for the respondent to take the poll in Spanish, may be missing these voters . .

I think you can consider this an admittance by Conservatives they neither hold positions favorable to Latinos nor care for them in general. You can also throw in that they don’t consider Latinos to be very smart, considering the ploy.

A right-wing front group called “Latinos for Reform” calls upon their people (*cough*) to employ a novel strategy when they go to the polls next month: Don’t. That’s right — when trying to decide how to vote, try deciding not to. Don’t vote:

What a grand American strategy: let’s change things by dropping out of the process and letting everybody else make decisions for us. I’m sure that everything will go better for the Hispanic communities after that, especially seeing how Republicans very much care for and respect them.

The group had shown up once before, in the 2008 elections, running this ad that pitted Latinos against African-Americans because you-know-who is Black:

. . Obama told reporters in Chicago that while everyone agrees that the Hispanic population has grown, they cannot expand by taking power from the African-American community. You heard right…but there’s more. Did you know that Obama has never hired a Latino to a senior position in his office throughout his legislative career? Did you know that Obama has opposed trade with Mexico, Central America and Colombia, yet supports free trade with Africa?

Classy. The guy who runs the group is Robert Deposada, a Republican consultant and former Bushie. Another guy, Juan Carlos Benitez, also a Bushie Republican, may still be involved as well. So you know to whom you can address your poison pen letters . .

Members of Hispanic community outraged over “Don’t Vote” TV ad
Oct 18, 2010 11:25 PM PDT | KTNV Action News, Las Vegas

. . “That message has to be denounced, its got to be thrown out,” President of the Hispanics in Politics organization, Fernando Romero, says.

“To ask a community, any community to silence their voice as a way to resolve or react during a time when their voice is most needed, is what makes all this reprehensible,” Luis Valera of UNLV’s Government Relations says.

Deposada may have predicted his own ignominious fate as a vote-killer back in 2008. Just substitute him here for “the Republican Party” . .

. . he and other conservative Latinos are disappointed that McCain hasn’t put more effort into courting the Latino vote.

“We were honestly so ridiculously frustrated,” he says. “There’s never been a Republican candidate with a better track record with the Latino community. Our big concern is that I can just picture the Republican Party after the election saying, ‘If we couldn’t get the Hispanic vote with John McCain, who is so pro-Hispanic, then why bother?’”

There must be some reason for this sort of behavior. You’ve got to be a helluva lot more than just a whack Tea Partier to be so insultingly, shamelessly full of shit. Especially considering that teenagers are your entire audience.

Angle, a tea party favorite who has rallied for stricter border enforcement, played down her usual conservative rhetoric in a brief discussion with a Hispanic high school group Friday in Las Vegas. The students asked her to explain her repeated use of TV spots denounced by national pro-immigrant and Hispanic organizations as race-baiting attacks.

They were students at Rancho High School. They had good reason to be concerned: she’s been hammering the ‘illegal alien’ issue to try to pull ahead of Harry Reid in her Senate campaign. These are the sorts of images she’s been flooding Nevada TV channels with:

So you can see why they’d wonder about her. There’s definitely a ‘scary brown people’ theme running through her messaging. I might feel like there were a lot of angry white people staring at me if I were one of these students. So, when she dropped by, they asked her:

Why is it that in all of your commercials you have the image of Latinos? What do you see when you hear, and I quote, “illegal aliens?”

Good question, fair enough. Sharron responded to it by lying to their faces:

I think that you’re misinterpreting those commercials. I’m not sure that those are Latinos in that commercial. What it is, is a fence and there are people coming across that fence. What we know is that our northern border is where the terrorists came through. That’s the most porous border that we have. We cannot allow terrorists; we cannot allow anyone to come across our border if we don’t know why they’re coming.

Those weren’t Latinos. That’s not the Mexican border.

Take a look at the ads’ images again, and then take a look at that answer. In the ‘fence’ video, you can see that it says ‘illegals’, clear as could be. And these are Latinos she’s talking to, telling them that they don’t know what Latinos look like, they must be mistaken. Perhaps she’s mentally ill.

ADD: WOW. Now I’m almost sure of it. Who behaves this way in dealing with a Hispanic Student Union? By accusing some of them of being secretly Asian, what does that prove? How does it help her campaign?