GOP must Pretend to Care About the Poor to Win Hispanic Votes
Matthew Yglesias: slate.com
American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks has a perceptive op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the fact that Hispanics have a much lower voter turnout rate than non-Hispanics, and there’s considerable evidence that non-voting Hispanics are more conservative than Hispanic voters. What could get those people to turn out and vote Republican? Brooks correctly notes that ranting against the evils of Latino immigration probably doesn’t help (not, I might add, does the fact that one of AEI’s leading scholars agrees that the genetic inferiority of Hispanics should be a major factor in shaping public policy). But he also correctly notes that Hispanics are very concerned about the fate of the poor, and a Republican Party that wants to win their votes needs to make a pitch on this score.
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Just to sum up—the actually existing GOP agenda overwhelmingly suggests that not only do Republicans think that government spending is bad, but also that government spending on the poor is an especially pernicious form of spending. They appear to believe that taxes are bad, but that taxes on the poor are an especially benign form of taxes. As Brooks notes, this works for Republicans as an electoral strategy because white voters by and large are not that concerned about the fate of poor people. But as Brooks also notes, it’s a strategy that doesn’t work if Republicans want to secure Hispanic votes. But to change it would require an actual turnaround in public policy.It’s a bit hard to know how to read Brooks’ op-ed in that light. He’s a political operator, not a journalist. It’s possible that he’s fully aware that the Republican Party is committed to a savage war against the economic interests of poor people and simply thinks that talking nice is the optimal strategy for shifting GOP policy. It’s also possible that he’s totally clueless. And it’s also possible that he is personally committed to this anti-poor person agenda but thinks it’s possible to adopt rhetorical strategies that disguise its existence. The fact that just last week the main architect of the GOP’s soak the poor budget was given AEI’s major award is, I think, suggestive. But whatever is going on in Brooks’ head, he’s right that economic policy is at the core of the GOP’s Latino problem.