Catholic Dioceses to Collide with Virginia GOP Over Immigration Reform

In all candor, today's Republican Party of Virginia is largely comprised of far Christofascists, Tea Party extremists, white supremacists and a few old time Republicans who refuse to face the reality that the GOP has morphed into something ugly.  Not surprisingly, immigration reform is not favored by the Virginia GOP and its anti-immigrant and anti-minority base.  Now, the Virginia GOP is about to collide with the Roman Catholic dioceses in Virginia which are putting on a push for passage of the Senate backed immigration reform bill that would provide a pathway to citizenship.  While the Virginia GOP and the Catholic bishops have been allies in the war on women's' health and gay rights, immigration provides a sharp break in the allied effort.  The Virginian Pilot looks at the Catholic push for immigration reform.  Here are excerpts:

More than a half-million Roman Catholics in Virginia will be asked at Sunday Mass on Sept. 8 to lobby their congressmen to pass immigration changes that give a path to citizenship for people living illegally in the United States.

The campaign is part of a national effort by American Catholic church leaders who say it's time to change U.S. immigration laws to make it easier for low-skilled workers to immigrate here, and to preserve family unity.

"We think there is unprecedented opportunity today to fix a broken immigration system," said Jeff Caruso, executive director of the Virginia Catholic Conference, which handles legislative affairs for Virginia's two bishops. "We look at it through the lens of family. A lot of times deportation polices have the consequences of separating children from their parents."

Their lobbying probably will encounter resistance from several of the commonwealth's federal lawmakers, including some in Hampton Roads, who dislike the idea of giving the estimated 11 million people illegally living in the country a special route to legal status.

In addition to priests addressing the issue from the pulpit, Caruso said parishioners throughout the commonwealth will receive a one-page insert in their church bulletins explaining the issue, along with contact information for members of Congress.

Long interested in reforming what they view as a failing system, the bishops and other supporters have stepped up their lobbying since the Senate passed a sweeping immigration overhaul in June. The measure includes a provision to allow millions of people illegally living in the United States to take steps toward citizenship under procedures that can take 13 years, as well as proposals to beef up border security and other changes. Virginia's two U.S. senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, voted for it.

Rep. Scott Rigell, R-Virginia Beach, who also opposes the Senate bill, has yet to see a path to citizenship proposal that he would support, said his spokeswoman, Kim Mosser Knapp. Rigell is interested in helping children in the country illegally, she said.

Rep. Bobby Scott, D- Newport News, favors assisting those in the country illegally. Earlier this summer, Scott said giving those 11 million people a path to citizenship - while securing U.S. borders, protecting workers and uniting families - "is critical to any comprehensive immigration reform package."

One can only hope that Virginia's immigrant and Hispanic voters are watching carefully and will realize that they need to turn out in force and vote against the GOP's statewide slate in November in order to send a strong message to the GOP.

Anti-Hispanic Racist Resigns from Hertitage Foundation

As noted before, the Heritage Foundation's first big venture under Jim DeMint - a homophobic racist in my estimation - on immigration reform continues to be a disaster for the organization.  Now, as damage control continues Jason Richwine, one of the authors of the much attacked report, has resigned.   Making the situation even more damaging for the Heritage Foundation is new information that Richwine also wrote pieces for a white "nationalist" website where he tried to depict Hispanics as more prone to committing crimes and criminal conduct.  Combined with his previously announced views that Hispanics will never have the intellect and intelligence of white American, the new revelations paint a telling picture.  Sadly, Richwine seems to have worked to put forth a mindset that would be popular with the racists and white supremacists who populate much of the GOP base.  Here are highlights from two Washington Post stories:

Jason Richwine, the co-author of a controversial immigration study released this week by the Heritage Foundation, tells Post Politics that he has resigned his position with the organization.

“Yes, that’s right,” Richwine wrote in a brief e-mail. Heritage confirmed that he resigned.

Complicating matters were a series of revelations about Richwine, including that he had written a doctoral thesis at Harvard University arguing that the United States should focus its immigration efforts on those with high IQs and that he had written for a Web site that describes itself as “nationalist.”

Yahoo’s Chris Moody has the story:

Heritage Foundation Analyst Jason Richwine, the co-author of a study claiming the immigration reform bill pending in the Senate would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion, wrote two articles in 2010 for a website founded by Richard Spencer, a self-described “nationalist” who writes frequently about race and against “the abstract notion of human equality.”

Spencer is now the chairman of the Montana-based National Policy Institute, an organization that describes itself as a think tank for “White Americans.”

Richwine’s articles for AlternativeRight.com, “Model Minority,” published on March 3, 2010, and “More on Hispanics and Crime,” published the next day, push back on an American Conservative essay that argued that some conservatives have over-hyped the crime rate among Hispanics.

 

Heritage Foundation Does Damage Control

As noted in a recent post, the Heritage Foundation - which seems to be dumbing itself down in parallel with the GOP base - released an anti-immigration reform report that was supposed to win high praise among the right.  Instead, it has blown up in Heritage's face - especially now that the racist, anti-Hispanic views of one of its authors have been widely publicized.  Indeed, the organization may be on the verge of hiring an outside PR firm to try to minimize the longer term damage.  Candidly, the type of batshitery that was contained in the report should come as no surprise seeing that the Heritage Foundation hired extremist, racist, homophobe Jim DeMint as its new leader. As with Mitt Romney's "the 47%" statement, when people truly discover what the right really believes, the blow back can be powerful.   Politico looks at the efforts to manage the shit storm the report has triggered.  Here are highlights:

The Heritage Foundation has gone into damage-control mode in the last few days, after coming under fire from Republicans and conservative outside groups over a report it published that puts the price tag of immigration reform at $6.3 trillion.

The conservative think tank is considering hiring a high-profile public relations firm to help deal with the fallout of the report that was supposed to be their big play in the immigration debate, according to two sources familiar with Heritage.

The group has also come under scrutiny after it was reported that one of the authors of the report asserted previously that white Americans have higher IQs than immigrants.

The rollout was supposed to be a coming out party of sorts for Jim DeMint, who took the helm of the organization last month, after giving up his Senate seat to take the job. While DeMint was expected to give the group a higher profile, the backlash and controversy are not the kind of attention the group was hoping to garner.

One Republican operative who works on immigration reform said that hiring a crisis communications firm could help stop the bleeding with donors or other supporters. Heritage’s efforts to get traction for its immigration report could be hampered, the operative said, if it gets lumped in with groups like FAIR, NumbersUSA or CIS, which are considered pure opposition to the immigration reform effort.

Heritage has stood by its findings that an immigration overhaul would cost $6.3 trillion despite many conservative groups and lawmakers, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), calling the findings inaccurate.

The group has also been fending off attacks over one of the report’s coauthors, Jason Richwine. As part of his Harvard dissertation, Richwine, who is now a senior policy analyst at the think tank, argued that there was a long-standing difference between the IQ of white Americans and immigrants.  .   .   .  

Heritage’s Gonzalez wrote in a blog post that the Harvard paper does not represent Heritage’s position.    “It’s findings do not reflect the positions of The Heritage Foundation or the conclusions of our study on the cost of amnesty to U.S. taxpayers, as race and ethnicity are not part of Heritage immigration policy recommendations,” Gonzalez wrote, adding that Richwine provided quantitative support to the lead author Robert Rector.

All in all, it is fun to watch the far right self destruct when it slips up and lets the world see its real racism and bigotry.   So much for wooing the Hispanic vote.

Far Right Heritage Foundation Report Distorts Immigration Reform

While I am glad he's out of the United States Senate, Jim DeMint is still busy peddling his lies and insanity from the pulpit of the Heritage Foundation - an organization that seems Hell bent on losing all credibility outside of Kool-Aid drinking circles.   How else to explain its new position paper on the consequences of immigration reform and looks more like the work of the KKK or other white supremacists groups.  The truth is that the far right wants no immigration reform because its spittle flecked angry white base cannot abide the fact that whites are headed toward losing majority status in America and with that change many of the privileges that they have enjoyed for centuries.   Both the Washington Post editorial board and an op-ed slam the factual flaws in the report. Here are excerpts from the Post editorial:

FORMER SENATOR Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), now leader of the Heritage Foundation, knows that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is likely to judge that immigration reform — including eventual citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants — will be a shot in the arm for the U.S. economy. After all, the CBO has done so with previous such legislation. That explains why Mr. DeMint, a bitter opponent of legalization, has launched a preemptive attack on the CBO — “puppets of the Congress,” he called the office the other day — and why Heritage has issued a study slamming amnesty for unauthorized immigrants as a drain on taxpayers.

The Heritage paper, chock-full of assumptions that most economists dispute, is a blatant attempt to twist the immigration debate.  .  .  .  .   Influential Republicans, including Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, rolled their eyes at the Heritage report with varying degrees of politeness.

The far right elements in the GOP are becoming uglier and uglier in their racism and bigotry.  It's something that certainly will not help the GOP win over Hispanic voters.  Here are some highlights from the op-ed column:

“There’s a statement at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty,” said the former Republican senator who just took over as chief of the powerful think tank. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses . . . ”    He and his colleagues then went on to outline their version of immigration reform: No poor and huddled need apply.

“We feel that the best immigration system is one that focuses on bringing high school [graduate] immigrants in,” said Robert Rector, the Heritage scholar seated beside DeMint for the rollout of a new study on the costs of immigration.

Latinos have been suspicious of Republicans in part because they assume that conservatives’ desire to crack down on illegal immigration may extend to legal immigration as well. Republicans invariably proclaim that they are big fans of legal immigration. But the Heritage doctrine undermines that, because it would sharply curtail Hispanic immigration — legal and illegal alike. 

Of the Mexican-born people in the United States age 25 and older, nearly 60 percent didn’t graduate from high school, according to a Pew Hispanic Center compilation of census data. Among Central Americans, the figure is 50 percent. To shun those without high school diplomas would dramatically reduce eligibility among Latinos.

When I asked at Monday’s news conference whether his [Robert Rector] conclusions would apply to legal immigrants, he answered “yes” even before I could get the whole question out. 

If Republicans don’t find a way to deal with illegal immigrants in the country, they risk political oblivion as the swelling ranks of Latino voters turn against them. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) recognized this in reaching a bipartisan agreement to allow legalization — a proposal being denounced by the right.

Never mind the rest of that Lazarus inscription DeMint cited, the bit about accepting “the wretched refuse” and the “homeless, tempest-tossed.” Now they’ll need a diploma.  

What truly sickens me about folks like DeMint is that they constantly pat themselves on the back for the piety and religiosity.  Meanwhile, if Christ were suddenly to reappear his attacks on the biblical Pharisees would probably seem mild compared to his judgment of the "godly Christian" crowd of today.  As I have said many times before, these folks are NOT nice people and they comprise the best argument around for why one would want to walk away from Christianity.

Jim Gilmore, Former RNC Head: GOP Risks Becoming Permanent Minority

I've known Jim Gilmore (pictured at right) since 1974 when we were law school classmates at the University of Virginia.  Indeed, while he was governor, he appointed me to a state authority responsible for financing for Virginia's colleges and universities.  No one would ever describe Jim Gilmore as a liberal by any stretch of the imagination.  Nonetheless, he sees the Republican Party's perilous mark towards a permanent minority party if moderation is not restored.  A piece in National Review looks at Gilmore's call to the GOP to cease its extremism and to let go of the hate and bigotry that is driving voters away from the GOP.  Here are some article excerpts:

Jim Gilmore, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, says the GOP is quickly becoming a “permanent minority.”

“I don’t think the party dies immediately,” Gilmore says. “It’s not going to just disappear like the Whigs did, since there is so much law that supports the two-party system. But Republicans will be locked into a permanent minority at the national level unless we seriously rethink our approach.”

Gilmore, a former Virginia governor, spoke with National Review Online on Wednesday. He says he and other longtime Republican leaders have been privately fretting about the GOP’s future since Mitt Romney’s defeat.

“The world has changed beneath us,” Gilmore says. “Shrillness and extreme language are driving away the voters who could help us build a majority. We’re not speaking to them as reasonable conservatives. Republicans have to decide if they want to govern or play ideological parlor games.”

“Young people today have a more tolerant, hands-off perspective,” he says. “Their libertarian philosophy, for example, has to be taken into consideration. Yet we keep projecting anger at the gay community and the Hispanic community, even though they’re open to many of our ideas.”
“It’s a real political problem when Hispanics don’t believe that the Republican party is their friend,” he warns. “You’ve got to fix that.”

I believe that Gilmore is 100% on point.  Sadly, the Christofascists and Tea Party elements of the GOP base refuse to hear the message that Gilmore and others are trying to send to them.

Social Conservatives to GOP Establishment: We Told You So

We all knew this was coming even before even before the defeat of the Romney/Ryan ticket on November 6th: the conservative Kool-Aid drinking element in the GOP would blame the loss on the party's failure to be conservative enough.  In the alternate universe of these folks, they refuse to understand that a majority of Americans do not want what they are selling and that, if anything, Romney's pandering to them helped set the stage for the loss of both the White House and Senate seats the GOP had hoped to gain.  Thus the GOP establishment is faced with the prospect of a civil war with people who are at best out of touch or, more likely half insane (OK, perhaps totally, insane).  An article in the Washington Post  looks at the recriminations now flying fast and furiously.  Here are excerpts:

Evangelical leaders and conservative activists have a simple message for establishment Republicans about Mitt Romney’s failed presidential bid: We told you so.

After nearly two weeks of listening to GOP officials pledge to assert greater control over the party and its most strident voices in the wake of Romney’s loss, grass-roots activists have begun to fight back, saying that they are not to blame for the party’s losses in November.

The conservative backlash sets up an internal fight for the direction of the Republican Party, as many top leaders in Washington have proposed moderating their views on citizenship for illegal immigrants, to appeal to Latino voters. In addition, many top GOP officials have called for softening the party’s rhetoric on social issues, following the embarrassing showing by Senate candidates who were routed after publicly musing about denying abortion services to women who had been raped.

The dispute began to take shape soon after Obama was declared the winner and Republicans, who had hoped to claim the Senate majority, lost two seats. Two days after the election, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told ABC News that the Republicans’ mission was to appeal to nonwhite voters: “How do we speak to all Americans? You know, not just to people who look like us and act like us, but how do we speak to all Americans?”

More problematic for Republicans is the drift of Hispanic voters into the Democratic fold. Obama won among Hispanic voters by 44 percentage points this year, up eight points from 2008.

Korn warned that two reliably Republican states worth 49 electoral votes combined could become swing states if demographic trendlines continue. In 2004, George W. Bush tied in the Hispanic vote in Texas and lost in Arizona by 13 percentage points. Romney lost the Hispanic vote by more than 40 points in both states.

[M]any senior party officials have reversed course and suggested that they should at least support the DREAM Act, which would allow the children of illegal immigrants to avoid deportation. Such a move would spark a huge internal fight with some conservatives. 

The 2014 Senate races will serve as a test for establishment control of the political process. For the third consecutive cycle, Republicans will begin as heavy favorites to gain a large bloc of seats, and some party leaders want a bigger role in choosing those nominees. In 2010 and 2012, Republicans say, bad nominees in Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Missouri and Nevada cost them what should have been easy victories. If those seats were in GOP hands today, the Senate would be deadlocked at 50-50.

Some outside groups, however, stand ready to fight for the most conservative nominee, pointing to Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) as examples of rising stars who won Senate races without establishment support.

The Democrats can only pray that the evangelicals and conservative win the civil war and help speed the GOP to a permanent minority party status where it belongs until the Christofascists are somehow driven back into the political wilderness.

Lindsay Graham: "Not Enough Angry White Guys"

The above image reflects a reality that many in today's Republican party don't seem to grasp: the party base is dying off and by driving away minorities and non-Christianists, the GOP is committing suicide.  Even if the Romney/Ryan ticket somehow wins, it may be a Pyrrhic victory in the long run.  The fact that GOP convention attendees were reportedly 98% white ought to send a message.

Democrats: Romney's Foreign Trip Played Horribly In Swing States

Following up on the Washington Post's dishing of Romney's foreign policy exhibition trip, the Democratic National Committee has collected brutal local news reports to prove that the trip played very badly in critical swing states.  Here's a video clip via You Tube:

As a reader on my earlier Romney post stated, Romney's world view is troubling:

In effect they are a version of "blaming the victim."   .   .   .  there are a lot more important reasons for poverty -- and few of them can be overcome by rejecting one's own culture.    .   .   .   .  But Romney [does] understand this? That takes empathy, sensitivity to others, and other traits he lacks to the same extent he lacks tact and the 'common touch.'  

The GOP's Immigration Quandary

With the Supreme Court striking down three sections of Arizona's racially motivated immigration law, the GOP is faced with the quandary of where to go next on an issue that is not going away and which pits the GOP's aging racist base with the fastest growing demographic segment of the nation's population.  Pretending that America can return to some fictional version of the 1950's plays well with elderly whites and psychologically disturbed Christianists, but it is long term suicide for the GOP.  An article in the Washington Post looks at the situation now facing the GOP and would be liar-in-chief, Mitt Romney.  Here are excerpts:

Monday’s Supreme Court ruling on Arizona’s tough anti-illegal-immigration law stirred a growing debate among Republicans over how to navigate an issue that has energized the conservative base and turned off Hispanic voters.

Some on the right were taken aback to see Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., an iconic figure to many conservatives, side with the court’s liberals to reject several key provisions in the law and even declare that as a “general rule, it is not a crime for a removable alien to remain present in the United States.”

The ruling came as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been struggling to connect with Hispanics after courting conservative primary voters with sharp rhetoric against illegal immigration. A survey published Monday showed him ­favored by just one-fourth of Hispanics.

The quandary for Romney and the GOP is clear from recent polling. The Arizona law is very popular with whites and independent voters, according to data from the Pew Research Center, while many GOP strategists think their party has little chance for success in battlegrounds such as Colorado, Nevada and Virginia if Romney doesn’t win close to 40 percent of Hispanics.

In recent weeks, President Obama has increased the pressure on Romney, announcing that he would halt deportations of hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants — action that Hispanic activists had been urging for a long time.

And some leading Republicans, including former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, have publicly expressed concern that Romney’s positions allow Democrats to portray the GOP as anti-Hispanic.

Romney appeared to be walking a careful line after the ruling.  Though he once called Arizona’s approach to immigration a “model” for the country and vowed to reverse the Obama administration’s challenge to the law, his support for the measure seemed more muted Monday.
 
Even the GOP’s biggest Hispanic star, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, has struggled to find the right balance, jousting in Spanish over his past support for the Arizona law with the country’s most important Hispanic newsman in an interview that aired Sunday.  Jorge Ramos, an anchor on Univision, the widely watched Spanish-language network, told the senator that he “took the side of the victimizers who are persecuting Hispanics.”

It will be interesting to watch to see whether more in the GOP come to grasp that long term, the party's less than subtle racism is going to push the GOP toward permanent minority status as elderly whites literally die off and its anti-gay mantra drives away younger voters. 

GOP Telling Hundreds of Voters They Are Inelligible to Vote

If you can't win the voters over with your lies about failed policies, then the next best thing is to strike them of the voter registry so that they cannot vote against your failed policies.   Or so seems to be the agenda of the Florida GOP and Florida GOP Governor Rick Scott (shown at left) who want to purge all "non-citizens" from the voting rolls.  The only problem is that the voters being stricken are in fact qualified voters.   I'm sure it's an approach that Bob "Governor Ultrasound" McDonnell would like to emulate here in Virginia.  Not surprisingly, those viewed as least likely to vote Republican are being particularly targeted while white Republicans are not.  It's yet another example of why I find it impossible to be a Republican nowadays.  Here are excerpts from Think Progress:

Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) has ordered the state to purge all “non-citizens” from the voting rolls prior to November’s election. But that list compiled by the Scott administration is so riddled with errors that, in Miami-Dade County alone, hundreds of U.S. citizens are being told they are ineligible to vote, ThinkProgress has learned exlusively.

According to data from the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections obtained by ThinkProgress:

- 1638 people in Miami-Dade County were flagged by the state as “non-citizens” and sent letters informing them that they were ineligible to vote.
- Of that group, 359 people have subsquently provided the county with proof of citizenship.
- Another 26 people were identified as U.S. citizens directly by the county.
- The bulk of the remaining 1200 people have simply not responded yet to a letter sent to them by the Supervisor of Elections.

You can see a similar letter sent to alleged “non-citizens” by the Broward County Supervisor of Elections HERE. (“The Supervisor of Elections… has received information that you are not a citizen of the United States.”) If recipients of the letter do not respond within 30 days — a deadline that is mere days away — they will be summarily removed from the voting rolls. The voters purged from the list, election officials tell ThinkProgress, will inevitably include fully eligible Florida voters.

An analysis of the state-wide list by the Miami Herald found that “Hispanic, Democratic and independent-minded voters are the most likely to be targeted” as ineligible by the list. Conversely, “whites and Republicans are disproportionately the least-likely to face the threat of removal.” 

Late last year, Scott ordered his Secretary of State, Kurt Browning, to “to identify and remove non-U.S. citizens from the voter rolls.” Browning could not access to reliable citizenship data. So election officials attempted to identify non-U.S. citizens by comparing data from the state motor vehicle administration with the voting file. That process produced a massive list of 182,000 names, which Browning considered unreliable and refused to release. Browning resigned in February and Scott pressed forward with the purge.

For example, Juan Artabe, a resident of Miami-Dade, was flagged as a “non-citizen” based on motor vehicle records from 2006. He became a citizen in 2008 but no one notified the state. He was able to retain his ability to vote only by sending his citizenship papers to the Supervisor of Elections.

The purge of fully eligible voters from the voting rolls by Scott could be enough to tip the balance in Florida and, perhaps, the presidential election. In 2000, the final (disputed) margin was just 537 votes. 

The Coming GOP Crisis: The Party's Voters are White, Aging and Dying Off'

Even if the GOP manages to seize victory in November, as a CNN report notes, the Party's long term prospects are increasingly bleak as nearly all efforts are focused on pandering to a demographic that is literally dying off.  Worse yet, the pandering to this shrinking demographic is alienating and driving away the demographic segments of the population that are growing.  The chart above shows Hispanic voting characteristics versus their self-identified ideology.  It ought to be a simple calculation to realize that the current mode of operation is long term suicide.  But no one in the GOP - or at least no one with guts enough to speak out - seems to be figuring out the party's long term trajectory.  I for one hope the party refuses to wake up and that the Christofascist/Tea Party base takes the GOP right over the proverbial waterfall.  Here are highlights from CNN's analysis:

When presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney appears before Latino small-business owners in Washington on Wednesday, he'll address a group whose explosive birth rates foreshadow a seismic political shift in GOP strongholds in the Deep South and Southwest.

"The Republicans' problem is their voters are white, aging and dying off," said David Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, who studies minority political engagement.  "There will come a time when they suffer catastrophic losses with the realization of the population changes."

Over the next several generations, the wave of minority voters -- who, according to U.S. Census figures released this week, now represent more than half of the nation's population born in the past year -- will become more of a power base in places like Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. That hold will extend across the Southwest all the way to California, experts say.

The coming political revolution could result in a massive changing of the guard on nearly every level of government, potential cultural clashes, and the type of political alliances that are now considered rare.

So far, Republican efforts to offer Latinos a place at the table have fallen short.  The nation's Hispanics tend to vote Democratic, and overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama and Joe Biden in 2008.

Romney in particular has stumbled with this critical voting bloc, after his comments suggesting that making the economic landscape tough for illegal immigrants will force them to "self deport."

If Republicans continue to struggle to appeal to Latino voters, Spanish-language ads may not stave off a change that experts like Bositis see coming in the not too distant future, when states such as Georgia go purple and eventually blue.

"There'll be a tipping point where you've got the Republicans in charge, but you'll get to the point when the population becomes minority," Bositis said. "When that happens the statewide offices will fall. Republican governors will fall. Things will change."

This announcement on birth rates "should be a wake-up call to everyone running for political office from this day forward," said Lionel Sosa, a veteran Latino GOP strategist who has helped advise candidates since 1980.  .   .   .  "Token efforts, such as tamale parties, will no longer work. Winning will require more than outreach. It will require inclusion," Sosa said. "Latinos, African-Americans and people of other races must be represented in the important decision-making strategies of any given campaign, whether it be for a Democrat or Republican."

As I've noted before, unlike the white Christianists who seemingly cannot see the shared humanity of others who look different from themselves, I'm not frightened by the change in demographics.   In fact, I welcome the changes in some ways.  Especially if it means a future end to the failed policies of the GOP and its Christianist masters. 

There's one additional irony:  it appears that I may have dual citizenship via my late mother.  That's right. I may well also be a citizen of Honduras because I am the child of a native born Honduran.  That would make me doubly "other" to the typical member of the GOP base: gay AND Central American.

Census: Minority Babies are Now the Majority in USA

Click image to enlarge

Brace yourself for hysteria from the white Christofascists and the white supremacist allies once they digest this new census information:  of the new babies being born, most are members of minority groups.  Bryan Fischer, Rush Limbaugh, and similar talking heads of the far right will be sending out a veritable wave of flying spittle.  In a perverse way, it will be entertaining to watch.  Meanwhile, this ought to be a serious wake up call to the Republican Party that continues to pander to aging white conservatives while alienating everyone else.  Ditto for the Virginia GOP.  Will the Party wake up to reality?  I'm certainly not going to be holding my breath.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post on the new census numbers:

For the first time in U.S. history, most of the nation’s babies are members of minority groups, according to new census figures that signal the dawn of an era in which whites no longer will be in the majority.  Population estimates show that 50.4 percent of children younger than 1 last year were Hispanic, black, Asian American or in other minority groups. 

The latest estimates, which gauge changes since the last census, are a reflection of an immigration wave that began four decades ago. The transformation of the country’s racial and ethnic makeup has gathered steam as the white population grows collectively older, especially compared with Hispanics.  The census has forecast that non-Hispanic whites will be outnumbered in the United States by 2042, and social scientists consider that current status among infants a harbinger of the change.

 

Although minorities make up about 37 percent of the U.S. population, the District and four states are majority minority — California, Hawaii, New Mexico and Texas.

Metropolitan Washington, where whites are in the minority, is far ahead of the curve. Among children younger than 5, there are more minorities than whites in virtually every jurisdiction except Arlington and Loudoun counties. Statewide, Virginia has just barely more white children under age 1 than minorities, but they are on the verge of falling below half. 

One of the biggest factors in the demographic change is age. Whites are by far the oldest group. Their median age is over 42, so many are beyond their prime childbearing years. In contrast, the median age for Hispanics is under 28. Blacks and Asians have median ages in their early 30s. 

 

William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, said the slowdown in immigration may delay the nation’s transformation to a majority-minority society from 2042 to 2050 or beyond. But he said it will not prevent it.

“Eventually, when the economy returns, we’re going to get more immigrants, maybe not from Mexico but from other parts of the world,” he said. Without so many youthful immigrants, he added, the United States would look more like Japan, with its disproportionate share of elderly citizens.  “We were already seeing a declining youth population in large parts of the country,” Frey said.

The future is here, in Northern Virginia, where several hundred thousand immigrants have settled over the past 25 years from societies as different as Vietnam, El Salvador, Ethiopia and Iraq. 

In both Maryland and Virginia, the numbers of Hispanics and Asians continued to grow sharply. The number of blacks increased modestly, while the number of whites was virtually unchanged. 

Personally, the changes in the nation's demographics don't frighten me whatsoever.  But then, I'm not one who finds it impossible to see the common humanity of others unless they look and think just like me.  Among the Virginia GOP and at The Family Foundation, that's not a trait you're likely to see.  They only seem to be able to show empathy to white conservative Christians.  The rest of us - in their book we simply do not matter and are to be maligned and denigrated.    The white Christianists had best hope that as they become the minority the new majority doesn't treat them as they have treated minorities in the past.  Pay backs could be hell.

Is The GOP’s Facing An Impending Electoral College Meltdown

Six months out from the November elections leaves plenty of time for any number of things to happen and turn current thinking on its head.  But as a piece in The Daily Beast suggests, the Electoral College map does NOT look good for the GOP and Mitt "Etch A Sketch" Romney.  For the record, I have no great love for Barack Obama who I see as a cynical politician, especially when it comes to LGBT issues.  He leaves you with near whip lash at times as he plays politics with LGBT lives.  That said, given Mitt Romney's slavish obedience to the Christofascist elements in the GOP base, I can only conclude that Obama is the lesser of the two evils.  God help the country if Romney's elected and he takes his policy points from hate merchants like the folks at hate groups like the American Family Association and Family Research Council.  Fortunately, the GOP's agenda of denigrating and alienating everyone but older white voters and Christianists may prove to be the best bulwark against a Romney victory.  Here are some article excerpts:

It’s now officially not too early to start thinking about the Electoral College map. First of all, the election is just six months away, which provides pundits one of those symbolic but meaningless pivot points to a new phase. But more than that, certain patterns are just starting to emerge.  .   .   .   So what do we know right now? Chiefly, this great and very amusing irony: that the Electoral College, that bane of good-government liberals for decades (and especially since the 2000 fiasco), is Obama’s best friend. He has the hate-and-anger party to thank for that. But the implications for the fall campaign may be ominous.

[N]ationally, it’s a close race.  But when you look at the likely swing states, it is not right now a close race at all. RCP’s Electoral College map gives Obama 227 electoral votes from states that are solidly or pretty clearly leaning in his direction. It gives Romney just 170. It lists 11 toss-up states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. You can then click on all the recent polls in those states. So I did. Here’s what I found.

Obama leads in nine of the 11 states. Romney leads only in two, and he leads in the two whose mere presence on a list of swing states suggests trouble for him—Arizona and Missouri. Romney’s lead in those states is small (3.2 percent in the former, 3.0 in the latter). Of the nine states in which Obama leads, he is ahead by outside your typical three- or four-point margin of error in four: Colorado (9.5 percent), Nevada (6.7 percent), Pennsylvania (6 percent), and Ohio (5.3 percent). Obviously it would be premature to say that Obama is certain to win those states. But given these leads, let’s just give him those states’ 53 combined electoral votes for the sake of argument.

As you’ve already figured out, 227 plus 53 equals 280, which means Obama wins (270 needed). Now here’s what’s really interesting about this hypothetical. Look at the list of states Obama does not need to win under this scenario: Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, and Virginia. That’s 63 electoral votes he can give away, from three states (all of them but Iowa) that political journalists are always insisting are crucial to Obama’s hopes.

Put another way: There appear to be lots of ways for Obama to get to 270 losing either Ohio or Florida. But there appear to be almost no plausible ways for Romney to get to 270 without winning both of them, and one or two major swing states besides, states where he is behind right now.

So, two questions: first, how did the electoral map come to favor Democrats? And second, what are the implications for the kind of race we’re going to see?

On the first question, we know all about the demographic changes of recent years, identified most comprehensively by Ruy Teixeira and John Judis. But there’s more to the story than that. Demography didn’t have to be destiny. If the Republican Party of the last few years hadn’t done everything it could possibly imagine do to alienate Latinos, “new-economy” professionals, and young people, the party would have remained competitive  .  .  .  .  But the Republicans chose not to be that party. They decided to be the hate-and-anger party, and they veritably shoved states like those I just mentioned into the Democratic column. The GOP message has been: “If you’re gonna let all those funny-talking brown people and wine-sipping brainiacs in your states, then we don’t want you voting for us anyway!”

And as to the kind of campaign we can expect: I’d say the most negative in history. Barring some huge catastrophe, the only way a not-well-liked candidate like Romney can make up five to seven points in expensive-market states is through massive doses of attack ads  .  .  .  .   Hate and anger aren’t going anywhere.

I continual bemoan what has become of the Republican Party.  One can hope that if Romney goes down to a crushing defeat common sense might once again prevail in the GOP.  But that's not likely since the Christofascists and Tea Party crowd will bend over backwards blaming Romney's loss on the fact that he wasn't extreme enough.  It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

The Onion Bashes NOM's Sick Strategies

With most major news outlets now having picked up on NOM's race baiting scandal - other than the Virginian Pilot, of course, which likely deemed it "not newsworthy" since it makes Christianists look bad - it was only a matter of time before The Onion weighed in on the scandal. NOM needs to be made a laughing stock and known as a bunch of bigots. Kudos to all the news coverage.

More on the GOP's Alienation of Hispanic Voters

While the Christianist/Tea Party base of the Republican Party would most likely like to deport all Hispanics from the country - along with all other non-whites and non-Christians - a few in the GOP seem to be waking up to the fact that the constant anti-immigrant mantra is potential political suicide. One such individual is the Chimperator's far smarter brother, Jeb Bush, who has an op-ed in the Washington Post that lectures the GOP on what needs to be done to avoid throwing away the GOP's 2012 election chances. I suspect that the message will fall on deaf ears with most in the GOP base which is best defined by its loathing of anyone who isn't a gun packing far right white evangelical Christian. If they reject the message, so much the better in my view. Here's a sampling of Bush's message to the ignorance and bigotry embracing GOP base:

In the 15 states that are likely to decide who controls the White House and the Senate in 2013, Hispanic voters will represent the margin of victory.For the Republican Party, the stakes could not be greater. Just eight years after the party’s successful effort to woo Hispanic voters in 2004, this community — the fastest-growing group in the United States, according to census data — has drifted away.

Here are four suggestions on how Republican candidates can regain momentum with the most powerful swing voters.

First, we need to recognize this is not a monochromatic community but, rather, a deeply diverse one. Hispanics in this country include Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans and many others. Some came here 50 years ago to make a better life; others came last year. Some have lots of education, some have none.

Second, we should echo the aspirations of these voters. The American immigrant experience is the most aspirational story ever told. Immigrants left all that was familiar to them to come here and make a better life for their families.

Third, we should press for an overhaul of our education system. . . . . But we have to move beyond simplistic plans to “get rid of the Department of Education” and focus on substantive, broad-based reform that includes school choice, robust accountability for underperforming schools and the elimination of social promotion, in which kids are passed along without mastering grade-level skills. . . . Hispanic voters, who often feel their children are trapped in failing schools, notice.

Finally, we need to think of immigration reform as an economic issue, not just a border security issue. . . . Republicans should reengage on this issue and reframe it. Start by recognizing that new Americans strengthen our economy. We need more people to come to this country, ready to work and to contribute their creativity to our economy. . . . We need to connect immigration to other pro-growth policies, so that new Americans can apply their talents here and succeed.

And when they come, as surely they will, we must welcome them, no matter whether they speak Spanish or Creole or Portuguese.

It's actually an intelligent message. However, given the GOP base's zero sum view of things in this country, I suspect gains by Hispanics will be viewed as something lost by the white evangelical Christian crowd.

Uncertain Hispanic Voters Favor Obama Over GOP Rivals

With Hispanics comprising the fastest growing segment of the nation's population I have often wondered at the Republican Party's concerted effort to alienate Hispanics - as well as younger voters - while kissing the bigoted asses of older white voters. It seems I'm not the only one to have noted the GOP's open hostility to Hispanic voters. Hispanic voters themselves have picked up on the dare we say hatred that is the principal GOP emotion towards Hispanics who seemed to be viewed as if they were all illegal immigrants who sole into America across the Rio Grande. A piece in the Washington Post looks at how the GOP's anti-Hispanic policies are pushing the Hispanic vote to Barack Obama. Here are highlights:

President Obama holds a wide lead among Hispanic voters when matched against potential Republican challengers, even as widespread opposition to his administration’s stepped-up deportation policies act as a drag on his approval ratings among that group, according to a new poll.

The survey, conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center, revealed a general-election weakness for Republicans among an increasingly influential voting bloc — with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry each winning less than one-fourth of the Hispanic vote in hypothetical matchups against Obama.

The president’s strong position with Latino voters comes even as Hispanic adults overall express disapproval with the way his administration is handling deportations of illegal immigrants, by 59 percent to 27 percent.

The findings suggest major challenges ahead for Republican strategists, many of whom believe the party cannot win the White House unless it slices into Obama’s support among Hispanics.

In the latest available data from Gallup, Obama’s numbers among Hispanics have recovered alongside a rise among the broader public. Fully 60 percent of all Hispanic adults interviewed by Gallup in late December said they approved of Obama’s overall job performance, a high in polls back to May.

[M]any Republican strategists said failing to improve that number in the future could doom Republican presidential contenders in battleground states with fast-growing Hispanic populations, such as Colorado and Florida.

Some Republicans have expressed concerns that Hispanics would feel alienated by hard-line rhetoric against illegal immigration in the GOP primary campaign — particularly from Romney, who has used the issue to attack Perry and former House speaker Newt Gingrich from the right. They worry that the debate might squander an opportunity to take advantage of Obama’s declining support among Hispanics, particularly centrists and conservatives.

The new Pew poll found that immigration is “extremely important” for a third of Hispanic voters, although that issue trails jobs, education, health care, taxes and the federal budget deficit on that list.

Democrats retain a strong advantage when Hispanics are asked which party they identify with, with two-thirds of voters picking Democrats and one-fifth siding with the GOP.

Some Republicans think that tapping Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), a Cuban American son of immigrants, as the party’s vice presidential nominee could offer a quick fix to their Hispanic problem. At the moment, the poll found, Rubio remains largely unknown to Hispanics nationally, with a majority saying they had not heard of him, couldn’t rate him or didn’t know whether they viewed him favorably.

U. S. Attorney General Slams GOP Efforts to Bar Voters

Having just seen Russia go through a cycle of election fraud under Vladimir Putin's regime, it's easy to see where some in the GOP are getting their ideas from in terms of suppressing the vote of those you don't like (or who don't like you) - i.e., blacks, Hispanics, youth voters - so as to maximize friendly voters who can cast ballots. It's the antithesis of democracy, but something all too characteristic of today's Republican Party. If your policies stink and screw most voters, just keep those most screwed over away from the ballot box. To counter this GOP agenda item, U. S. Attorney General Eric Holder said he intends to fully enforce the civil rights laws. Here are highlights from a Washington Post story that looks at this issue:

Attorney General Eric Holder vowed Tuesday to fully enforce civil rights protections in next year’s elections amid a flurry of activity by states to redraw political boundaries and impose requirements that could reduce voting by minorities who enthusiastically supported Barack Obama in the 2008 election.

Giving his most expansive speech on civil rights since taking office, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer declared that “we need election systems that are free from fraud, discrimination and partisan influence — and that are more, not less, accessible to the citizens of this country.”

Currently, the Justice Department is reviewing new requirements in Texas and South Carolina requiring voters to produce a photo ID before casting ballots. The department also is examining changes that Florida has made to its electoral process — imposing financial penalties on third-party voter registration organizations like the League of Women Voters when they miss deadlines and shortening the number of days in the early voting period before elections.

Most of the changes have been promoted and approved by Republicans, who argue they are needed to avert voter fraud. Democrats, citing studies suggesting there is little voter fraud, say the measures are actually aimed at reducing minority votes for their candidates.

“Over the years, we’ve seen all sorts of attempts to gain partisan advantage by keeping people away from the polls — from literacy tests and poll taxes, to misinformation campaigns telling people that Election Day has been moved, or that only one adult per household can cast a ballot,” said Holder.

“The most recent census data indicated that Texas has gained more than 4 million new residents — the vast majority of whom are Hispanic,” said Holder. “However, this state has proposed adding zero additional seats in which Hispanics would have the electoral opportunity envisioned by the Voting Rights Act.”

In September, the Justice Department’s civil rights division said it needed the racial breakdown and counties of residence of the estimated 605,500 registered voters in Texas who do not have a state-issued license or ID. The division also asked how many of voters have Spanish surnames. Under the federal Voting Rights Act, the new Texas law needs Justice Department approval to take effect.

Alabama Anti-Immigrant Law Snags Mercedes-Benz Executive

Sometimes karma can be a bitch. A case in point is the fall out from Alabama's horrific new anti-immigrant law that subjects individuals to arrest if they aren't carrying proper identification papers with them. The latest example of the unintended consequences of unvarnished bigotry is the arrest of a Mercedes-Benz executive who failed to have his passport on him when he was stopped for a minor traffic issue (involving his rental car). Having once lived in Alabama, i truly do not know what has happened to the state. From all I read, the state is far more bigoted and nasty than it was 30 years ago. I suspect employers are beginning to think twice about relocating plants and businesses to such a reactionary region. Will Virginia's "Taliban Bob" McDonnell and Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli learn a lesson from this? I doubt it. Here are highlights from Think Progress on this "oops" moment for the bigots in Montgomery:

Alabama’s economy is suffering because of HB 56, the state’s draconian immigration law, as workers flee out of fear. State Sen. Scott Beason (R), who sponsored the anti-immigrant bill in the Alabama legislature, once called it a “jobs bill,” but the state’s immigration law is leaving entire industries without enough workers instead.

And the extreme law, which legislators are now reconsidering, could seriously damage the state’s reputation as well after police arrested a German Mercedes-Benz executive last week under the immigration law. Mercedes opened its first American manufacturing plant in Vance, Alabama in 1993, spurring a trend of foreign car makers and suppliers opening factories in the state. They may be rethinking that decision, however, after one of their German executives was arrested for simply not having his passport with him:

Tuscaloosa Police Chief Steven Anderson told The Associated Press an officer stopped a rental vehicle for not having a tag Wednesday night and asked the driver for his license. The man only had a German identification card, so he was arrested and taken to police headquarters, Anderson said.

The 46-year-old executive was charged with violating the immigration law for not having proper identification, but he was released after an associate retrieved his passport, visa and German driver’s license from the hotel where he was staying, Anderson said.

In October, the New York Times speculated in an editorial that despite best efforts to recruit foreign automakers to Alabama, the state was now “infamous as a regional capital of xenophobia.” And if the immigration law scared away a manufacturer like Mercedes, which employs about 2,800 Alabamians, or Hyundai, which announced an expansion at its Montgomery, Alabama plant in May, would only compound the state’s economic woes. The unfortunate arrest of a visiting Mercedes executive only underscores the damage Alabama’s harmful anti-immigrant law will continue to do to the state’s economy — and its reputation.

The GOP's Quest to Limit the Right to Vote

Besides supporting an economic system that would hearken back to the so-called Gilded Age and its robber barons, the GOP is also striving to bring back an era when many - especially blacks and minorities - were effectively disenfranchised through laws that put hurdles in front of would be voters. The goal, of course, is to suppress the vote of those who do not support the GOP's poisonous economic and social polices. This true agenda, naturally, is disguised under the rubric of preventing "voter fraud." The real fraud, of course, is what the GOP is doing, not any real world problem with fraudulent voting. Next the GOP will want some kind of poll tax or property requirement for one to vote. E.J. Dionne has a column in the Washington Post that looks at this insidious agenda. Here are highlights:
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An attack on the right to vote is underway across the country through laws designed to make it more difficult to cast a ballot. If this were happening in an emerging democracy, we’d condemn it as election-rigging. But it’s happening here, so there’s barely a whimper.
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The laws are being passed in the name of preventing “voter fraud.” But study after study has shown that fraud by voters is not a major problem — and is less of a problem than how hard many states make it for people to vote in the first place.
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These statutes are not neutral. Their greatest impact will be to reduce turnout among African Americans, Latinos and the young. It is no accident that these groups were key to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 — or that the laws in question are being enacted in states where Republicans control state governments.
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[T]hink of what this would look like to a dispassionate observer. A party wins an election, as the GOP did in 2010. Then it changes the election laws in ways that benefit itself. In a democracy, the electorate is supposed to pick the politicians. With these laws, politicians are shaping their electorates.
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Sometimes the partisan motivation is so clear that if Stephen Colbert reported on what’s transpiring, his audience would assume he was making it up. In Texas, for example, the law allows concealed handgun licenses as identification but not student IDs. And guess what? Nationwide exit polls show that John McCain carried households in which someone owned a gun by 25 percentage points but lost voters in households without a gun by 32 points. Besides Texas, states that enacted voter ID laws this year include Kansas, Wisconsin, South Carolina and Tennessee. Indiana and Georgia already had such requirements.
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[T]he Justice Department should vigorously challenge these laws, particularly in states covered by the Voting Rights Act. And the court should be asked to review the issue again in light of new evidence that these laws have a real impact in restricting the rights of particular voter groups.
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“This requirement is just a poll tax by another name,” state Sen. Wendy Davis declared when Texas was debating its ID law early this year. In the bad old days, poll taxes, now outlawed by the 24th Amendment, were used to keep African Americans from voting.
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Whether or not these laws can be rolled back, their existence should unleash a great civic campaign akin to the voter-registration drives of the civil rights years. The poor, the young and people of color should get their IDs, flock to the polls and insist on their right to vote in 2012.

GOP Kansas State Rep. Compares Illegal Immigrants to Feral Pigs and Suggests Shooting Them from Helicopters

If the horrid rantings of Chuck Pierce examined in the previous post were not disgusting enough, Kansas GOP State Rep. Virgil Peck (pictured at left) has demonstrated the yet an even more extreme fruit of the Christianist/Tea Party/GOP hate fest that has become the norm for the Republican Party. And what is really scary is the fact that Peck probably views himself as an upstanding "godly Christian." So what did Peck propose? He proposed that that hunters could shoot undocumented immigrants like they do with feral pigs in order to control illegal immigration. Clearly, in Peck's book, humans with brown skin and/or Hispanic ancestry are the equivalent of animals. And some people still ask me why I left the GOP years ago? Absent a lobotomy or severe psychological disorder, I don't know how anyone can still be a Republican. Here are highlights from ThinkProgess on Peck's disgusting comments:
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Today, during a Kansas state House Appropriations Committee hearing on state spending for controlling feral swine, GOP state Rep. Virgil Peck suggested that hunters could shoot undocumented immigrants like they do with pigs in order to control illegal immigration.
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The Lawrence Journal World reports that Peck refused to apologize for the remark. “I was just speaking like a southeast Kansas person,” he said. The Kansas blog Dome on the Range has the audio clip and direct quote of Peck’s remarks. “It looks like to me if shooting these immigrating feral hogs works maybe we have found a [solution] to our illegal immigration problem,” he said.
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Listen to the audio clip:
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