08/19/2021
Previously by Pedro De Alvarado: Venezuelan Immigrant Says UK, US Share Same Destiny, Both Mortally Threatened By Great Replacement
You have to wonder whether Donald J. Trump’s impressive but still losing 38 percent share of the Hispanic vote in 2020 — which jumped from 29 percent in 2016 — was a good thing after all. It’s reinforced the idea among Stupid Party Brain Trusters that the Hispanic vote is a vein of gold just waiting to be mined. Newsflash: It’s not. The party’s core constituency is still white, and the sooner the GOP’s panjandrums figure that out, the sooner they’ll give up the hunt for “natural Republican” snipes in the Hispanic demographic.
Consider Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who published an op-ed at Fox News bragging about the GOP’s improvements with the Hispanic vote:
Hispanic voters are becoming Republican. It’s happening right now, and there is no stopping it. This isn’t something we are hoping for, this is something that is in process. This train is moving. …
Here’s the reality that the NRSC’s new polling proves: Hispanic voters are aspirational. They want to live in a society with a government that values work, faith, family, a quality education, strong borders, independence and self-determination. They increasingly see the Democratic Party as out of touch with those values.
Republicans will win Hispanic vote — sooner than you think. This is how, June 7, 2021
There followed polling data to suggest Hispanics are just like white Republicans. They want limited government and free markets and crime-free neighborhoods.
This is, of course, a ludicrous fantasy, as actually voting totals show. Let’s go over some numbers.
According to an exit poll from Fox News, Trump picked up 61 percent of the white vote in Florida this time around [Voter Analysis | Elections 2020 | Fox News]. That exceeded his overall performance with whites at the national level, where he received about 58 percent [National Exit Polls: How Different Groups Voted, NYT, November 3, 2020]. Had Trump only picked up 53 percent of the white vote like he did in Arizona (a state he lost), Trump would have lost.
Trump was nowhere close to those figures among Hispanics. Wake up, GOP: Demography is still destiny. Although Trump improved among Hispanics in 2020, he still lost, 38 percent to Biden’s 59 — a sizable margin that will not be overcome anytime soon[Behind Biden’s 2020 Victory, by Ruth Igielnik, Scott Keeter and Hannah Hartig, Pew Research Center, June 30, 2021]. The Hispanophilia of Republicans simply goes too far, and I say this, again, as a Hispanic who votes Republican.
As VDARE has reported many times, Hispanics vote for Democrats because they like the Democrat platform; i.e. they favor big government: statist control of the economy, a higher minimum wage, more welfare spending (free stuff!), and more gun control [Latino voters favor raising minimum wage, government involvement in health care, stricter gun laws, by Jen Manuel Krogstad, Mark Hugo Lopez, & Abby Budiman, Pew Research Center, February 20, 2020]. However conservative their views on social issues such as abortion and “gay marriage,” those issues don’t inform their vote. So they aren’t “natural Republicans,” as the GOP wing of the Open Borders Lobby keeps telling us. They’re natural Democrats.
And that’s another reason, by the way, they don’t much care about “immigration reform.” They’re already here! The GOP’s “nation of immigrants” flan doesn’t attract Hispanic votes.
Now, let’s look at the Hispanic vote going back 50 years. The numbers show that the GOP simply can’t expect a realignment.
Hispanic voting patterns, as the chart shows, have oscillated, but never risen above 40 percent. The slimmest Democrat margin victory in the last 50 years was 2004, when the GOP lost by “only” 17 percent.
Since they start keeping records, The GOP is good for at least 30 percent Hispanic support.
Trump was above that number in 2020 … . and damn near won because of it. pic.twitter.com/JIH7LljNrh
— pro labor independent Rico P (@reesetheone1) July 20, 2021
Scott and his amigos at the National Republican Senatorial Committee even want us to believe the political future of the GOP is in Florida. Because Hispanics!
But that’s another GOP hound that just won’t hunt. To replicate Florida, the party needs elite Cuban whites, who are less than 1 percent of the American population. But even replicating Florida is not a saving tactic for the GOP. That’s because the party’s share of the Cuban vote is steadily declining as the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the anti-Communists who fled Fidel Castro are assimilated into larger Hispanic culture [Charlie Kirk or Russell Kirk, Which Way Western Man?, Red Elephants, December 3, 2019]. In other words, young Cubans vote like most Hispanics: for Democrats.
And by the way, for Heaven’s sake, can we stop crediting Trump’s Florida victory to Hispanics? Whites played a key role in keeping the Sunshine State red (see above).
In fairness, Republicans slightly improved with Hispanics post-Obama. Trump’s 2020 gains with Hispanic sub-groups such as South Texans and even Caribbean Hispanics, such as Puerto Ricans in the Orlando area, raised a few eyebrows [President Trump’s Gains with Hispanics Are Just The Beginning: Giancarlo Sopo, by Vanessa Vallejo, El American, November 25, 2020]. And yes, Hispanics aren’t quite as monolithically Democrat as blacks, a totally lost cause as far as GOP outreach goes.
But so what? That doesn’t mean the GOP should direct so much special attention to non-whites with a long record of voting against the party, particularly when so large a percentage of the white vote eludes it. You dance with the guy who brung you! Plenty of white working-class voters are disaffected with the current crop of political actors and yearn for a populist willing to take stronger stances on issues like immigration. That candidate was Trump in 2016 and 2020, although he didn’t do what he said he would do. To the degree that he could still be that candidate, if he doesn’t run in 2024, someone must replace him.
Republicans are tossing water into a fan. A growing non-white, largely Hispanic electorate is dimming the party’s electoral hope in the coming years [The Changing Racial and Ethnic Composition of the U.S. Electorate, by Ruth Igielnik & Abby Budiman, Pew Research Center, September 23, 2020]. Newly released census data show that America’s white population has fallen for the first time since 1790. The Historic American Nation is clearly losing ground [Census data shows the number of White people in the U.S. fellfor first time since 1790, by Tara Bahrampour & Ted Mellnik, Washington Post, July 12, 2021]. And as the white population declines, millions of illegal aliens, likely to benefit from an Amnesty, are Zerg-rushing the border. Yet America’s flawed immigration system remains intact, and Stupid Party leaders have yet to push for an immigration moratorium.
Leftists such as Jennifer Rubin gloat about this demographic disaster for a reason. They want whites replaced. The Great Replacement guarantees permanent Democrat rule.
Still, immigration patriots can take solace that some Republicans are waking up. Candidates such as Joe Kent and Blake Masters are running on explicitly America First immigration policies. They and other like-minded candidates will play pivotal roles in fighting for the Historic American Nation.
But pressure must come from below — from MAGA-hat wearing middle-class Americans — if the party is to change its suicidal position on immigration.
My time working in GOP circles (on Hispanic outreach! — I’m a Venezuelan immigrant) taught me that wishful thinking about the Hispanic vote is somehow encoded in the DNA of party bigwigs. They don’t bother to do their homework or research demographics — the latter a crucial prerequisite to understand the multicultural Thunderdome unfolding before our eyes.
If the party is to survive, it must retool its platform to bring home whites who fell into Democrat arms, and also energize politically apathetic whites who stay home on Election Day because they feel hopeless. The latter might even cement right-wing populist victories.
Whether the GOP will get the message is anyone’s guess. But one thing is certain: if the GOP leadership continues “minority outreach” at the expense of increasing its share of the working-class, middle-American white vote, it is doomed.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.