Hispanics for Tancredo

By Mark Krikorian on January 29, 2009

No, that's not the name of a new group, though it wouldn't surprise me. A new poll of the 2010 Senate prospects of Colorado's Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter found, among other things, that 35 percent of the state's Hispanic voters prefer immigration hawk Tom Tancredo to Ritter. Given the margins of error, that's the same share of the Hispanic vote in Colorado as McCain last year (reported as 38 percent), and Bush in 2004 (reported as 30 percent). In other words, there's a solid one-third of Hispanic voters who are established, assimilated Americans who prefer the GOP's distinctive message of national sovereignty, military readiness, free enterprise, and defense of tradition. Growing that vote is a laudable goal, but it's not going to happen by abandoning through amnesty and open borders the very features that made the Republican Party attractive to that one-third of Hispanics in the first place.