The Hispanic Vote
Blog post by John Feehery
May 28, 2009 @ 12:52 pm

Much has been said about the importance of the Hispanic vote.

Some Republican strategists say that for the GOP to be competitive in future presidential elections, they’ll have to capture about 40 percent of this fastest-growing minority group.
President George W. Bush, who spoke a bit of Spanish, had a strategy to reach out to Hispanic voters and actually hit that 40 percent number in the 2004 election.

But it has been a bad couple of years for the Republicans when it comes to the Hispanic vote.
As a Pew survey points out, “Some 57 percent of Hispanic registered voters now call themselves Democrats or say they lean to the Democratic Party, while just 23 percent align with the Republican Party — meaning there is now a 34-percentage-point gap in partisan affiliation among Latinos. In July 2006, the same gap measured just 21 percentage points — whereas back in 1999, it had been 33 percentage points.”

The debate over President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, may make that trend even more pronounced.

What has caused this collapse of Republican support in the Hispanic community?
According to surveys, hard-line opposition to illegal immigration is the big reason for the slide. Again, according to Pew, “By 41 percent to 14 percent, Hispanic registered voters say the Democrats rather than the Republicans are the party doing the better job of dealing with illegal immigration … Immigration has become a more important issue to Latinos since the last election. Some 79 percent of Hispanic registered voters now say it is an ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ important issue in the upcoming presidential race; up from 63 percent who said the same thing in June 2004.”

The Hispanic community is no monolith. Cubans vote differently than Mexicans. Dominicans have different concerns than Venezuelans. Puerto Ricans don’t have the same political impulses as Salvadorans.

But they all have a desire to be respected. They share a similar language. They all have come to America to help their families have a better life. But many of them have loved ones whom they have left back at home.

George Bush understood all of that. He looked at the Hispanic community as an opportunity to get votes, not as a threat to American independence. He viewed Hispanics as hardworking Americans worthy of respect. And as a result, he got a pretty big percentage of their votes.
Unfortunately, the party doesn’t seem to have President Bush's sensitivity to the Hispanic community. The immigration debate at times took on a racist undertone that turned off many potential voters in that community.

And now, we have Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, who seem to want to dig the hole deeper with this vital voting bloc.

Newt is done running for office and Rush has never run for office, so their comments are notable only in how destructive they are for the party. Keep in mind, it was Rush Limbaugh (and Lou Dobbs) who worked hard against an immigration bill that would have fixed our immigration laws and taken that issue off the table for the next election.

The irony in all of this is that it was the Democrats who pulled out all the stops when it came to stopping the first Hispanic Supreme Court nominee. Democrats wouldn’t allow Miguel Estrada to get a vote to become a judge on the D.C. Court of Appeals. They filibustered because they were afraid that Bush would then appoint him to the Supreme Court. It was an unbelievable and unconscionable decision by the Democrats, but somehow they got away with it.

It was Democrats who did nothing to pass an immigration bill in either the House or the Senate, despite President Bush’s best efforts to get something done. And Democrats have put immigration reform on the backburner for their agenda this year.

Democrats have used and abused their Hispanic supporters. Most Hispanics are pro-life. Democrats have a radical anti-life agenda. Most Hispanics are religious, while the Democrat Party is avowedly secular. Many Hispanics (Cubans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans) are strongly anti-communist, while the Democrats find anti-communism to be passé. Many Hispanics are small-business owners, but the Democrats want to tax small-business owners the hardest.
But Hispanics look beyond all of these issues and continue to flock to the Democrats, because they perceive that the GOP is a bunch of racists who don’t want to welcome them into the country, let alone into the party.

Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich haven’t helped change that perception in these opening days of the debate over Sonia Sotomayor. Senate Republicans, for the long-term good of the party, should strongly condemn incendiary language in the debate, and then vote her onto the Supreme Court. She is going to get in anyway. Let her get in with GOP support.

Another "Rabid" G.O.P. Operative ays the Price!!!

Women in McCain attack hoax sentenced
Bloomfield 'attack' was self-inflicted
Saturday, May 23, 2009
By Jim McKinnon, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A John McCain campaign volunteer yesterday was sentenced to nine months probation for lying about an alleged attack last year when she claimed a Barack Obama supporter assaulted her and scratched a backwards "B" on her face.
..........Ashley Todd

Ashley Todd, 21, of College Station, Texas, was approved for a program for first-time offenders after she pleaded guilty to filing false reports last Oct. 24.

She told police that she was attacked in Bloomfield by a tall black man who was upset that she had a John McCain bumper sticker on her car.
She said the man knocked her down, pinned her hands with his knees, and scrawled the backwards letter on her face.

Police doubted her story early in the investigation, and Ms. Todd later admitted it was made up.
A district judge, at the start of a preliminary hearing last November, ordered her to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. She then waived her right to have the hearing, in lieu of pleading guilty, to enter the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program. Participants who successfully complete terms of the program are eligible to have their public criminal records expunged.

"A lot of you are going to violate, no matter what I say," said Common Pleas Judge Robert C. Gallo, who presided over the hearings for Ms. Todd and the other first-time offenders.

In addition to the probation, the judge ordered Ms. Todd to perform 50 hours of community service within the next six months and to pay court costs.

Ms. Todd's claims of a politically motivated assault with some racial undertones garnered national media attention before the tale unraveled.

After the hoax, she was fired by the College Republican National Committee, which had her working as a field representative in Pittsburgh to the presidential election campaign last fall.

Yesterday, Ms. Todd ran down three flights of stairs at the courthouse to avoid the media. Unable to immediately find the exit, she and a male companion barged through the reporters while declining comment.

"I didn't have any [comment] before, and don't have any now," she said.

Read more: Click Here

Exclusive: Steele associates' pay spurs questions
Some call RNC salaries 'way out of line'
By Ralph Z. Hallow

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

When Michael S. Steele took over as chairman of the Republican National Committee earlier this year, he brought along longtime personal assistant Belinda Cook and gave her a salary nearly three times what her predecessor made.
Mrs. Cook's son, Lee, also landed an RNC job.
Mr. Steele hired another family friend, Angela Sailor, to be the party's outreach director at a salary of $180,000, more than double her predecessor's compensation, though new responsibilities have been added to the job, according to a high-ranking RNC official and Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.
Mr. Steele's early record and personnel decisions figure to be hot topics at a special meeting of Republican state party chairmen Tuesday and Wednesday at National Harbor in Washington's Maryland suburbs. His hiring of friends and the salaries he is paying them already helped to instigate a struggle over who controls the party's purse strings, one that forced the new party chairman to relinquish some control to elected RNC members.
"These salaries we hear about are way out of line for what staff should be paid for working for a political party, which most of us think of as a cause," said Hawaii Republican Party Chairman Willis Lee. "And if certain staff at the national committee are making that much, then the public understandably might think they are examples of cronyism."
RNC Communications Director Trevor Francis declined to address specifically questions about the salaries of Mrs. Cook and Ms. Sailor and the reasons for the increases.
"Salaries aren't secret, just something that we're not going to talk about outside of our [Federal Election Commission] filings," Mr. Francis said.
Mr. Steele could face other headaches at the special meeting as well, including a vote on a resolution he has publicly opposed: to ask the Democratic Party to rename itself "the Democrat Socialist Party." Two other less contentious resolutions - praising Republican lawmakers for opposing pet federal projects, government bailouts and heavy federal spending - also will be voted on.
But many complaints will focus on staff compensation. Some party officials have said that the salaries appear generous compared with those paid for similar positions under previous RNC head Robert M. "Mike" Duncan.
"When we are talking about paying someone three times what his predecessor made, it would be wise to make sure all 168 members of the national committee know who these people being hired are and what their qualifications are for being paid that much," Texas RNC member Cathie Adams said.
According to take-home-pay figures that the RNC filed with the FEC for March of this year, Mrs. Cook, Mr. Steele's personal assistant, earned $7,134.66 for the month, after withholding for federal and state taxes, which would amount to $85,615.92 over 12 months.
The person who held the same post under Mr. Duncan took home $2,436.74 monthly, or $29,240.88 over 12 months, FEC reports showed. The RNC official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to disclose the figures, said Mrs. Cooks salary before deductions is $125,000.
As for Lee Cook, he earned $3,251.77 in March, about $39,021.24 a year after taxes, according to the FEC.
The salary being paid to Ms. Sailor, a former White House aide, is $180,000 a year, according to the RNC official. That is $40,000 more than the $140,000 paid to Jan Larimer, the elected RNC co-chairman, the second-highest elective post in the party directly behind Mr. Steele, the official said.
Ms. Sailor's salary is also $97,000 more than the $83,000 Mr. Duncan paid to his outreach director, Shannon Reeves.
The RNC reported to the FEC in 2008 that Mr. Reeves' salary in May was $4,755.07, which would total $57,060.84 over 12 months. The FEC report lists Ms. Sailor's take-home pay as $8,557.59 for March, which would total $102,691.08 in yearly salary after taxes. The figures are lower than their actual salary because the party reports to the FEC the take-home pay after taxes.
Ms. Sailor's job has been upgraded from what the position was under Mr. Duncan, the RNC says.
"The Coalitions Department is a new RNC division created by Chairman Steele as part of his commitment to creating sustained communications with every constituency," the RNC announced in a recent statement. "The director of coalitions will work to recruit and support Republicans by targeting messages to identified publications, events and emerging issues in communities where the party has opportunities to grow."
Mr. Steele set an ambitious goal for the new coalitions department, saying it "will evaluate every outside constituent organization in the country at the local, state and national levels."
Under the "good governance" pact that he reluctantly agreed to last week, Mr. Steele will retain sole say over who is hired and at what salary at the RNC. State party leaders typically have both their staffs and salary scales approved by executive committees and by the larger state GOP central committees.
Mr. Steele has staunch defenders on the RNC - which is made up of three members from each of the 50 states and five territories - but a growing number of critics as well, some of whom say privately they expect a showdown with Mr. Steele at the special meeting.
Hawaii's Mr. Lee, who says he is not an enemy of the chairman's, is explicit about the need for sharing control of the party's purse strings.
"These types of salaries my friend Michael Steele is paying show why it is important for the protection of all of us to have a signed set of rules of good governance, and I am pleased that all the parties have agreed to have checks and balances in place to avoid any perception of impropriety," Mr. Lee said.
The "parties" he refers to are Mr. Steele and his top advisers on the one hand, and, on the other, Randy Pullen, the elected RNC treasurer; Blake Hall, the RNC general counsel; and three former RNC officers who co-sponsored the "good governance" resolution, which Mr. Steele said is a move to strip him of his rightful powers.
The three resolutions on the agenda will be debated and voted on in open session.
Before that, however, private negotiations are expected between conservatives and Steele supporters over the wording of the "socialist" resolution.
Not up for discussion or a vote is a resolution to limit Mr. Steele's control over the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars from donors across the nation. Mr. Steele agreed to abide by the essence of that resolution until it is debated and voted on at the regularly scheduled annual summer RNC meeting in July in San Diego.
Several of the party's "elders" are co-sponsors of the "good governnance" resolution, including Mr. Pullen, Mr. Hall and former RNC Budget Committee Chairman Ron Kaufman.
Mr. Steele is scheduled to address the National Harbor meeting Tuesday afternoon.

Only 63% of GOP Voters Now Say Party has no clear Leader

As the old political saying goes, you can’t beat somebody with nobody. But a plurality of national Republican voters still think nobody’s running the show for the GOP.
Still, it’s better than two months ago when 68% of Republican voters said the party had no clear leader.

Now only 37% of GOP voters feel that way.

Arizona Senator John McCain , last year’s unsuccessful presidential candidate who is already facing a primary challenge in 2010, is seen as the party’s leader by 18% of Republican voters.
National party chairman Michael Steele, who has been plagued with gaffes since taking the job, is next with 14% support. Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, McCain’s running mate, is seen as the GOP leader by 10%.

McCain and Steele were the top vote getters in March, with five percent (5%) each.
Next for Republican voters now is former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, another presidential hopeful from last year, who has eight percent (8%) support. He is followed by broadcaster Rush Limbaugh (6%) and former Vice President Dick Cheney (4%).
Among all voters, including Democrats and unaffiliated voters, 48% say the Republicans have no clear leader. Steele is the top named Republican, the choice of 15% of voters. McCain is next with 11%.

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of GOP voters say congressional Republicans have lost touch with the party’s base throughout the country.

Fifty percent (50%) of Arizona Republican voters say the same about McCain but don’t see him having much trouble beating his only announced opponent so far in next year’s GOP Senate Primary.

As Scott Rasmussen points out in a recent analysis, “To be relevant in politics, you need either formal power or a lot of people willing to follow your lead. The governing Republicans in the nation’s capital have lost both on their continuing path to irrelevance.”

Who is in charge in the GOP: Republicans see Their Party as Leaderless

Sixty-eight percent (68%) of Republican voters say their party has no clear leader, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Another 17% are undecided.

Just five percent (5%) view either John McCain, the GOP's unsuccessful 2008 presidential candidate, or new party chairman Michael Steele as the party's leader.

Two percent (2%) see conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh in that role, and one percent (1%) name McCain's running mate, Alaska Govenror Sarah Palin. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner are each seen as GOP leader by less than one-half of one percent.

Democrats have no question who's in charge. Two-thirds of the party's voters (66%) see President Barack Obama as their leader. Nobody else reaches even the five percent (5%) level.

Only 10% of Democrats say the party has no clear leader. Four percent (4%) say House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in charge, while two percent (2%) list longtime Massachusetts Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy and one percent name political comedian Jon Stewart. Sixteen percent (16%) of Democratic voters are not sure.

Democrats and unaffiliated voters agree on the leaderless GOP. Eighty-six percent (86%) of Democrats say the Republicans have no clear leader or that they're not sure who's in charge. Eighty-eight percent (88%) of unaffiliated voters agree.

Democrats are more likely to see Rush Limbaugh as the GOP leader: Seven percent (7%) of those in Obama’s party hold that view.

Republicans and unaffiliated voters are not as sure that Obama is the Democratic Party leader.

Just 41% of unaffiliated voters see Obama as party chief, along with 35% of Republicans.

Among unaffiliated voters, 24% say there is no clear leader of the Democratic Party, 21% are not sure, and 10% see Pelosi as the real leader of the party.

Among Republicans, a plurality (37%) say there is no clear Democratic Party leader. Sixteen percent (16%) of the GOP faithful are not sure who leads the Democrats, and nine percent (9%) say Pelosi is the boss.

Last week, Rasmussen Reports found that just 11% of Republicans agreed with the statement “Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party. He says jump, and they say how high.” This was a comment made by Brad Woodhouse, president of an advocacy group running national television ads linking Limbaugh to the Republican Party. His comment came at the same time that top White House officials were saying Limbaugh is the leader of the GOP.

Some pundits, however, wondered if the harsh nature of the quote might have diminished the apparent support for Limbaugh as party leader. In the current survey, we simply asked if Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party. The different wording had virtually no impact on the GOP responses: Only 10% said yes.

However, the different wording had a significant impact on Democrats who were evenly divided over the question when it included the second sentence, “He says jump, and they say how high.” When asked straight out if Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party, only 21% said yes and 60% said no. Among unaffiliated voters, just nine percent (9%) see Limbaugh as the GOP leader and 77% do not.

Texas Governor's Primary A Toss-Up
Thursday, May 07, 2009

Texas Governor Rick Perry and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison find themselves essentially tied in an early look at their 2010 Primary battle.
The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey shows Perry attracting 42% of the vote while Hutchison earns 38%. Seven percent (7%) say they’d like to vote for somebody else and 13% are undecided.
Perry leads by 15 percentage points among conservative voters but Hutchison leads by 35 points among the moderates.
Favorability ratings for the two candidates are virtually even among Likely Republican Primary Voters. Perry is viewed Very Favorably by 26% and Very Unfavorably by 9%. The comparable numbers for Hutchison are 27% and 10%.
Twenty-five percent (25%) Strongly Approve of the way that Perry has performed his job as Governor while 10% Strongly Disapprove.
These numbers suggest that the Governor’s race is wide open with neither candidate holding a commanding position. This is the first Rasmussen Reports poll of the race. Earlier in the year, other polls had shown Hutchison with a significant lead.
In 2006, Perry won re-election with just 39% of the vote while Democrat Chris Bell earned 30%. Carole Keeton Strayhorn left the Republican Party to run as an Independent in the race and picked up 18% of the vote. Comedian Richard 'Kinky' Friedman also ran as an Independent and attracted support from 12%.
While attending a “Tea Party” protest last month, Perry seemed to suggest that secession was something Texas might consider in the future. He later backed away from those comments. Seventy-five percent (75%) of Texas voters said they would vote to stay in the USA.[LINK]

69% of GOP Voters Say Republicans in Congress Out of Touch With The Party Base

Just 21% of GOP voters believe Republicans in Congress have done a good job representing their own party’s values, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Sixty-nine percent (69%) say congressional Republicans have lost touch with GOP voters throughout the nation. These findings are virtually unchanged from a survey just after Election Day.
Among all voters, 73% say Republicans in Congress have lost touch with the GOP base.
Seventy-two percent (72%) of Republicans say it is more important for the GOP to stand for what it believes in than for the party to work with President Obama. Twenty-two percent (22%) want their party to work with the President more.
Not surprisingly 72% of Democrats say it is more important for the Republican Party to work with Obama, but 54% of unaffiliated voters hold the opposite view.
“To be relevant in politics, you need either formal power or a lot of people willing to follow your lead. The governing Republicans in the nation’s capital have lost both on their continuing path to irrelevance,” Scott Rasmussen says in an analysis this week.
Please sign up for the Rasmussen Reports daily e-mail update (it's free). let us keep you up to date with the latest public opinion news.
Party officials and pundits have been debating for months what direction Republicans should take following Obama’s election and sizable Democratic gains in both houses of Congress. Some argue that the party should move in the direction of the Democrats on issues, while others say the GOP has been hurt by abandoning its core conservative economic and social positions.
The debate flared up again this week with longtime Republican Senator Arlen Specter’s decision to become a Democrat out of fear he would lose his own party’s primary to a conservative challenger next year. Fifty-one percent (51%) of Republican voters say the Pennsylvania senator’s switch will have a significant impact on the laws passed by the Senate.
Voters for the first time since the election now say congressional Republicans are as partisan as their Democratic counterparts. Up till now, Democrats in Congress have been seen as governing in a more partisan fashion than Republicans. Fifty-five percent (55%) now expect politics in Washington, D.C., to be more partisan over the next year.
At the end of April, for just the second time in more than five years of tracking, Republicans led Democrats in the Generic Congressional Ballot. Forty-one percent (41%) said they would vote for their district’s Republican candidate while 38% would choose the Democrat.
In January, 56% of all voters said the Republican Party should return to the views and values of President Ronald Reagan to be successful. Eighty-five percent (85%) of Republican voters agreed.