How should the GOP try to win over more Hispanics and Aisans?

[Beezer]

From another thread.

It's gonna take more than a couple of editorials to win over Hispanics. Numerous surveys have shown that they are staunch liberals when it comes to economics and the role of government and that many couldn't care less about social issues. Just arguing that poverty is bad and that we shouldn't close our eyes to it along with a couple of photos ops in a soup kitchen will simply not suffice.

Agreed, which is why we should carefully watch Rubio's next two years, and see what he does.

This brings us back to a key point though: Can a contemporary Republican appear compassionate on poverty and still win the party's nomination? The problem is that Hispanics and the voters that constitute today's Republican base are virtually diametrically opposed to one another when it comes to economic matters (and the basic question of what the government's role is). I don't doubt that some rhetoric about working hard and keeping your money can get you some additional Hispanic votes but at the end of the day Hispanics don't care much for Reaganomics. Now some of this may change over the coming decades as Hispanics integrate into American society (Protestantism is for example far more widespread among third and later generations and there is an increasing openness for GOP economic policies, see below) but in the short term I don't see much hope for getting back to 40%.

[Beezer]

But remember, Republicans aren't expecting to get over 50% of the Hispanic vote.
They are just aiming for something like 35 to 40%, (like W. Bush)
Anyway, it is going to be interesting if Rubio starts to distance himself from the Tea Party, he arguably already is with his new anti poverty outlook.
But yes, that will arguably (in my opinion) be the toughest thing for Republicans to receive Hispanic votes.

True and I believe that in the long run, the GOP could actually profit from immigration reform. Among third generation Hispanics, you get to that magic 40% when they're being asked the classic question on the role of government in economics (more government investment or lower taxes and spending cuts). I just think that as I said above, right now with the rabid anti-statist GOP base in place, it'll be very hard to make inroads into the Hispanic electorate without simultaneously wrecking your own support within the party.

[Beezer]

Ryan is actually really addressing the issue of poverty, it's him continuing Kemp's legacy. We can't just say "welfare is evil!" We need to strike a more understanding tone that sometimes people need it. That softens our image on the role of government and makes us more palatable. The reason they're staunch economic liberals is because liberals have been the only ones to turn economics into a values issue for them.

Whenever you vote for someone, you're always a values voter. Whether they're social issues or not. We need to start talking conservative economic policy in terms of values. Rubio actually does a pretty good job of this. Ryan is a bit too wonkish about it, but he's on the right track. Less "47%" more "The GOP wants to make America a place where everyone has the opportunity to succeed." Reassert our moral authority on the issues. Bush did it, we won.

I'd still argue it's not as simple as that. Any efforts to portray the party in a more favorable light are immediately squashed when you cut food stamp funding and go on and on about the evils of socialized health care (which is actually pretty popular among Hispanics).

"The GOP wants to make America a place where everyone has the opportunity to succeed."

People also care about your plans for what happens when you don't succeed in America even if you are, as a party, trying your best to ensure that everyone can move up the social ladder. If your answer is, "sorry but you're on your own since you've got no one to blame but yourself," you won't get all that far among Hispanics.

[Beezer]

One of those is compelling to political types like us, the conservative, and the other is compelling to everyone. Republicans won in 80, 84, 00, and 04 when they made the elections about values, not in a relgious right kind of way.

BTW, in 88 Bush won 30% of the Hispanic vote while Reagan won 34% four years earlier. The case can be made that the GOP won in those years not because of a nice message that appealed to everyone but rather because of a signficiantly different electorate that's not coming back. Let's not forget that Romney would have won the election had it been run with the 2000 demographic composition...in other words he actually fared better than Bush did, his only problem being that whites only comprised 72% of the electorate instead of the 81% they made up 12 years earlier.

[Beezer]

One of those is compelling to political types like us, the conservative, and the other is compelling to everyone. Republicans won in 80, 84, 00, and 04 when they made the elections about values, not in a relgious right kind of way.

BTW, in 88 Bush won 30% of the Hispanic vote while Reagan won 34% four years earlier. The case can be made that the GOP won in those years not because of a nice message that appealed to everyone but rather because of a signficiantly different electorate that's not coming back. Let's not forget that Romney would have won the election had it been run with the 2000 demographic composition...in other words he actually fared better than Bush did, his only problem being that whites only comprised 72% of the electorate instead of the 81% they made up 12 years earlier.

Right, but now we're going to need to change our messaging in order to make up for that demographic change. That's the whole conversation.

Exactly and I'm arguing that the messaging change will yield very limited returns (see earlier elections that you mentioned as examples in which the GOP used a more upbeat economic "values" message).

[Beezer]

Hillary will underperform among youth, hispanics, African Americans, probably asians, and hold the line on white voters. Any effort to make the south competitive will involve cannibalizing their numbers among African Americans. You'll see better GOP performance in general among more diverse demographics, but you'll also see white share of the vote increase.

So you subscribe to Sean Trende's "missing white voter" theory? The white share of the vote has steadily decreased since the late 80s (except for that small uptick in 92 thanks to Perot). Obama did a great job with black voters but I have a hard time believing that Hillary will do far worse in terms of her share of the vote and turnout. And as mentioned above, she beat Obama quite comfortably among Hispanics in the 08 primaries.

Hispanics voted for Sen. Hillary Clinton over Sen. Barack Obama by a margin of nearly two-to-one in the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, according to an analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of exit polls taken throughout the primary season.

http://www.pewhispanic.org/files/reports/86.pdf

I also doubt she's gonna lose white voters by 20 points. If anything HRC represents the perfect storm of great appeal among minorities and a skin color that will allow her to at least win a county or two in WV.

[Beezer]

You think that white voters voted a certain way because of the President's skin color but African Americans didn't? That's absurd. Hillary will have issues.

Of course some African Americans also vote on skin color, where did it contend that they don't? But it's not like the GOP was winning a quarter of the black vote before the Obama presidency. Will Hillary do just as well Obama? Probably not. But to be honest I don't think that'll sink her candidacy.