They All Speak Spanish, Don't They?

If I were a Republican, I wouldn't be especially optimistic about putting Mel Martinez in as RNC Chair as a strategy "intended to appeal to disaffected Latino voters." The thing about "Latino voters" is that this isn't a very meaningful category. Republicans don't have a problem with Cuban-Americans, and Martinez is from Cuba. Now, it's true that Martinez favors liberalized immigration rules, which really might help the GOP with more problematic ethnic groups. But, of course, what got the GOP in trouble was that the party, notwithstanding George W. Bush's sentiments, in fact does not favor liberalizing immigration rules. That's not a something voters concerned with this issue are confused about, it's actually the case that while Bush and some other Republicans have lax immigration views, the bulk of the party follows a restrictionist line.

The big picture issues aside, though, this does still leave me wondering about the pure ethnic pandering issue here. Do they really not see that you can't give jobs to Cubans as a way of appealing to Mexican-Americans? That the two political communities are completely different in terms of demographics, voting behavior, issue concerns, etc. I thought there was a crack political machine lurking somewhere in the White House.

Comments

It has nothing to do with appealing to Mexican-Americans. It is for allowing people like Jonah Goldberg to state how inclusive they are.

Posted by Rob | November 15, 2006 3:09 PM

Do they really not see that you can't give jobs to Cubans as a way of appealing to Mexican-Americans?

I refer you to G.H.W. Bush ('The Not-nearly-dumb George Bush') who thought nothing of referring to a grandchild as 'the little brown one.'

Posted by dj moonbat | November 15, 2006 3:15 PM

Sorry. Not-nearly-as-dumb.

Posted by dj moonbat | November 15, 2006 3:24 PM

It has nothing to do with appealing to Mexican-Americans. It is for allowing people like Jonah Goldberg to state how inclusive they are.

Yes. More importantly, it's for convincing married suburban and exurban women that the Republican Party is not all Trent Lotts and George Allens.

Posted by Duvall | November 15, 2006 3:28 PM

It all seems of a part of modern GOP racial outreach, which really does believe that minority groups can be bought off with a couple of high-profile affirmative action appointments. As if the presence of Powell and Rice would cause African American voters to overlook Katrina, or having Bush stammer out a couple of sentences en espanol would nullify his party's xenophobic anti-immigrant policies.

Not surprising from a party that presents photo ops as if they were meaningful policy actions - releasing photos and saying "Here's President Bush meeting with his military advisors. See how serious his frowny face is?" as a subsititue for actually reassessing and changing policy).

Posted by FMguru | November 15, 2006 3:30 PM

Republicans don't have a problem with Cuban-Americans

Last week's election was the first-ever election in which the Democrats got more votes among Florida Hispanics than did the Republicans. To some extent that might be due to an increasing number of non-Cuban Hispanics in Florida, but clearly the Republicans cannot take the Cuban-American vote for granted any longer.

Posted by Peter | November 15, 2006 4:07 PM

Someone explain to me why referring to your grandchild affectionately and humorously as the "little brown one" is so bad.

Posted by Pithlord | November 15, 2006 4:26 PM

Cubans do not consider themselves "Hispanic" and reject the term with great passion.

Posted by Garuda | November 15, 2006 4:37 PM

Thats like the people who insist that Michelle Malkin's In Defense of Internment isn't racist because her parents are from the Phillipines. Because, you know, all Asians are the same.

Posted by Travis | November 15, 2006 5:18 PM

The post presumes too much, that the appointment turned on & should be judged by Martinez’s national origins. Does anyone reality imagine the White House, which is familiar with both Texas & Florida, isn’t well aware of the heterogeneity of the Hispanic population? I doubt this is just a case of, ‘sometimes you go to war with the Hispanic you've got, not the Hispanic you'd like to have.’ Martinez's ethnicity can’t hurt & may marginally help with non-Cuban Hispanics, & his views on immigration marginally help. Whether he helps or hurts should be judged relative to the alternatives, who, given the nature of the Republican Party, likely would have been worse. Esp. in the context of a highly racialized immigration debate, he may be most useful vis-à-vis white people, who don’t always make sharp, Borgesian distinctions among the varieties of hispanitude. It seems unlikely the White House imagines the appointment is anything other than a second-order gesture. Bush brought a number of Mexican-Americans with him from Texas, one of whom is now Attorney-General, & by know knows that a few personnel choices won’t revolutionize Hispanic political behavior. In any event, the main thing remains what it was, immigration policy & the accompanying racial polarization, which Hispanics, even Cubans, will long remember.

Posted by KH | November 15, 2006 5:22 PM

Presumably Jeb Bush, who is married to a Mexican-American and is governor of Florida, would have some insight into this issue.

Posted by Dave | November 15, 2006 6:11 PM

All sorts of subgroups within the worldwide Hispanic population strongly reject the label "hispanic", and they and others reject the idea that the grouping is meaningful. But of course it's meaningful. Language groupings are among the most important cultural groupings there are and language is closely related to culture and ethnicity. Nations rise and fall according to language groupings.

It's also the case that perhaps the majority of Hispanics that encounter Martinez's name somewhere won't know his specific ethnicity. But even if that's not the case, it's self-evident that there's at least some limited soliditarity across various Hispanic interest groups. For good reason, I think. And, specifically, I think of the Floridian Cuban-Americans as a political aberration so to use them as an example of dissimilarity is a bit misleading.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | November 15, 2006 6:17 PM

Grouping may be meaningful, but that doesn't mean that the "hispanic" designation is necessarily descriptive or neutral, any more than the alternative "Latino."

At least among Chicano-identified mexican-americans, "hispanic" is disfavored because it is read to signify "Spanish" heritage exclusively, and negate the Indian component of a mestizo identity.

Posted by calendar | November 15, 2006 6:35 PM

Martinez was the co-sponsor of the Hagel-Martinez S.2611 bill to increase legal immigration by 66 million over the next 20 years. It badly lost out with the public to the House's enforcement approach during dueling hearings over summer. It was a central element in Bush's grand strategy of Invade-the-World-Invite-the-World. Appointing Martinez as the face of the Republican Party is George W. Bush's way of extending a middle finger to the Republican base that denied him his most prized domestic policy.

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 15, 2006 7:31 PM

The last thing I want to do is defend any action of the Bush administration but it's possible that Martinez's position on immigration, and not some general idea of "hispanicity," was the reason for his appointment. It may have been a gesture, however clumsy, intended to say "we're not all inbred bigots." It won't work for the sorts of reason that KH mentioned but it's all the White House could come up with.

Posted by Roberto | November 15, 2006 7:34 PM

Martinez could have been one of the better Republicans, but he settled for being W's bitch. He wanted to be governor and run this year, but Rove talked him into running for the Senate in 2004 to pick up the Cuban vote for Bush in Florida. Rove then ran Martinez's campaign for governor from DC. The campaign got so dirty even during the primary that Martinez lost personal friends in the party when Rove pretty much called them gay (IIRC) or something like that. One of the major dailies down there actually withdrew its support for Martinez, which was a first for that paper. Maybe now the Bush is totally lame duck on a shit stick, Martinez can use his new power to actually cultivate a liberal, pro-business wing of the Republican Party that would be sane instead of being the bitch shopping around the Schiavo talking points.

Posted by Reality Man | November 15, 2006 9:38 PM

They All Speak Spanish, Don't They?

Except for the 180,000,000 who speak Portuguese.

Posted by Randy Paul | November 15, 2006 9:48 PM

Republicans don't have a problem with Cuban-Americans
I can think of at least one Cuban-American the Republicans have a problem with...

Posted by Jacob | November 15, 2006 10:38 PM

What is the substance of the Republican appeal to Hispanic/Latino/whatever voters meant to be? Is it meant to be a God'n'guns'n'gays'n'pre-born little soldiers appeal to Catholic conservatism? I can't see that Republican positions on, say, immigration, education or workplace rights are going to convince.

Perhaps they never did, and it was just more Karl Rove psywar bollocks. Get everyone talking about Our Great Latino Support, so the Democrats have to run around in circles worrying about nonexistent Mexican texanisers.

If they put Martinez in, the Democratic Congress should immediately table a guest worker program bill and watch the wingnuts and the party apparatus fight like cats in a sack.

Posted by Alex | November 16, 2006 6:34 AM

"What is the substance of the Republican appeal to Hispanic/Latino/whatever voters meant to be?"

As you guess, it's cultural conservatism. The way it looks on paper, they're right to think that Hispanics are a natural fit within the GOP. In reality, they are ignoring that everyone knows that the GOP is the party of racists, bigots, and nativists. But the GOP will continue to covet these voters because, I think, the Judis/Teixeira theory is correct that the burgeoning Hispanic populations in the SW and West are the most important long-term political change in the US.

That's why the recent GOP attack on immigrants with its obvious racist subtext was a real strategic blunder. The Democratic Party may repeat this mistake and perhaps erode enough of the natural affiliation between Hispanics and Dems that the barriers to GOP affiliation become surmountable. God, I hope not. Yes, many Hispanics are as upset about illegals as non-Hispanics. But a non-Hispanic ranting about illegal aliens with a focus on the southern border is inherently suspicious to any Hispanic, whatever their feelings about illegals. Because, frankly, racism is involved.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | November 16, 2006 3:12 PM

Re; but clearly the Republicans cannot take the Cuban-American vote for granted any longer.

Thats' because they've been here long enough to assimilate. Most of the 20-something Cubans I work with are 100% Americanized (they were born here after all) although they may still be fluent in Spanish and speak it at home. Many of them seemed quite happy with last Tuesday's electoral results too.

Posted by JonF | November 16, 2006 3:49 PM