Todo el repentino, republicanos quisiera que los hispanos votaran

Todo el repentino, republicanos quisiera que los hispanos votaran

The GOP has taken a sudden interest in the Hispanic vote after last week's debacle. And, as usual, their approach is tokenism:

Florida Sen. Mel Martinez, a prominent Hispanic who previously served in President Bush's Cabinet, will assume the high-profile post of Republican National Committee general chairman, GOP officials said Monday.

Wrong on just so many levels:

Just like the Rumsfeld firing, it's a ready-fire-aim too late move. Look at the numbers:

73 percent of Hispanics voted for the Democratic Party on Tuesday, while only 26 percent voted for Republican candidates, CNN exit polls show. In the 2004 presidential elections, 55 percent of Hispanics voted Democrat and about 42 percent voted Republican.

Gee, Steve King, why would that be?

Republican sponsorship of a law to build a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border and Republican House members' efforts to pass a bill that would have turned millions of undocumented workers into felons fueled a climate that many Hispanics saw as veiled racism.

When they accused Hispanic immigrants of draining Social Security coffers, clogging schools and hospitals, being potential terrorists and bringing infectious diseases into the United States, millions of Hispanic-heritage U.S. citizens felt insulted. It was as if all Hispanics were suddenly cast as potential national security threats.

A week after an election that was a repudiation of George W. Bush and the scandal-riddled Republican congress, the GOP names as its head... a former Bush cabinet official who's currently serving in Congress and who you can at least use in a sentence with the name Jack Abramoff.

Kos makes the point that Hispanics are a diverse group:

There's a wide culture gap between Cubans and most other Latinos. Politically, Cubans have more in common with Vietnamese immigrants than they do other Latino groups.

Talking Points Memo puts it well:

One of the big campaign gambits from Republican candidates was Democratic Candidate X is going to ruin Social Security by giving away money to illegal aliens (pan to pictures of Mexicans).

It's a pretty sad but also really familiar story. GOP spends years 'reaching out' to [insert minority group of your choice] until they find themselves losing an election and go hog wild with race-bating or whatever other nastiness looks like it will yield short-term political benefits.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays with the Don't Talk Spanish In Front Of Me In The Wal-Mart Line Republican base. I assume they'll be able to manage the War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery cognitive dissonance they usually handle, or at least a level of I'm Not Prejudiced One Of My Best Friends Is Hispanic But I'm Just Saying tokenism.