The Republican dilemma

The fastest growing minority group of voters is that amorphous group called Hispanic. Karl Rove recognizes that, and so does George W. Bush. If the Hispanic voters tend to vote Republican, then the Republicans can covert from a regional Southern Party to a national one. But they cannot become a national majority party without Hispanic voters, who are expected to go from their 5.5% in 2000 to 6% in 2004 to 10% or more in 2008.

But the core block of Republicans is (the polite term) Nativist. They have recently been depending on that to get out Republican voters.

... in the run-up to last year's midterm elections, Republicans chose to make immigration their lead issue. The GOP leadership in Congress encouraged talk radio and cable news shows to inflate the illegal alien problem, and Republican candidates took a hard-line anti-immigration stance in hopes of turning out GOP voters. It didn't work. Not only did the strategy fail to help Republicans hang on to their majorities in Congress, but support from Hispanic voters fell to 29%, the lowest level this decade. [Wall Street Journal via Kos]

Kos points out that the immigration issue, which several short years ago seemed to be a winning issue for the Republicans, now appears to be splitting the Republicans and alienating the Hispanic vote culturally from Republicans as a reaction to the nasty anti-immigrant attitudes Republican politicians and opinion leaders (like Limbaugh) have displayed.

Unlike African-American voters, Hispanic voters can be wooed by the Republican Party, but Hispanics are also very proud of there heritage. The Hispanic voters have been a growing swing block willing to entertain the Republican message, but as the Republicans began running against immigrants and minorities, the previous increases in Hispanic votes has reversed. In essence, it appears that the Republican anti-immigrant message is pushing the Hispanic voters to the Democratic Party.

If you remember Republican Governor Pete Wilson of California a decade or more ago and his strong anti-immigrant message, the result was a heavily Democratic California electorate. Since the Republicans with national with the message, it is highly possible that the result will also be similar for the Democrats nationally.