With Romney’s defeat, the open-borders Left and Right will obviously pounce in an effort to delegitimize any opposition to amnesty and unlimited immigration. But one of the DREAM Act lobbying groups has jumped the gun, just now issuing a press release without any of the numbers plugged in. Here’s the opening graf:
Washington, DC — Last night, Latino voters came out to vote in record numbers clearly knowing what was at stake. Immigrant youth, the DREAMers, waged a fearless campaign to force the DREAM Act onto the political agenda and to convince the President to offer them protection from deportation — a move that XX percent of Latino voters said made them more enthusiastic about voting for President Obama, who won the Latino vote by a record breaking XX% / XX% margin among Latinos according to a new poll by Latino Decisions, after seeing only lukewarm enthusiasm earlier this year.
Maybe they’re using Roman numerals! And then there’s this:
The unprecedented impact of DREAMers and the Latino vote this year was apparent in states like Colorado, Nevada, and Florida, where their support made the crucial difference in President Obama’s re-election. In addition, Latino support was critical in electing Richard Carmona to the Senate from Arizona, and proved to be the difference in electing NAME from STATE.
Aside from the ineptitude of issuing a dummy press release, Carmona did not win; Flake is ahead by 5 points with votes still being counted.
Seriously, though, the president’s illegal DREAM decree likely did increase enthusiasm among some Hispanic voters, although it was irrelevant to the presidential outcome. But the “record breaking” stuff is baloney. Republicans actually do a lot better among Hispanic voters now than they did before. Author Jose de la Isla estimates that Johnson got close to 90 percent of the Hispanic vote, Humphrey 87 percent, while Carter got 82 percent in 1976 and 76 percent in 1980. But because of immigration, the Hispanic electorate is much larger today. And since Hispanics are poorer on average than non-Hispanics, they are more likely to support larger and more activist government. So long as mass immigration continues, the electorate will continue, on net, to move to the left.
The long-run message remains: The GOP can change its stance on immigration and embrace lower numbers (both legal and illegal), or it can change its stance on everything else.