March 06, 2012 09:26 PM UTC

So You Like Demonizing Brown People, Do You?

• 3 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

FOX News Latino reports, H/T to Alicia Caldwell of the Denver paper’s editorial board:

The national poll of likely Latino voters indicated that 73 percent of them approved of Obama’s performance in office, with over half those questioned looking favorably upon his handling of the healthcare debate and the economy, at 66 percent and 58 percent respectively.

Released on the eve of the Super Tuesday primaries in the race for the GOP nomination, the Fox News Latino poll shows former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 35 percent of Latino voter support, to Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s 13 percent, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s 12 percent, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s 9 percent.

But the poll shows that the overwhelming choice among likely Latino voters is President Obama. In head-to-head match-ups none of the GOP candidates would garner more than 14 percent of the Latino vote come November, the poll said. [Pols emphasis]

“This is what we’re seeing across the country,” said Gabriela Domenzain, Obama campaign spokesperson. “The more Latinos learn about the candidates, the more they reject them.”

Folks, there is really no more powerful confirmation of what we’ve been warning in this space for years than the results of this poll showing that President Barack Obama is preferred 6-to-1 over any GOP opponent  among Latino voters, the fastest-growing bloc of voters in the United States. As Caldwell notes, Latinos’ overwhelming preference for Obama comes despite the fact that Obama doesn’t get great marks on the issue of immigration itself with them–as you probably know, the Obama administration has actually deported illegal immigrants at a much higher rate than his Republican predecessor. It’s true, though Tom Tancredo doesn’t talk about it.

But despite that, despite the massive economic downturn that hobbled the first two and a half years of Obama’s presidency and impacted Latinos disproportionately, despite the money being invested by Republicans in improving their numbers with Latinos, the “outreach directors” hired and paraded in press releases, vaguely introspective Ryan Call in the New York Times…

Some things–like years demonizing a growing minority to win a majority’s votes–you just can’t erase with a new consultant. They’ve earned the scorn of Latinos. And they were amply warned.