The Incredible Shrinking Party

America's Voice Blog

Posted 10/07/09 at 03:15pm

The Incredible Shrinking Party

Earlier this year, McCain called on the Republican Party to adopt a new outreach strategy towards America’s growing Hispanic population, advocating for positive messages instead of the inflammatory rhetoric which has created a negative opinion of the GOP.

Shortly after, Senator Mel Martinez, FL-R, announced that he would be resigning from the U.S. Senate, and although his motivation for doing so was personal, he made it clear that he though the GOP’s stance on immigration was regrettable. On NBC’s Meet the Press, he said:

...There were voices within our party, frankly, which if they continue with that kind of rhetoric, anti-Hispanic rhetoric, that so much of it was heard, we're going to be relegated to minority status.

And in today’s Washington Post, we see that his message is still the same. Michael Gerson quotes Martinez:

There are lots of Hispanics to the right of you and me on immigration…but they think, 'Republicans just don't like us.'…It is more a matter of tone, of how you talk about immigrants. It has made Hispanics feel unwelcome, unwanted.

And now, with Martinez gone, there aren’t a lot of members of the GOP who really “get” the immigration issue (the numbers are dwindling!), which gives America’s Hispanic population even more of a reason to feel alienated. Take a look at the examples of hate that Gerson’s compiled in his Washington Post piece:

During the 2006 congressional debate on immigration reform, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) grabbed the Republican microphone to call Miami a "Third World country." The same year, Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) darkly warned of illegal immigrant murderers as a "slow motion nightmare" greater than Sept. 11. A provision of the House immigration reform bill would have made it illegal for priests, ministers and volunteers to "assist" illegal immigrants -- criminalizing a religious duty. Republican presidential candidates conspicuously avoided Hispanic forums during the 2008 primaries. Conservative shock radio, on its frightening fringes, can be overtly racist, referring to Mexican immigrants as "leeches," "the world's lowest primitives" and diseased carriers of the "fajita flu" who may "wipe their behinds with their hands." Pat Buchanan sells books with this title: "State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America."

The Republican Party is digging too deep a hole with their anti-immigrant rhetoric, and with a growing immigrant population and political independents who want a solution to our broken immigration system, they should take a tip (or five) from Mel.