Romney's Latino Strategy Comes Into Focus

lilbawler2001 · 05-30-2012, 08:16 AM

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Try to discourage pro-immigrant Latino voters from voting at all
The final plank of the Romney Latino strategy that seems to be taking shape is the most troubling of all: depress the Latino vote by bombarding passionately pro-immigrant Latino voters with ads attacking President Obama's immigration record - both for his failure to achieve comprehensive immigration reform and for his Administration's record number of deportations. Importantly, the campaign will have deniability regarding this tactic because Republican surrogates and Super PACs will do the dirty work.
The goal here is not to convince these voters to switch to Romney. They won't. Instead, it's designed to exploit their pronounced lack of enthusiasm in 2012 in hopes they don't vote at all. Already, Republicans, who are masterful at message discipline, have been unified in hammering the "broken promises" and record deportations talking points. Now, outside groups and Super PACs are joining the fray. A new effort aimed at Latino voters in Nevada, spearheaded by the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, goes so far as to make the claim that President Obama is "worse than Joe Arpaio" on immigration. Look for Karl Rove, the mastermind of Crossroads and no stranger to the importance of Latino vote, to turbo charge the attack on Obama's immigration record with Spanish-language advertising in hopes of discouraging low-propensity Latino immigrant voters.
On MSNBC's "Morning Joe" earlier this week, political journalist John Heilemann forecast just such a strategy:

"This is going to be a viciously negative campaign against Obama by both the Romney campaign and the Republican super PACs that will attack him from the left, saying deportations are at an historic high with Obama; he's failed. They're going to attack him from the middle and say he failed on immigration reform. They're going to attack him from the right on gay marriage, and the goal of that campaign I think is going to be not to close the vote shares but just to push Hispanic turnout down, try to drive the overall vote total down and be able to not be hurt as badly if they can get Hispanics just to stay home."

Could it work? Adam Serwer at Mother Jones points out:

Obama has a large lead over Romney among Latinos, but the ratio of the Latino vote that Obama gets is less important than the number of Latinos who would have voted Obama but stay home out of disappointment with the administration.

Polling released this past week by NBC News/Telemundo captures the challenge for both the President and for Romney. Obama leads Romney by a 61-27% margin among Latino registered voters. However, as the recap accompanying the poll notes:

The challenge for Obama...will be turning out these voters with only a combined 68 percent of respondents saying they are highly interested in the upcoming election (compared with 81 percent of all American voters who expressed high interest in the NBC/WSJ poll).

Meanwhile, the DREAMers - young undocumented immigrants who are Americans in all but paperwork - are both calling out Romney for his extremism and calling on the President to protect them from the DHS deportation mill. During last week's "Right to DREAM" rallies, young undocumented immigrants, fresh from confronting Romney for his promise to veto the DREAM Act, held signs that read, "Obama: You can't court us and deport us."

A challenge and an opportunity for the Obama campaign
So, the Romney playbook with respect to Latino voters is coming into focus. Though ugly and cynical, it does represent a challenge to the Obama campaign, for OFA needs not only a huge margin from Latino voters, they need a huge mobilization of them.
The good news is that Obama has a commanding lead and cards to play to improve turnout on his behalf. He can give Latino voters discouraged with the Administration's immigration record more reasons to turn out to the polls. He can provide DREAM Act-eligible young people with protection against deportation and work permits so they are given a chance to contribute to the country they call home. And he can insist that the Secretary Janet Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security significantly improve the on-the-ground implementation of his year-old enlightened policy directives aimed at protecting the civil rights and family unity of hard working immigrants with strong claims to stay to America.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-...elections-2012

This is a very interesting analysis of how Romney is going to try to suppress the Latino vote. The fact is that the Obama administration has deported more people than all the 4 previous administrations.

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A new effort aimed at Latino voters in Nevada, spearheaded by the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, goes so far as to make the claim that President Obama is "worse than Joe Arpaio" on immigration. Look for Karl Rove, the mastermind of Crossroads and no stranger to the importance of Latino vote, to turbo charge the attack on Obama's immigration record with Spanish-language advertising in hopes of discouraging low-propensity Latino immigrant voters.

king kong · 05-30-2012, 09:52 AM

-Well Immigrants its once again time to pick the lesser of two evils. I was optimistic of the Rubio Bill but its all starting to feel dismal with the Romney campaign message. Rubio wont hurt Romneys message, i could see his bill seeing the light of day after the elections as either a save face with immigrants if the GOP loses or a really limited reprieve for very few of us so that the GOP says its the peoples party once they win.
-All in all ive been here for 23 years and once again am getting the feeling things are never gonna change. Cant wait till the day that we as immigrants get to turn the table on those that have held us hostage for so long.

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Romney's Latino Strategy Comes Into Focus