Category ►►► Asquirmative Action

October 6, 2010

Shocked Democrats Discover - Hispanics Are Americans!

A report released yesterday by the Pew Hispanic Center has bewitched Democrats for two reasons:

• It shows that Hispanic registered voters are much less enthusiastic about voting on November 2nd than are registered voters in general; this "enthusiasm gap" almost certainly means they will end up voting in much lower numbers than they did in 2008, when Hispanic voters helped propel Barack H. Obama into the White House and a huge gaggle of Dems into Congress.
• But the same report also indicates that Hispanic registered Republicans are significantly more enthusiastic about voting. Which equally implies that the percent of Hispanics voting Republican will be far higher than in 2008, as Republican Hispanics vote while Democratic Hispanics sulk at home.

What bothers liberals, like a thorn in the heel, is that Hispanics in the United States appear to react much the same as other Americans: Those on the left are demoralized, those on the right happily anticipate the elections. Quelle dommage!

According to the PHC report, 50% of registered voters in general have given the upcoming elections "quite a lot" of thought, but only 32% of Latino registered voters; similarly, 70% of registered voters generally say they are "certain" to vote, but only 51% of Latino registered voters. However, among Latino registered Republicans, 44% have given the election "quite a lot" of thought. (Alas, Pew didn't tell us the gap between Latino Democrats and Latino Republicans on how certain they are to vote, so we must use the first question as a proxy for the second.)

But there is another result in this poll that will truly bewilder the Left. As the Washington Times discovers:

Pew interviewed 618 registered Hispanic voters in August and September. One surprising finding was that immigration does not top the list of concerns of Hispanic voters.

"Rather, they rank education, jobs and health care as their top three issues of concern for this year's congressional campaign. Immigration ranks as the fifth most important issue for Latino registered voters," said Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director of the center and the report's author. [The deficit ranked number four. -- DaH]

That finding surprised Clarrisa Martinez De Castro, director of immigration and national campaigns at the National Council of La Raza, who said fights over issues such as Arizona's immigration law play an "energizing role" for turning out Hispanic voters.

Thankfully for the country, the Democrats' dogma may bite them right in their aspirations. The Democratic Party and Latino groups such as La Raza and MEChA are shackled to their ideological premises, one of which is that Hispanics care first and foremost about immigration; consequently, that is the one issue through which they traditionally appeal to Latinos -- as Senate Majority Leader Harry "Pinky" Reid (D-Caesar's Palace, 95%) attempted to do in the last regular session of the 111th Congress:

Democratic lawmakers seeking re-election are hoping immigration is a motivating factor.

Just before Congress adjourned for the campaign season, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to force a debate on a bill to legalize illegal immigrant students, known as the Dream Act. He tried to have that debate as part of the annual defense policy debate, but it was blocked by Republicans who said that was the wrong forum for considering immigration.

Mr. Reid, a Nevada Democrat, is counting on a large turnout of Hispanics to boost him in his re-election bid against Republican challenger Sharron Angle.

But Republicans, Tea Party activists, and conservatives can approach Hispanics on issues of education, jobs, health care, and the deficit, which are not only the top four concerns of Hispanic voters but are also top Republican strengths -- along with taxes, spending, small businesses, and of course national security, all of which should resonate very strongly with Hispanics. So Democrats have "no hand and no draw," as they say in Texas Hold 'Em.

Democrats are only capable of seeing "special interest" groups like Hispanics as one-note ponies: The Left demands that Hispanics care about immigration (in this case, code for "amnesty") above everything, just as they demand that blacks care about nothing but affirmative action, that gays care only about same-sex marriage, and that union members care about nothing but higher wages and pensions.

The idea that members of any of these groups might care more about the bread-and-butter issues that affect all Americans than about their liberal-selected, parochial, identity-politics issues... well, that thought simply doesn't cross the liberal consciousness. And when circumstances (actual votes) forcibly bring such dissent to their attention, liberals denounce dissenters as "inauthentic" (fill in the blanks). (How galling it must be for a Hispanic conservative to be told he's not authentically Hispanic... by an ivory-white "progressive" like Pinky Reid.)

And that might very well explain the enthusiasm gap between liberal and conservative Hispanics... as well as liberal and conservative blacks, gays, and union members. What we're really seeing is an ideology gap.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, October 6, 2010, at the time of 3:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 24, 2007

Cindy Sheehan's Day of Out-of-Tunement Manifesto

I rarely do this, as you know: I rarely link to some piece and say simply "read this." (I'm too in love with the sound of my own fingers typing on a keyboard.)

But here's an exception. Read Cindy Sheehan's Yom Kippur "sermon," delivered at Michael Lerner's Beyt Tikkun "synogogue;" you will be -- if not exactly glad, then at least agape. (Rabbi Lerner is Hillary Clinton's mentor, author of the Politics of Meaning and other works of Socialist agit-prop masquerading as theology.)

My response (I love this) is entirely contained in the list of categories I had to attach to this post.

(Well, one more thing. It has always been my understanding that Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, is a day for each person to atone for what he, personally, has done wrong -- not "atone" for his enemies failing to live up to his own lofty standards, apologize for all the times America hasn't followed his lead, or wallow in self-righteous indignation that nobody listens to him. 'Nuff said; read the list of categories above.)

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 24, 2007, at the time of 2:36 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 23, 2007

Blundering Herd of RINOs: Endangered Species?

A couple of weeks ago, we published a post titled "Two More RINOs Join the Blundering Herd." In it, we noted a fascinating phenomenon: Every Republican senator who called for us to declare defeat and withdraw from Iraq or Afghanistan was a member of a very select group... GOP senators whose "partisanship" score was 75% or less.

In other words, all of the supposed "GOP collapse" of support for the war comes from the most liberal wing of the Republican Party -- from Olympia Snowe (ME, 36%) to Chuck Hagel (NE, 75%) and Pete Domenici (NM, 75%). And toting them all up, there simply are not enough of them to overturn a presidential veto of retreat and defeat.

I don't believe this point has sufficiently sunk in; at least, no other new analyst or blogger that I have seen has remarked upon it. But this is the single most important fact in the low-speed "civil war" between Left and Right in the United States Congress, with the fate of the War on Global Hirabah hanging in the balance: The anti-war crowd simply hasn't the votes in the Senate (or likely the House, either), until and unless President Bush begins losing actual conservatives... not just RINOs.

Once these sunshine patriots realize they're playing a dead hand, I suspect it will be harder and harder to lure them into alliance with the radical Democrats, especially if they begin drawing more conservative primary challenges. It doesn't affect the equation that a conservative who bumps a RINO off the ticket might well lose to the Democrat in the general election. Either way, the RINO is out looking for honest work.

So please, gentle readers, do your best to spread this word: There are not enough RINOs to override the president's veto of withdrawal or defunding legislation. So the rest of the GOP had better brace up and find a spine somewhere... or else there will be sufficient anti-war votes in the next Congress.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, July 23, 2007, at the time of 8:56 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 5, 2006

Anutter Grutter Cutter?

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that has at least a good possibility of reversing what was arguably the worst Supreme-Court decision of the Bush era... a position that was ardently supported by the Bush administration itself.

The Supreme Court agreed today to consider an issue of enormous importance to parents and educators across the country: the extent to which public school administrators can use racial factors in assigning children to schools.

The court accepted cases from Seattle and Louisville, Ky., for its next term. The school districts in both cities defeated challenges to their assignment procedures in the lower courts.

"Looming in the background of this is the constitutionality of affirmative action," Davison Douglas, a law professor at William and Mary, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "This is huge."

The earlier case to which I alluded was Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), in which the Court held that the "affirmative-action" (racial preferences) in the University of Michigan's law school were constitutional. And the reason I think there's a reasonable chance to chip away at that awful decision is that it was 5-4... with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor writing for the majority.

O'Connor has since retired, of course, replaced by Justice Samuel A. Alito: if Alito actually opposes racial preferences, as I suspect he does, then he could be the crucial flip-vote that might begin wrenching the country towards racial sanity.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist died in the meanwhile and was replaced by Chief Justice John Roberts; but Rehnquist was in the minority in this case. So assuming that Roberts is as opposed to "affirmative action" as Rehnquist was, this will result in no change. But the O'Connor retirement could lead to racial preferences moving from a 5-4 win to a 5-4 loss.

Seattle school administrators have wrestled for decades with the de facto segregation that tends to mirror the housing patterns of white, black and Asian families in the community. Students can pick among high schools. But since some schools have more applicants than they can handle, the district relies on tie-breakers, including whether a sibling attends a certain school, distance from a prospective student's home and race, to decide who gets into the over-subscribed schools. A group called Parents Involved in Community Schools sued in 2000, contending that it was unfair for the school district to consider race.

There are two cases here, and it could end up with another split decision (like Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger -- the latter involving U of M's undergraduate admissions, where the Court struck down racial preferences). The problem is that in the Kentucky case, there is an existing federal judicial order to desegregate:

The Kentucky case arises from a suit filed by Crystal Meredith, who contends that her son Joshua was not allowed into the neighborhood school because he is white. The Jefferson County school district has a history different from Seattle's, in that the Louisville schools operated for years under a federal order to desegregate. In 2001, the district began using a plan that includes racial guidelines. The plan was upheld by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

I have always argued that the way to combat official segregation is by the complete lack of segregation... not by segregating in the other direction. It's as unfair to the white Joshua Meredith that he's kept out a good school because he's white as it was to black kids during Jim Crow to be kept out of good schools because they weren't white.

But we'll see how the Court sees it. Keep your eyes on the prize....

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, June 5, 2006, at the time of 5:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

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