Giving up on minority voters

Republicans these days insist that their anti-immigration stance has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. It's the left, they say, that injects identity politics into everything. I caught the well-coiffed, permanently snarling ideologue Michelle Malkin making that exact point on television a few weeks back. "Let me drive this through the thick skulls of the open-border zealots at the New York Times and elsewhere," she barked. "This [illegal immigration] crisis has nothing to do with race. It's about peaceful citizens of all colors and creeds demanding that their government do everything possible to secure the blessings of liberty." And then, as if she couldn't control herself, Malkin punctuated her diatribe with a sarcastic bit of Spanish: "Comprende?"

OK, so immigration isn't about Latinos. I guess that follows because as far as the Republicans are concerned, nothing is about Latinos.

Witness the Republican presidential candidate debate on the Spanish-language TV network Univision. Oh wait, that debate didn't happen. All the contenders save Sen. John McCain claimed scheduling conflicts.

Sure, relatively few Latinos actually vote in the Republican primary. And a majority of likely Latino voters -- 61% -- don't even watch Spanish-language television. But it was still stupid for the candidates to snub Univision. It's just one more sign of how the GOP is retreating from its big-tent strategy, which had made sizable gains in attracting Latino voters.

Difficult as it is to imagine, Latinos actually may have a reason to miss President Bush when he's gone. No, not because he accomplished the "Latino strategy" that his advisors touted when he was running for president in 2000 -- passing comprehensive immigration reform and putting a Mexican American on the Supreme Court -- but because he brought more attention to the Latino electorate than any major American politician before or since.

Think back to the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles seven years ago. By August of 2000, Bush's Latino outreach had begun to broaden the appeal of the GOP, and that was sending ripples through the Democratic Party. During the convention, prominent Latino Democrats successfully leveraged Bush's appeal to get their own party to pay more attention to the fast-growing Latino electorate. One Latino pollster complained that, in contrast to the GOP convention, he'd seen no signs that Democrats "have any effort geared toward Latinos." Even Bill Richardson, who was then U.S. Energy secretary, conceded that the GOP strategy was working and could "hurt Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore."