Statistikhengst
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Samuel Rodriguez, Jr., head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, speaks to reporters in Houston, Texas on Wednesday.
CREDIT: JACK JENKINS/THINKPROGRESS
Hispanic Evangelicals Threaten To Abandon Republicans Over Immigration ThinkProgress
Note: ThinkProgress is a very Left-Leaning publication, but this story is one that Conservatives should really, really read and digest.
Just a few hours before hearing speeches from likely Republican presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee, the nation’s largest Hispanic Evangelical organization threw down the gauntlet and called on them and others running for the White House to pledge support for immigration reform.
“Republicans must cross the Jordan of immigration reform to step into the promised land of the Hispanic faith electorate,” said National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference president Sam Rodriguez at a press conference in Houston on Wednesday. “There’s a period there, not a comma. They must.” He then referenced Mitt Romney’s abysmal performance with Latino voters, which Rodriguez tied to his support for “self deportation” policies, as a cautionary tale.
The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC) leans sharply conservative, with a long history of opposing same-sex marriage and abortion rights. But on the issue of immigration, they align more with President Obama, whose executive actions to protect parents and children from deportation they “reluctantly support.”
The exact text of the pledge has not been revealed, but Rodriguez said it includes four “pillars”: “No amnesty, secure borders, secure families, and an integration process” for the roughly 12 million undocumented people living in the United States. Over the next several months, the group will challenge all presidential candidates to sign on to support comprehensive immigration reform that “secures our values and our families.” If they don’t, Rodriguez warned, “they’re going to discard a vote that has natural tendencies with the GOP.”
That vote emerges out of a rapidly-expanding population of Hispanic Evangelicals, which some estimate is around 5.6 million strong — and growing every year.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), one of the few Democrats to speak at the conference, wryly noted, “One million Latinos turn 18 every year and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. You can’t shut down that faucet. That happens even if there’s not one more immigrant.”
Just to be crystal-clear, this group, The National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC) is a strongly CONSERVATIVE Latino organization and most likely accounted for a great deal of the 27% of the Latino vote that Mitt Romney got in 2012, which was still the second worst performance by a Republican in a two-man race since data for this electoral demographic has been collected:
1976: Carter (D) 82 / Ford (R) 18, margin: Carter +64 (1% of electorate)
1980: Carter (D) 56 / Reagan (R) 37 / Anderson (I) 7, margin: Carter +19 (2% of electorate)
1984: Mondale (D) 66 / Reagan (R) 34, margin: Mondale +32 (3% of electorate)
1988: Dukakis (D) 70 / Bush, Sr. (R) 30, margin: Dukakis +40 (3% of electorate)
1992: Clinton (D) 61 / Bush, Sr. (R) 37 / Perot (I) 14, margin: Clinton +24 (2% of electorate)
1996: Clinton (D) 73 / Dole (R) 21 / Perot (I) 6, margin: Clinton +52 (5% of electorate)
2000: Gore (D) 62 / Bush, Jr. (R) 37 / Nader (I) 2, margin: Gore +25 (7% of electorate)
2004: Kerry (D) 53 / Bush, Jr. (R) 44 / Nader (I) 2, margin: Kerry +9 (8% of electorate)
2008: Obama (D) 67 / McCain (R) 31 /, margin: Obama +36 (9% of electorate)
2012: Obama (D) 71 / Romney (R) 27 /, margin: Obama +44 (10% of electorate)
So, to lose this group does not mean that a Republican would lose his chances of maybe getting to George W. Bush 43's 44% of the Latino vote, as was the case in 2004. It means that if the GOP loses the NHCLC, it's strongest Conservative-Latino advocacy group, then it could easily slip well under 25% of the Latino vote in 2016, which has far-reaching implications for New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Texas and yes, even Georgia.
Gerald Ford did the worst of all in the Latino vote, in 1976. He only got 18%, but at that time, the Latino vote was only 1% of the electorate on election night. Now it's 10 times that much. Tendency: growing.
There is more information at the link, I recommend that everyone take time to read it.
This thread is extremely relevant right now because the NHCLC is holding it's yearly conference in Houston right now, and indeed, some GOP presidential hopefuls are going to speak to the conference today.
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Discuss: Should GOP hopefuls sign "the pledge", or not? Or is that extortion for a vote?