Staking out a position on immigration well to the right of Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry hasn’t done Mitt Romney any favors with Latinos, according to a new survey from the Pew Hispanic Center. Let’s remember that Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 despite (pdf) getting 32% of the Latino vote, and he barely won the Electoral College in 2004 despite (pdf) getting 44% of the Latino vote. When John McCain only mustered 31% of the Latino vote in 2008, his campaign was crushed. A Republican can no longer hope to win less than a third of the Latino vote and still scrape their way into the White House. Those days are over. So, how is Romney doing?
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 these voters, according to a new poll.
The survey, conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center, revealed a dramatic 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.
Obama leads Romney 68-23 and Perry 69-23 among Hispanic voters, with an error margin of plus or minus 5.2 percentage points for the voter sample.
Twenty-three percent isn’t going to get it done. And the numbers would be considerably worse if the Obama administration were not deporting 400,000 Latino immigrants a year. That aggressive policy is tearing apart families and hurting Obama’s standing in the Latino community. But the Republicans are far from being able to capitalize on this weakness. They do everything they can to make sure Latinos know that they aren’t welcome in this country, whether they’re here legally or not. Mitt Romney may have hired undocumented Mexicans to mow his lawn, but he’s campaigning on a much bigger deportation program.
But… but…. anti-Obama white liberals told me that Obama was losing Latinos.
Oh that’s right. Firebagger = teabagger. They simply make up whatever shit they want, that makes them feel good at the time.
You are a blithering idiot. They aren’t the same, for one. And two, if you can read the article Booman linked to, for Latinos it’s the lesser of two evils.
For real. While I agree with rikyrah about the Dream Act, why don’t we as progressives put up pressure for him to stop needlessly breaking up families. It’s clear the GOP will not be enticed over immigration reform, so why do it?
am I incorrect, or has the President, within the last 3 months, stopped this policy?
I’m probably to the right of most people here with regards to illegal immigration, but, I do tire of folks believing that the President can just ‘order’ immigration reform.
George Bush was able to lie this country into TWO wars, and still wasn’t able to get immigration reform.
the problem for Latinos is NOT President Barack Obama.
I’d argue that it isn’t the Democrats period.
it’s not the Democrats passing the ‘ WHAT ABOUT IF YOU AIN’T WHITE, DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND’ laws.
it’s not the Democrats running around this country, systematically trying to suppress the Latino vote.
and, if the Latinos don’t grasp who their political friends are, and who aren’t…
nobody can help them.
I don’t even grasp why I have to type this.
when the fuck did getting everything that you want become payment for voting.
if that was the case, Black folks STILL wouldn’t be voting in this country.
Immigration laws have failed to be implemented in this country for … well, forever. Until President Obama came to office legislation was simply not effectively implemented, a good thing for immigrants and their employers and friends, but a bad thing for xenophobes.
So the mystery is why, under Obama, who campaigns so well for more liberal immigration laws, have the existing, unjust immigration laws suddenly become implemented like never before? That is something he needs to be challenged on.
I think the President came in and said to himself that the laws on the books would be implemented. That meant Justice pursued civil rights cases and ICE raids homes.
There’s a thread in what Obama does that can be traced to a sense of separation of powers, and moreover I imagine his sense that the big problem with the GW Bush administration was the lack of such separation to the executive’s benefit. That is something he wants to roll back. He knows that as the executive refusing to implement laws as passed is precisely the kind of thing that Bush and Nixon did to our detriment. Enforcing the law and presiding over its change is slower but without detrimental systemic effects.
We have sick immigration laws. Those laws need to change.
That’s what every president says, and there are many laws that aren’t yet being implemented as the law prescribes, despite his best intents — the clean air and clean water acts, for two.
The question is what conditions changed that caused a very immigrant friendly president to be the first one to actually implement immigration law.
Since when did every President say they’d implement the laws on the books and mean it? I think Obama means it. But in what sense is Obama the first to actually implement immigration law? This has been a nasty country for immigrants for some time now. Since 1776 or so, actually. You’re right though to point to conditions rather than personalities.
Saying that you’re going to implement the laws as written in the book, and really mean it, is exactly the kind of thing a simpler mind, like GWB, would do, not someone like Obama who has a very sophisticated understanding of power and its role in public policy. For one thing, there is the whole problem of ambiguity — many of the “laws on the books” are written to be deliberately contradictory or with multiple interpretations precisely to make implementation problematic or to give executive authority or courts greater discretion about how to go about getting everyone on board with the policy. Most laws, and even rules in the federal register, are never implemented as written, and that’s a good thing. Obama certainly didn’t mean to change that part of our federal system of governance across the board, so the question is why is it happening on one of his key issues — more liberal immigration?
Are you merely asking the question, why?, or are you proposing an answer? I’d wonder what your answer would be.
Well, if I were in his shoes, I just wouldn’t have enforced the law any better than my predecessors did. Or at least that’s what I would have wanted. I hope I would have had the courage to have tried to implement it even worse than my predecessors.
But you’re not in his shoes. I wouldn’t have enforced a number of laws were I in his shoes, but those types of discussions are only useful for explaining things that don’t exist, like me in the President’s shoes.
So you posit the President as someone with a sophisticated understanding of the role of law in actual policy, suggest that one with such an understanding would know not to enforce immigration law or at least parts of it, and are then presented with the fact that the President is enforcing law that someone who has his understanding wouldn’t enforce. Something has to give. What does?
That’s exactly why I called it a mystery.
There are two possible explanations:
Both views seem consistent with the facts, so I’d like to know which is right. If I had to guess, because I don’t think Obama goes for playing games, I’d pick #2 as the reason.
I’m not castigating him for not getting immigration reform done, I’m questioning why he’s deported more people in one year than any president in years past, including George Bush, despite the obviousness that Republicans aren’t going to work with him on the issue. The Latinos understand what you wrote, which is why they’re supporting the president despite disproving of him on this issue.
TL;DR, what santiago stated.
argh…disapproving.
For enforcement where as previous administrations targeted workers. Enforcement is more effective when employers are the ones under investigation.
Is that really why? Is there evidence that this is the reason? His numbers aren’t substantially higher than Bush’s, they’re just continuing a trend that started around 2006.
If you cut off the demand for something, it’s much more effective than trying to target supply.
And I’m pleased when employers are targeted. They are the exploiters.
I don’t think that’s why. Employer targeting began in the 1990’s, after Clinton signed the bill increasing sanctions for employers. Yet nothing really took off in that area until now — with a President who says he doesn’t even agree with the law.
Also, Obama is way too sophisticated about how power works to ever be pinned down with as simplistic an understanding of things as believing that the letter of the law should, or could, be simply implemented as written.
I doubt it as well. I personally don’t think he’s doing anything differently than Bush. The Department is just carrying on how they were doing business when he was in office, and he hasn’t changed it. W/e happened around 2005-2006 will explain it.
This. I rather hate Obama but it’s not like I’m going to vote for the GOP candidate.
Since I’m a political follower I obviously have more problems with him than just this, but his administration’s immigration policies are bad. On this one specific issue I could see a republican potentially being better (on Civil Liberties too but that’s Ron Paul and while I don’t think a RP would be actively bad–the parties would unite to make sure he could never get ANYTHING done–it’s a piss poor option).
And two, if you can read the article Booman linked to, for Latinos it’s the lesser of two evils.
True story: whether you pull the lever really hard in the voting booth, or gently and with a look of great melancholy, it still counts as exactly one vote.
Assuming they get to the voting booth…
When you’ve got a party split of 45 points or more, you can assume motivation among the electorate, even if it’s voting-against motivation.
If you’re mere;y the lesser of two evils, it’s harder to get people into the voting booth even absent dirty tricks by the other guys.
That depends on how much lesser. I’ll point to the rather excellent turnout among anti-war liberals for John Kerry in 2004. It was neither his yes vote for the Iraq AUMF nor his raw animal magnetism (Rowr!) that drew them to him, but the awfulness of George W. Bush.
The problem with Obama faces is whether Latino’s will turn out to vote. He failed to change 5 Democratic Senators to vote for the DREAM ACT.
I call bull on this. Why can’t the Latinos get FIVE GOP Senators to vote for the DREAM ACT?
Because, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Florida were won by Obama because of the Latino vote. Pay to Play…
I continue to call bull on this. If this is so important to Latinos, then they need to do the heavy lifting and find the GOP VOTES IN THE SENATE.
President Obama is NOT their problem. IF it comes to his desk, he WILL sign the DREAM ACT.
It’s up to Latinos to find their VOTES in the House and Senate. It’s not up to the President.
Yes, to a certain extent Obama is a problem. When you make a promise keep it..Immigration Reform is non-existent. Obama “I can’t do Immigration Reform by myself” ..lie yes you can. You can give Temporary Protected Status to ever undocumented Mexican in the US since yesterday. Why TPS, because there is a war in Mexico that has killed over 40,000 people.
your point is mute, because Latino supported Obama in 2008 and all we got was 400,000 deportations per year.
And the only thing going for Obama is Kris Kobach is a Republican as is the whole state of Alabama.
Seems obvious to me. One guy is deporting a lot of undocumented workers. The other guys want to engage in widespread discrimination against all Latinos, documented or not. And American citizens of Latino origin are the ones who vote – they are not the ones being targeted by deportation, however much they might sympathize.
If Obama and justice dept (ie., ICE) didn’t deport, then the charge would be that he isn’t “enforcing the laws.” Critics (Republicans) have made a 2-pronged argument: that the laws aren’t being enforced and that the border isn’t being secured. So if you deport people here illegally, then you get criticized from the left and no credit from the right. How about we become a country of laws?
And let’s not forget that this charge gains salience in the midst of a debate in which the anti-immigrant party does everything it can hide behind legalism – ie, “What part of illegal don’t you understand?”
Well the GOP have made it pretty clear that they aren’t down with Latinos. I saw the phrase “No amnesty for lawbreakers” at Ron Paul’s site. I admit I’m not much inclined to give Ron Paul the benefit of the doubt, but it’s hard not to see some pretty fierce bigotry in that–they’re all lawbreakers! Some of them are even guilty of the heinous offense of being brought here when they were three years old. Others still had the nerve to be born here!
And of course that’s just standard among Republicans. So regardless of the policies anyone pursues, there’s this basic difference where Democrats don’t have the same history of scapegoating immigrants. I live in California, where Pete Wilson helped put the GOP in a permanent minority by building his campaigns around immigrant bashing. So when a party’s basic message to you is “Fuck off and die,” you tend to remember.