by Patrick J. Buchanan
Republicans have been given fair warning.
Should GOP senators treat Sonia Sotomayor as contemptuously asDemocrats treated Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, theyshould expect Hispanic hostility for a generation.
The chutzpah of this Beltway crowd does not cease to amaze.
They archly demand that conservatives accord a self-described“affirmative action baby” from Princeton a respect they never for amoment accorded a pro-life conservative mother of five from IdahoState, Sarah Palin.
Pundits here gets hoots of appreciation for doing to a whiteChristian woman what would constitute a hate crime if done to a “wiseLatina woman.” But, as no Republican who followed the script of themainstream media ever won a national election, why should the party paythem mind?
The imperative of the GOP is not to appease a city that went 93-7 for Obama, but to win back its lost voters.
In 2008, Hispanics, according to the latest figures, were 7.4percent of the total vote. White folks were 74 percent, 10 times aslarge. Adding just 1 percent to the white vote is thus the same asadding 10 percent to the candidate’s Hispanic vote.
If John McCain, instead of getting 55 percent of the white vote, gotthe 58 percent George W. Bush got in 2004, that would have had the sameimpact as lifting his share of the Hispanic vote from 32 percent to 62percent.
But even Ronald Reagan never got over 44 percent of the Hispanicvote. Yet, he and Richard Nixon both got around 65 percent of the whitevote.