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What Mike Murphy Should Have Said
My reaction to Mike Murphy’s recent appearance on the Ricochet Podcast can be summarized with one word: frustration. I think it safe to say that my reaction is one shared by many – probably most – members. That said, the cause of my frustration puts me in a minority on Ricochet. Though I do not support comprehensive immigration reform at the present moment, I think it will be necessary at some point and I was deeply disappointed at how poor a case Murphy made for immigration reform as a political necessity. There are few things I find more frustrating than listening to an argument to which I am sympathetic put poorly. Now I don’t expect everyone to be persuaded by this, but here’s what I think Murphy should have said:*
First, we need to recognize that the GOP’s problem with the Hispanic vote is a serious one. Hispanics are the largest minority group in the United States and are the fastest-growing segment of the American population. There are currently around 25 million Hispanics eligible to vote in the United States, a number set to rise to 40 million by 2030. Even if Hispanic immigration (both legal and illegal) were stopped entirely today, if the Republican Party cannot get a significantly higher percent of the Hispanic vote than it has in recent elections it is headed for long-term minority party status. This is particularly true in the case of presidential politics. The GOP cannot achieve an Electoral College majority without Texas and Hispanics are on track to become the largest ethnic group in Texas in about a decade. A Republican Party that receives less than 30 percent of the Hispanic vote is in trouble. Since 1980 (the first election for which such data is available and reliable), no one has won a presidential election with less than 30% of the Hispanic vote. In 2012, Romney received only 27%.
Fortunately, Hispanic voting patterns are not set in stone. While it is unlikely that the GOP is going to win a majority of Hispanic votes anytime soon, it should be recognized that the Republican Party’s standing among Hispanic voters is currently at a twenty year low and that it was much higher fairly recently. George W. Bush did quite well among Hispanics. In 2000, he received 35% of the Hispanic vote and in 2004 he won between 41 and 44% (depending on the source).
This brings us to the question of why the GOP currently does so poorly among Hispanics. Between 2004 and the midterm elections of 2006, the Republican Party saw its share of the Hispanic vote fall by between one quarter and one third. While the GOP lost ground among pretty much every demographic group, the drop in support among Hispanics was substantially greater than among other groups. One thing that likely contributed to this collapse in support is that W’s attempt to pass a Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA) was thwarted by a GOP-controlled Congress.
Perhaps more at fault than the actual failure of the CIRA was the nature of much of the right’s opposition to it. Groups such as the Minutemen received prominent news coverage and, while their motives may have been benign, they were portrayed as anti-Hispanic vigilantes and bigots. Such coverage may have been unfair, but it was not without a factual basis. In 2008, Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist expressed dismay at the number of organizations with “sinister intentions” that grew out of the Minuteman Project saying, “I very well may have been fighting for people with less character and less integrity than the ‘open border fanatics’ I have been fighting against.” On a less extreme level, it’s hard to argue that conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh help the perception of the GOP among Hispanics when they argue against immigration reform on the grounds that Hispanic immigrants are welfare-dependent, job-stealing, criminally-inclined drains on America’s public finances planning to reconquer the Southwest for La Raza (not that La Raza wouldn’t like a reconquista).
So why, you may ask, if the GOP is generally perceived to be unwelcoming to Hispanics, is immigration reform necessary to improve the GOP’s standing among Hispanics?
Well, immigration is more of a threshold question than a magic bullet. Passing immigration reform would demonstrate to Hispanic voters that the GOP is not hostile to them. There are currently large numbers of Hispanics who might be receptive to the conservative message on the value of hard work, traditional morality, and opportunity, but who reject it out of hand because they perceive the messengers to be hostile to them. We cannot persuade someone of the rightness of our position if they aren’t willing to give us a hearing in the first place.
But shouldn’t Hispanics already be receptive to our position? After all, polling tends to show that Hispanic voters care far more about the economy than they do about immigration.
It’s true that polling suggests that Hispanic voters care far more about the economy than they do about immigration reform, but that doesn’t really matter in this context. As Mickey Kaus astutely pointed out, the fact that voters in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District stated that the economy was a higher priority to them than immigration doesn’t mean that immigration doesn’t matter. Sauce for the goose being sauce for the gander, Hispanic voters may care more about the economy than they do about immigration, but that doesn’t mean they don’t care about immigration.
What about the argument that amnesty would add millions of new Democratic voters to the electorate?
Opponents of the path to citizenship frequently make the claim that it will result in 11 million new Democratic voters, ushering in a permanent Democratic majority. While it’s true that providing a path to citizenship to those illegally in the country would lead to an increase in Democratic votes, the actual net effect is likely to be far less than the 11 million figure. First, it needs to be recognized that 11 million is the total number of illegal immigrants in the country and that not all of these are going to become citizens. I have a friend who is an immigration lawyer and staunch opponent of comprehensive immigration reform. His best estimate is that between 40 and 50 percent of current illegal immigrants will not end up becoming citizens — some because of ineligibility or return to their home country, most because they don’t really care about citizenship and would be content with legal status as permanent residents. Let’s assume the high end of his range opts for citizenship. 60% of 11 million is 6.6 million. That’s not the end of the analysis. Hispanics have a voter turnout of 48%, so of the 6.6 million eligible to vote only 3.17 million are likely to actually vote. Not all of these will vote Democrat. If we assume that the GOP is able to increase its share of the Hispanic vote from the currently abysmal 27% to a 2000 level 35% we end up with 2 million new Democratic votes and 1.1 million new Republicans for a net increase of only 900,000 Democratic votes. If the GOP can revive its share of the Hispanic votes to 2004 levels, the net increase in Democratic votes shrinks to 380,000.
And that doesn’t take into account the effect of comprehensive immigration reform on the larger established Hispanic vote. The first amnestied voters won’t go to the polls for a decade. By then, the established (non-amnestied) Hispanic electorate will be around 35 million, of which around half, or 17.5 million will actually vote. Under current voting patterns, the GOP will receive about 4.72 million of those votes. If the GOP share of the Hispanic votes rises to 2000 levels, it will receive 6.13 million votes and if it rises to 2004 levels it will receive 7.7 million votes for a net increase of between 1.41 million and 3.02 million votes. Thus a path to citizenship, taken on its own, will likely lead to a net increase of between 380,000 and 900,000 Democratic votes, but the overall effect of comprehensive immigration reform will likely be a net Republican gain of between 500,000 and 2.6 million votes.
What about the risk that amnesty will just induce another wave of illegal immigration?
I agree that’s a real problem. That’s why I oppose comprehensive immigration reform at the moment. At least until we control the Senate, preferably until we retake the White House in 2016.
* In fairness, Murphy did make some of these points, or points of a similar nature.
Published in General
Some of it could be immigration reform, some could be that Kerr y was a bad candidate and did not fit the Hispanic voters in the south well.
The change between 2004 and 2008 for Hispanics was big, but lots of things changed. Compared to Bush, McCain got 13% fewer voters age 18-29, 9% fewer voters age 3-44. 9% fewer Asian Voters. 5% fewer white male voters. 7% fewer voters in the Midwest.
Candidates matter. McCain did worse than Bush in almost every demographic, so of course he did worse with Hispanics. By your logic , we need to pander to each group with a drop off. We have a lot of pandering to do to lots of groups and then they won’t vote for the GOP they just won’t hate the GOP
I’m not sure what the specifics of effective border security would entail, but I’m certain that political give and take is not the best way to devise it.
Is that actually true? I had never heard that in my life until just the last few years; it has the sound of a modern left-wing myth, or like Ellis Island descendents trying to jump on the oppression bandwagon. There were ethnic tensions undoubtedly, but I have a hard time believing that WASPs of the early 20th century truly thought that Italians, Irish and Germans were a “different race.” Steve Sailer has joked about this same contention, wondering why Scarlet O’Hara was not captured and sold into slavery.
But the drop in the GOP Hispanic vote occurred before the 2006 midterms. McCain received the same percent of the Hispanic vote in 2008 that GOP congressional candidates received in 2006. The collapse in the GOP Hispanic vote preceded McCain.
It’s not quite true in the sense that we use the term “race” today. Historically, the term was more analogous to the way we use ethnicity. For example, Benjamin Franklin famously referred to German immigrants to Pennsylvania as being of a different race than the established Anglo-Saxons.
But how do you think it will come about?
I have to disagree on this one. Condi Rice would have had no shot at the black female demographic if she had run because folks vote for their best economic interests. The percentage of GOP Hispanic voters has dropped because their economic net worth has dropped; it pays to be a Democrat.
I’m not a Mormon, but I’m Romney’s biggest fan.
Liz- the Hispanic GOP vote dropped before their economic standing did.
As for Condi, I think the situation with blacks is different than with Hispanics. Blacks have voted about 90% Democratic for over a generation. As recently as a decade ago the GOP won almost half of the Hispanic vote.
Yes, that was pretty much what I was getting at – The English were “the island race” as Churchill used the term. A few years ago I started noticing this argument cropping up everywhere – “How the Irish became white,” etc. In this exaggerated form, it always felt to me like people understanding that coming from an oppressed group is where the glory is today, and so trying to manufacture a history that puts them in the same league as blacks in the South.
???
RR received 37% of the Hispanic vote in 1984; Romney 26% in 2012.
I know it was true of the Italians. I have never heard it said of the Irish (as a separate race), unless you count Celtic vs. Germanic. As for the Germans, no, just never. There were Germans here from the start, like General von Steuben. It has long been known that the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were Germanic tribes.
W received 35% and 41-44% in 2000 and 2004 respectively.
I am pretty sure Italians were not considered a different “race” in the same sense that blacks, Native Americans and Chinese were considered different races. Different ethnicities, unquestionably.
If they were truly considered a different race, how did this manifest itself in white Americans’ social behavior? Did Italians suffer some sort of grinding oppression because of it?
I should add that the “Non-Whiteness” of the Italians varied by how far south and how dark the hair and eyes. The Romans had brought many slaves from Africa, and it did include “Nubians” as well as Berbers at the time. The Romans’ restrictions on marrying had much more to do with status than what we think of as race today. There was more of that “Nubian” blood circulating in the Italian Peninsula than other non-African parts of the Roman empire. The various genes got watered down quite a bit over a few thousand years. But there was an interesting genetic study done in England where a town had widespread genes from Sub-Saharan Africa, even though there had been no new African injections in recorded history since the Roman days. Certainly in Italy where there were more such, there was a higher percentage of the admixture resulting in higher percentages of the genetically-dominant coloring.
Interestingly, the Berbers of the Riff have a higher percentage of “blondism” than any other group in Africa and some groups in Europe.
Comparing 1988 (a semi-decent Republican year with Presidential candidates on the ticket) with 2006 (an awful, off-year election) to tease out relative Latino support for the GOP based on immigration legislation is a bit of a stretch, regardless of one’s conclusions.
However, even assuming that Sal is wrong about the Hispanic vote per se (I’m not), there are other factors to consider. Often demeanor trumps policy on culturally charged issues.
For example, it is easy to find an electoral majority that flatly rejects preferential college admissions by race. It is even easier to find an electoral majority that wouldn’t even consider voting for a party which it perceived to be openly racist in its opposition to affirmative action.
Remember also that the housing bubble was pushed in no small part by hispanics, and the 2004 election came right at the peak of the bubble (and George W Bush identified himself with the temporary latino prosperity). There’s a reason the hardest hit states when the bubble crashed were California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida. Even if Bush got the 44% (which I consider unrealistically high, and incline toward a compromise 40%) he did so through a set of economic circumstances that will not be repeated. At least, I hope they won’t…
I think you’re generally right, but I’d direct you to Franklin’s Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind. Two relevant quotes:
Sal explains it better than I ever could at comment #65.
It was probably somewhere between what we would call ethnicity and race. Just as an example, there was the moldboard plow theory of why the Northern Europeans were cooperative and hardworking vs. those narsty Southern Europeans from the Med basin who were all lazy and shiftless. (I’m exaggerating the terms used slightly, perhaps, but they really were seen as inferiors.) The Italians and Southern Europeans were also Roman Catholics (mostly), vs. the Protestant Northern Europeans. All of this worked together to restrict immigration from Southern Europe for many years and to restrict social access.
For the Italians, it was nothing like the level of oppression that Blacks felt. More akin to what the Jews got. Maybe they could be useful, but you wouldn’t want to marry one or work with one too closely was the attitude.
The Irish Catholics also got much of the same treatment and the reputation of being drinking men.
I don’t know if you’re exaggerating. I’m pretty lazy and shiftless, myself.
And non-property owning women didn’t get the vote until 1920!
The moral of this story (I think) is that somehow, most of us managed to muddle through it. :)
While we’re on the topic, here’s a very interesting recent New York Times article on how fairly widely accepted Jews were in the antebellum South.
Yeah, and it’s all been downhill from there.
That’s true. The South was different. A lot of Jewish folks thought my great-granddaddy was Jewish since his name was Simeon and he had a Jewish son-in-law. Again, Jews were here from before the Revolution and even were instrumental in funding the Revolution. A shipload of Sephardim arrived in the Georgia colony early on, and since one of their leaders was a doctor, they were welcomed since the colony was facing an epidemic. Again, a lot of history there.
Yes. African migrants trying to get into Israel are far more desperate than any Mexican immigrant trying to get into the States, yet Israel stops them cold…
Yeah, but we love you anyway. (For one hard-working sense of humour, if nothing else.)
Do not try to pick a fight with me. :)
I’m not sure it will. It can be done only under certain conditions. Reid must be out. Obama must be out. Republicans must make a convincing case for border security as a matter of national interest—convincing to voters and convincing enough for at least a few Democrat legislators to join the cause and participate constructively. Legislators and the appropriate experts must design border security legislation.
As long as the current government chooses which laws to defend, all else is commentary and any new laws are at risk. Close the border. Now. Then we can talk about policy and strategy.
W was a unique candidate and you know it! Texas + Jeb equaled votes; nevertheless, he wouldn’t have won that percentage in 2012.
The socio-economic demographics have changed throughout this country, particularly within certain ethnic communities. The technically unskilled labor forces have fewer and fewer places to go as the American market is now, more than ever, a demanding and highly competitive environment. At one point, Hispanic voters were primarily the economically successful and Republicans did well with this block, but the Democratic party has done a magnificent job of enrolling the disenfranchised and jobless to vote while it vilifies the GOP for its stance against illegal immigration. Eric Cantor understood this but he lost his rural white constituency.
I’m truly at a loss here.