Latinos Are Becoming Citizens For The Chance To Vote Against Donald Trump

Donald Trump is motivating people! The problem for Republicans is that he's motivating them to become citizens so they can vote against him and, potentially, other Republicans.

Latino Vote T-Shirts

The New York Times reports that Latinos who have been happy to maintain their status as legal resident aliens for some time are taking the steps necessary to become citizens, and that many of them are apparently motivated to do o by the chance to vote against Donald Trump:

Donald J. Trump’s harsh campaign rhetoric against Mexican immigrants has helped him win a substantial delegate lead in the Republican primary, but it is also mobilizing a different set of likely voters — six of them alone in the family of Hortensia Villegas.

A legal immigrant from Mexico, Ms. Villegas is a mother of two who has been living in the United States for nearly a decade but never felt compelled to become a citizen. But as Mr. Trump has surged toward the Republican nomination, Ms. Villegas — along with her sister, her parents and her husband’s parents — has joined a rush by many Latino immigrants to naturalize in time to vote in November.

“I want to vote so Donald Trump won’t win,” said Ms. Villegas, 32, one of several hundred legal residents, mostly Mexicans, who crowded one recent Saturday into a Denver union hall. Volunteers helped them fill out applications for citizenship, which this year are taking about five months for federal officials to approve. “He doesn’t like us,” she said

Over all, naturalization applications increased by 11 percent in the 2015 fiscal year over the year before, and jumped 14 percent during the six months ending in January, according to federal figures. The pace is picking up by the week, advocates say, and they estimate applications could approach 1 million in 2016, about 200,000 more than the average in recent years.

While naturalizations generally rise during presidential election years, Mr. Trump provided an extra boost this year. He kicked off his campaign in June describing Mexicans as drug-traffickers and rapists. His pledge to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it has been a regular applause line. He has vowed to create a deportation force to expel the estimated 11 million immigrants here illegally, evoking mass roundups of the 1950s.

Among 8.8 million legal residents eligible to naturalize, about 2.7 million are Mexicans, the largest national group, federal figures show. But after decades of low naturalization rates, only 36 percent of eligible Mexicans have become citizens, while 68 percent of all other immigrants have done so, according to the Pew Research Center.

“A lot of people are opening their eyes because of all the negative stuff Donald Trump has brought,” said Ms. Villegas’s husband, Miguel Garfío, 30, who was born and raised in Colorado and came to the workshop here to help his wife and other family members become citizens this year. His parents came from Mexico in the 1980s and worked hard all their lives, he said, helping him create a construction company in Denver that now employs 18 people. Contrary to Mr. Trump’s depiction, he said, none of his relatives have criminal records.

This year immigrants seeking to become citizens can find extra help from nonprofit groups and even from the White House. Last September, President Obama launched a national campaign to galvanize legal residents to take the step. They can now pay the fee, $680, with a credit card, and practice the civics test online. They can get applications at “citizenship corners” in public libraries in many states.

The White House recruited Fernando Valenzuela, the legendary Mexican-born pitcher who naturalized only last year, and José Andrés, the Spanish-American chef, to make encouraging advertisements and to turn up at swearing-in ceremonies. On Presidents’ Day, administration officials swore in more than 20,000 new citizens. On Wednesday the administration announced $10 million in grants to groups guiding immigrants through the process.

The majority of Latinos are Democrats, and some Republicans accuse the White House of leading a thinly veiled effort to expand the ranks of the president’s party. But administration officials argue the campaign is nonpartisan, noting that immigrants who become citizens improve their incomes and chances for homeownership.

“I certainly don’t care what party they register with, I just want them to become citizens,” said Leon Rodriguez, director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency in charge of naturalizations.

Aside from Colorado, naturalization drives are taking place in Nevada and Florida, states likely to be fiercely contested in November where Latino voters could provide a crucial margin. One nonprofit group, the New Americans Campaign, plans to complete 1,500 applications at a session in Marlins Park baseball stadium in Miami on March 19.

Among the groups the White House is supporting are immigrant rights organizations and labor unions, which say their goal in holding dozens of citizenship workshops this spring is to build immigrant voting power. They want to boost support for legislation creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, which Mr. Obama has long promised but has never been able to push through Congress. Recently naturalized immigrants, after all the effort they must make, are more likely to vote than longtime citizens.

“People who are eligible are really feeling the urgency to get out there,” said Tara Raghuveer, deputy director of the National Partnership for New Americans, a coalition that helped put on the workshop in Denver. “They are worried by the prospect that someone who is running for president has said hateful things.”

Mr. Trump says he is confident his immigration plans will not hurt him among Latinos, because he has employed many thousands of them over the years in his hotels and other properties.

“They’re incredible people,” he said in the Republican debate in Houston on February 26. “I’m just telling you that I will do really well with Hispanics.”

But in a poll of Latino voters on Feb. 25 by the Washington Post and Univision, the Spanish language television network, 80 percent had an unfavorable view of Mr. Trump, including 72 percent with a very unfavorable view, far more than for other Republican candidates. In the poll, 74 percent of the voters said Mr. Trump’s views on immigration were “offensive.”

It’s impossible to say, of course, that Donald Trump, his position on immigration, and his comments about Mexicans and other immigrants are necessarily solely responsible for the increase in citizenship applications and many of the tales related by the Times are purely anecdotal, there does seem to be some correlation between the increase and the controversies that Donald Trump has unleashed over the eight months that he’s been a candidate for President. One reason for this may be the fact that Trump and his anti-immigrant rhetoric have been a very frequent topic in the news and other talk programming on both Telemundo and Univision, the principal Spanish-language television networks in the United States, as well a on Spanish language radio stations. The Trump campaign’s rhetoric, including his promise to build a border wall that Mexico will pay for, most notably from former Mexican President Vinencte Fox as well as current Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto who has recently commented that Trump’s rhetoric threatens to harm America’s relationship with Mexico. Given the fact that Trump has announced support for policies that would discriminate against Mexicans and other Latinos as well as threaten the entire structure of the two decade old North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, it’s not surprising that Mexican government officials would react this way and that it would have an impact on Mexicans living in the United States legally who have not taken the final steps toward citizenship.

Leaving aside the issue of the citizenship application surge, the issue that this all ultimately raises is what impact this will have on the Latino vote overall in the 2016 election. After seeing Latino’s support George W. Bush in record numbers in 2004, with 44% of Latinos voting for the incumbent Republican in that election, Republicans saw their party’s support among this growing demographic block fall to 31% in 2008, and then fall even further to 27% in the 2012 elections. Given the extent to which Trump has pushed Republican rhetoric on immigration and other issues of concern to Latino voters even further to the right than they were in 2012, it seems probable that the GOP share of the Latino vote will be even lower this year than it was four years ago, a prospect which makes winning the states the GOP needs to win to get to 270 Electoral Votes even more difficult than it already appears to be. Perhaps the only chance the GOP has to avoid that fate would be to nominate someone like Marco Rubio who has actually tried to reach out to Latino communities, but even Rubio has been forced by the GOP base to renounce his support for common sense immigration reform and compete with Ted Cruz and others for the title of who would deport people faster. Given that, even if Rubio could get beyond the fact that he has demonstrated a singular inability to win any primary of consequence to date, it’s unclear that he would change the GOP’s fate with Latino voters very much at all.

What all this suggests, of course, is that the Trump campaign is likely to have caused irreparable damage to the GOP in the minds of Latino voters, and if that’s true then Republicans could find themselves having increasingly difficult election problems not just in 2016 but in the years that follow.

FILED UNDER: 2016 Election, Borders and Immigration, Race and Politics, US Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. Mu says:

    As the process takes a year I hope they decided on their application early on in the election cycle.

  2. MBunge says:

    The damage may not be too long lasting because I don’t think Latinos will allow the Democrats to take them for granted as African-Americans have.

    Of course, the GOP may not last long enough to take advantage of that.

    Mike

  3. Barry says:

    Doug: “What all this suggests, of course, is that the Trump campaign is likely to have caused irreparable damage to the GOP in the minds of Latino voters, and if that’s true then Republicans could find themselves having increasingly difficult election problems not just in 2016 but in the years that follow.”

    From your lips to God’s ear.

    I remember seeing a similar article in ‘The New Republic’, about the surge in naturalization and voter registration among Latinos in California during Prop 187. That caused California to go Dem from then onward, hopefully forever.

    With any luck, this will flip a couple of more states.

  4. Pch101 says:

    Former California Republican governor Pete Wilson, with his various anti-Hispanic measures, helped to turn California into a blue state. The Democrats owe him a thank you.

  5. Barry says:

    @MBunge: “The damage may not be too long lasting because I don’t think Latinos will allow the Democrats to take them for granted as African-Americans have.”

    What part of ‘the GOP hates them and wants to hurt them’ do you not understand?

  6. Barry says:

    @Mu: “As the process takes a year I hope they decided on their application early on in the election cycle.”

    There’s also voter registration and voting for those already naturalized.

    And, of course, conversion – every person who switches from the GOP to the Democratic Party is a net shift of two.

    I wonder how much lower than 27% we can take them?

  7. MBunge says:

    @Barry:

    When’s the last time Democrats paid more than lip service to African-Americans? Granted, that’s still a lot more than Republicans do but Latinos are growing to be a big and powerful enough group that “the Republicans hate you” isn’t going to be all it takes to get their votes.

    Mike

  8. Barry says:

    @MBunge: “When’s the last time Democrats paid more than lip service to African-Americans? ”

    Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhht

  9. An Interested Party says:

    When’s the last time Democrats paid more than lip service to African-Americans?

    So you’re saying that blacks allow themselves to be treated shabbily with no repercussions…

  10. Mikey says:

    @Mu: As the process takes a year I hope they decided on their application early on in the election cycle.

    The NYT article Doug excerpted says it’s five months right now.

  11. Just 'nutha ig'rant cracker says:

    I’m sure that not all of the motivation is to vote against Trump. I’m sure that a fair amount of it is to vote against Ted Cruz, too.

  12. Anonne says:

    I see MBunge’s point – the Democratic Party doesn’t have an animus against blacks, but hasn’t actually done anything specifically to help their situation in decades. Democrats have been complicit in the War on Drugs, in welfare reform, in trade agreements that shipped jobs overseas. This is why Black Lives Matter isn’t necessarily endorsing Hillary Clinton. Although the economic prosperity that came in the 90s was a boon that lifted many blacks up, it wasn’t anything like reparations specifically for blacks. But then, that was before the free trade agreements really started kicking in and kicking jobs in the pants. The only reason blacks are a reliable voting bloc for Democrats is because the Democrats at least try to be inclusive, whereas the Republicans have been selling coded racism for decades.

  13. Bob@Youngstown says:

    According to Customs and Immigration Service – process takes about six months after application filed

  14. MarkedMan says:

    Can anyone get my comment out of Spam h*ll?

  15. grumpy realist says:

    @Anonne: It’s not just coded racism. How many Republicans have jumped on the Birther movement, or called President Obama “the Affirmative-Action President”, or sent around that picture with watermelons on the front lawn of the White House?

    The number of people who call him a “far-left” politician is amazing as well.

  16. SenyorDave says:

    @grumpy realist: Its just an attitude that was prevalent from Day One of his presidency. To many in the GOP, Obama was simply not legitimate in their eyes. They switched narratives many times. They sneered that he was a community organizer in Chicago. When that didn’t work, they started with the affirmative action president, but he showed that he was a smart guy. Then they struck gold with the birther thing, and that played very well with the much of the base. They tried the anti-colonialist angle, but even for the Republican base that was too nonsensical (after all, is it better to be pro-colonialist?.

    As far as calling him a far-left politician, I think the way the Republicans use that label is meaningless, especially taking into consideration where their party is on the ideological spectrum.

    Bottom line is for many in the party Obama is the “other” because he is, as Rick Santorum would put it, one of the blahs. Or maybe McCain exemplified the Republican attitude towards Obama best when he Referred to him as “this one”.

  17. al-Ameda says:

    @MBunge:

    The damage may not be too long lasting because I don’t think Latinos will allow the Democrats to take them for granted as African-Americans have.

    Well, that is a common talking point among Republicans who assert that Blacks are voting against their self-interest by voting for Democratic Party candidates.

    Why is it that Black voters apparently do not understand that it is not in their interest to vote for Democratic Party candidates?

    It is especially hard to understand when only the vast majority of Democratic Party candidates and representatives happen to support civil and voting rights laws, who favor judges and justices who support laws that address unfair and unequal treatment of Black citizens in our justice system, increased funding for education at all opportunities, increased financial assistance and grants for admission to colleges? Why would Black voters support Democratic politicians who advocate for those kind of policies versus Republican politicians who do NOT? And it’s surely not job creation, which is more problematic for Republicans than for Democrats – Republicans have consistently favored policies that are hostile to organized labor, advocated austerity-based policies in the face of a catastrophic recession.

    What should Democrats have done for the Black community, what have Democrats ignored?

  18. gVOR08 says:

    @SenyorDave:

    They tried the anti-colonialist angle

    I found that revealing. Obama’s agenda has been pretty much:
    – Keynesian stimulus to fight the recession
    – save the auto industry from collapsing
    – universal health insurance
    – end the Iraq and Afghan wars (proved hard)
    – not start new wars
    – not torture prisoners
    – raise taxes a little
    – try diplomacy rather than war with Iraq

    Dinesh D’Souza found all of this so baffling that the only possible explanation was somehow genetically inherited anti-British colonialism.Obama is pragmatically acting in the best interests of the country. Apparently conservatives find this incomprehensible.

  19. DrDaveT says:

    @gVOR08:

    Obama is pragmatically acting in the best interests of the country. Apparently conservatives find this incomprehensible.

    Explain it to them as “greedily scheming to maximize his reputation with the historians of the future”.

  20. Pch101 says:

    Under Democratic presidents, the incomes of black families grew by an average of $895 a year, but only by $142 a year under Republicans. Across 26 years of Democratic leadership, unemployment among blacks declined by 7.9%; under 28 years of Republican presidencies, the rate increased by a net of 13.7%. Similarly, the black poverty rate fell by 23.6% under Democratic presidents and rose by 3% under Republicans.

    The results for Latinos and Asians, though based on fewer years of data, show the same pattern. For example, Latino incomes grew an average of $627 a year under Democrats and fell by $197 a year under Republicans. The data similarly show that the living standards of Asian Americans have improved under Democrats and stagnated under Republicans.

    http://articles.latimes.com/2012/dec/03/opinion/la-oe-hajnal-democrats-benefit-minorities-20121203

    If someone can figure out a good reason to vote for Republicans, then I’d like to hear it.

  21. stonetools says:

    So racist presidential campaigns have consequences…
    Trump is actually helping to speed the assimilation of Latinos. Irony abounds!
    You might see latinos and maybe Asians become as solid for Democrats this cycle as blacks. Also too, you might see the Southwest begin ton turn blue.
    Hillary might seal the deal for Latinos by appointing Julian Castro as VP, although I think that’s unlikely. Either way, the Republicans are digging themselves a hole…

  22. Pch101 says:

    @stonetools:

    It’s a variation of the tragedy of the commons. It’s good for individual GOP candidates today to play to the bigots, particularly in House races thanks to our district-based representation, even if it’s bad for the long-term brand equity of the party as a whole.

    Then again, political parties can reinvent themselves. The Democrats went from being the party of Jim Crow to the party of civil rights within a relatively short time; perhaps the GOP can eventually shift gears when it serves its broader interests to do so.

  23. gVOR08 says:

    @Pch101:

    If someone can figure out a good reason to vote for Republicans, then I’d like to hear it.

    Me too. I’ll upvote again when I get home.

    Correlation is not causation, but enough correlation is damn suspicious.

  24. SenyorDave says:

    @Pch101: Then again, political parties can reinvent themselves. The Democrats went from being the party of Jim Crow to the party of civil rights within a relatively short time; perhaps the GOP can eventually shift gears when it serves its broader interests to do so.

    I know I’m biased since the Republicans have been pretty far out there for most of my adult life, but Jim Crow was pretty regional for Democrats. That certainly doesn’t excuse it, but the lunacy of the current Republican party seems pretty broad-based. Pick a region, and its not hard to find a wingnut, and for some states the entire party seems insane (Kansas, Oklahoma, most of the deep south are a few examples). As long as Fox news and talk radio have the propaganda machine going, I don’t see how it changes. Especially Fox news, because Roger Ailes runs things over there, and from what I’ve read Roger has some pretty deep-seated negative feelings about minorities (and I think that has a lot to do with how Fox treats Obama. When a Fox news personality such as Eric Bolling references an African leader as one of Obama’s “homeys” on air, he ends with a promotion instead of a reprimand).

  25. Jenos Idanian says:

    Yeah, those GOP racists. While the Democrats are celebrating diversity by recruiting their candidates from the Old White Folks Retirement Home, half the remaining GOP candidates are first-generation Americans of Latino extraction.

    And it’s remarkable how fast the immigration process can go when the prospective citizens are likely to vote for the president’s political party…

  26. Pch101 says:

    @SenyorDave:

    Political parties are ultimately consumer products, and they have to either adapt or die.

    At its core, the GOP is the industrialists party. When demographic changes eventually make the Southern Strategy less useful, then there will be reasons for there to be some sort of shift.

    Whether or not that shift happens is another matter, but we’ve essentially had the same two parties since the mid-1800s because the parties were able to adapt to changing conditions. However, it will probably take decades for the next shift to occur, as these population blocs are pretty solid and demographics aren’t changing rapidly enough to encourage much change beyond the bounds of the occasional “autopsy report.”

  27. DrDaveT says:

    @SenyorDave:

    Jim Crow was pretty regional for Democrats. That certainly doesn’t excuse it, but the lunacy of the current Republican party seems pretty broad-based.

    You came close to answering your own question here. It’s still ‘regional’, but the regions are not based on physical proximity. Geography is so 19th-century.

    The new regions are demographic — urban vs. rural predominantly, but also ethnic, religious, and occupational divides. In the same way that the internet and cable TV make us all neighbors, they enable self-selected association into “regions” of the demographic space.

    The nuttiest wing of the Republican Party is a pretty distinct region in that space. It’s a shrinking region, which is both good in the long run and the cause for its agitation in the short run. Unfortunately, there are places where the correlation between geography and demographics is still high enough that it translates to a disproportionate number of seats in the Senate.

  28. Electroman says:

    @SenyorDave: Jim Crow was pretty regional for Democrats.

    Only in a very literal sense. It’s true that there were no Jim Crow laws in, for example, Wisconsin. However, if you went to the beach, there were “white beaches” and “black beaches”. No, there weren’t any signs; they weren’t necessary – the skin color of the people there were all you needed to see.

    If you were black and went to a white beach the police wouldn’t arrest you – but they also wouldn’t arrest the bigoted white thugs who beat you up.

  29. Pete S says:

    @Jenos Idanian: I don’t think most reasonable people are saying the GOP is completely racist. But the “Old White Folks” (your term, not mine) candidate who spouts racist nonsense has locked up about as many delegates as the two candidates with Latino backgrounds combined. Its almost like there is more to successful race relations than the ethnicity of some of your candidates….

  30. SenyorDave says:

    @Electroman: I agree there were de facto Jim Crow rules in much of the country, but they weren’t rule of law.. My dad was born in NYC in 1923, and when his parents had a candy store near the Polo Grounds in the mid 1930’s, there was virtually no chance that a black person was going to come into their store. Any black in their neighborhood would have been harassed (verbally and physically, especially by the police) and shown the error of their ways for being outside where “they belong”. The difference was largely in magnitude. My dad went to Biloxi, MS in 1948 for the springs (he was a severe asthmatic) and he and his best friend were stunned at the general attitude by whites toward blacks. It was like they were considered subhuman. They stayed in a hotel and the person at the front desk told them that he’d get a “n*****” too take their bags up to the room.

    He went to high school in NYC and blacks attended the same schools. They rode in the same buses and subways and there were no special seating arrangements. There were lots of police who were racist thugs, but not all of them. And by the 1950’s things were starting to change in many areas, but as we all know, the south was only getting more entrenched.

  31. al-Ameda says:

    @Jenos Idanian:

    And it’s remarkable how fast the immigration process can go when the prospective citizens are likely to vote for the president’s political party…

    And it’s remarkable that both Hillary and Bernie are more liberal on immigration than the two – a Cuban-Canadian-American and a Cuban-American – GOP candidates who are “first-generation Americans of Latino extraction,” right? Why is that?

  32. Davebo says:

    Why is that?

    Well aside from the obvious reason, the base supports it, there’s the other obvious reason. Cuban-American.

    Because as well all know Cubans are “special” immigrants and treated as such.

  33. Jenos Idanian says:

    @al-Ameda: And it’s remarkable that both Hillary and Bernie are more liberal on immigration than the two – a Cuban-Canadian-American and a Cuban-American – GOP candidates who are “first-generation Americans of Latino extraction,” right? Why is that?

    I have a couple of theories, nothing I can substantiate. One is that their parents came here legally, and they think others ought to do the same. Another is that they resent being told that because of their ethnic identity, they owe some kind of loyalty to a particular ideology. Yet another is that they resent people who lump their parents and others who came here legally with those who came here illegally, like people who wait in line get pissed a line-jumpers and line-cutters.

    Conservatives who also belong to minority groups tend to get a special kind of hatred from a lot on the left. People like Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Ben Carson, Michael Steele, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Milo Yiannopoulos, Herman Cain, Mia Love, Michelle Malkin, Thomas Sowell, Nikki Haley, Allen West… and that’s just a few off the top of my head.

    My theory there is that there are a lot of liberals who have a “plantation minority” towards these groups. They figure that since they see themselves as the champions of the minorities, then they have some kind of claim to their political loyalty. And when members of those minorities express themselves as conservatives, they feel a sense of betrayal and call them things like traitors and deniers of their identity.

    One would think they would celebrate these people asserting their right to choose and hold whatever beliefs they wish, even when they choose to put other principles ahead of race, gender, sexuality, or other forms of identity… but they don’t.

  34. An Interested Party says:

    Yeah, those GOP racists. While the Democrats are celebrating diversity by recruiting their candidates from the Old White Folks Retirement Home, half the remaining GOP candidates are first-generation Americans of Latino extraction.

    Oh please, two token Hispanic candidates do not make a diverse political party…rather, Democratic voters make a diverse political party…

    Conservatives who also belong to minority groups tend to get a special kind of hatred from a lot on the left.

    When we have a raging hypocrite like Clarence Thomas, who benefited from affirmative action and then turned against it for others, well, that shouldn’t inspire love and admiration…

  35. Jenos Idanian says:

    @An Interested Party: Cruz has a hell of a lot more going for him than his ethnicity. Hillary’s main argument seems to be “vote for my ladyparts.”

  36. DrDaveT says:

    @Jenos Idanian:

    Cruz has a hell of a lot more going for him than his ethnicity.

    Oh please, do enumerate — that should be entertaining.

  37. An Interested Party says:

    Cruz has a hell of a lot more going for him than his ethnicity.

    Oh absolutely, particularly to the religiously deranged…

    Hillary’s main argument seems to be “vote for my ladyparts.”

    Not really, but it figures that would be your main takeaway…

  38. Barry says:

    @Jenos Idanian: “My theory there is that there are a lot of liberals who have a “plantation minority” towards these groups. ”

    The only people who have a ‘plantation’ fixation are the right-wingers who can’t stop using that word.

  39. Barry says:

    @Jenos Idanian: Aside from the fact that you’re wrong on all counts, I note that Cruz has how many of his colleagues supporting him?

  40. Jenos Idanian says:

    Cruz has argued and won cases before the Supreme Court, on matters of real substance. He was a major player in the Heller case, just for one.

    Hillary’s accomplishments? As Bill’s wife, she headed up the efforts to discredit and destroy all those women who wanted to talk about their relations with Bill. As Senator, she voted for the Iraq war. As Secretary of State, she oversaw our relations with Russia, and our involvement in the messes in Syria and Libya, among other wonderful feats.

    There’s a wonderful meme floating around. It features Hillary Clinton. The caption: “I’m filthy rich. I’m white. I’m nominally Christian. I get huge donations from big corporations. I voted for the Iraq War. I am everything liberals hate, and yet I am the one they want.”

    That’s your candidate, bubeleh.

  41. Jenos Idanian says:

    @Barry: Aside from the fact that you’re wrong on all counts, I note that Cruz has how many of his colleagues supporting him?

    It’s cute that you think that’s a weakness for Cruz. Or, if you like, “that’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”

  42. An Interested Party says:

    Cruz has argued and won cases before the Supreme Court, on matters of real substance. He was a major player in the Heller case, just for one.

    Oh my, how impressive! It’s such a shame that he’s not going to get anywhere near the White House…

  43. Pch101 says:

    I asked whether someone could figure out whether there is a good reason to vote for Republicans, and Jenos shows up to prove that there isn’t.

  44. Grewgills says:

    @Jenos Idanian:

    I have a couple of theories, nothing I can substantiate. One is that their parents came here legally, and they think others ought to do the same.

    You do realize that a Mexican and a Cuban can come here exactly the same way and one of them will be legal and the other illegal don’t you? That more than anything is why Cubans feel differently about immigration than other Latin American and Hispanic groups. Privilege breeds condescension.

  45. Jenos Idanian says:

    @An Interested Party: Oh my, how impressive! It’s such a shame that he’s not going to get anywhere near the White House…

    Yeah, especially since Cruz has a major criminal investigation hanging over his head, on top of everything else…

    Oh, yeah, that’s not Cruz, that’s your candidate.

  46. Andre Kenji says:

    As I pointed out, culturally speaking, Marco Rubio is a Hispanic that can strike a chord with other Hispanics. He speaks very comfortable Spanish(His Spanish is better than my English) and he understands Latino Culture.

    But he is running for the Republican party nomination, so, he basically downplays that he is a Hispanic. He can´t defend immigration reform, he can´t even go to the Our Lady of Guadalupe Sanctuary.

    Besides that, he is losing badly for the guy that wants to build the Great Wall of Arizona and make Mexico pay for it.

  47. Grumpy Realist says:

    @Jenos Idanian: so is yours. But I guess you never heard of a little thing called Trump University?

    I may also point out that at least one of the cases Cruz ended up arguing before SCOTUS was because he was the guy who had screwed everything up. That’s not something to boast about–that you misapply the rules on sentencing and refuse to admit wrong. That’s why the case ended up in front of SCOTUS–because Cruz didn’t have the integrity and balls to admit that he had done wrong.

    I don’t want a POTUS whose ego is more important than reality.

  48. An Interested Party says:

    Yeah, especially since Cruz has a major criminal investigation hanging over his head, on top of everything else…

    Another shame that this “major criminal” investigation isn’t going to go anywhere either, just like Cruz…

  49. Jenos Idanian says:

    @Grumpy Realist: I don’t want a POTUS whose ego is more important than reality.

    Hillary set up her private e-mail server so she could conduct her business without being bothered by Congressional oversight or FOIA requests, and a good chunk of her business was some really profitable quid pro quos for the Clinton Foundation. But in doing this, she put a shit-ton of classified and sensitive information where it could be (and was) hacked and shared with our nation’s enemies.

    She put her own interests ahead of the nation’s while serving as our nation’s chief diplomat. That sounds a hell of a lot like putting her own ego ahead of reality.

  50. Jenos Idanian says:

    @An Interested Party: Another shame that this “major criminal” investigation isn’t going to go anywhere either

    Her former top aide at the State Department was just given immunity to testify. He’s the guy who set up that server for her.

    BTW, he didn’t report any income for doing that, so he can’t say that he was moonlighting when he did it. That says that setting it up was part of his official duties at the State Department.

    He can also testify about what Hillary told him about why she wanted it in the first place. She’s said that it was a “mistake,” but never offered a plausible reason why she thought it was a good idea in the first place. She’s offered a few excuses, but they’ve all been exposed as lies. (Didn’t want to have more than one mail account — she had at least two; didn’t want to use more than one device — she had at least three.)

    So we resort to the simplest and most plausible explanation: she wanted to conduct her business without being subject to Congressional oversight and FOIA and document retention laws. She put her personal political security ahead of national security.

    And what was her business? Trading favors at State for big donations to the Clinton Foundation.

  51. An Interested Party says:

    And what was her business? Trading favors at State for big donations to the Clinton Foundation.

    Oh look at you, little Mr. Detective…good luck with the investigation…

  52. grumpy realist says:

    @Jenos Idanian: You do like quoting from far-right sites, don’t you?

    Now explain why the same accusation shouldn’t be made against Colin Powell and Jeb Bush. Who did the same stuff.

    Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.

  53. Jenos Idanian says:

    @grumpy realist: Now explain why the same accusation shouldn’t be made against Colin Powell and Jeb Bush. Who did the same stuff.

    Both Powell and Bush had a government employee set up a private e-mail server for them? And lied repeatedly about how many accounts they had? And had it hacked by foreigners?

    Do tell.

  54. Jenos Idanian says:

    @Grewgills: You do realize that a Mexican and a Cuban can come here exactly the same way and one of them will be legal and the other illegal don’t you? That more than anything is why Cubans feel differently about immigration than other Latin American and Hispanic groups. Privilege breeds condescension.

    Since you’re putting yourself forth on Hispanics, why don’t you go down this list and tell us who on that list is Hispanic enough, and who isn’t. And please detail your criteria for making such recommendations.

  55. Jenos Idanian says:

    @Jenos Idanian: Crap, forgot the link. This list.

  56. Pch101 says:

    Yes, it’s shocking that the party that keeps talking about deporting Hispanics and the evils of immigration “amnesty” for Hispanics is unpopular among Hispanics.

    Yes, it’s equally shocking that the Cuban-American Hispanic subgroup that is in the exact opposite position and sees itself as being culturally superior to other Hispanics feels somewhat differently.

  57. Grewgills says:

    @Jenos Idanian:
    Another straw man. Jesus you can be tiring with your constant redirection whenever you are confronted with inconvenient facts.
    Now why don’t you point me to where I claimed anything about the Hispanicness or Latinoness of anyone? You will not and cannot, because I did not. You simply want to try to play some sort of shell game to distract from why Cuban Americans feel differently about immigration than other Hispanic and Latino Americans. It is beyond boring. Please try to honestly engage with the actual arguments put forth by other commenters or just stop.

  58. rachel says:

    @Grewgills:

    Please try to honestly engage with the actual arguments put forth by other commenters or just stop.

    You know he’s not–not until President Hillary Clinton is sworn in. I expect not to hear from him any more after his head explodes like that guy in Scanners.

  59. Jenos Idanian says:

    @Grewgills: I have multiple arguments, and don’t devote myself full time to this site.

    On the economic front, the idea that illegal aliens pay taxes that they never file about may be a net gain for the US government, but it creates headaches for those people whose identities they steal.

    Imagine that audit letter. “Dear Mr. Gills. We’d like to discuss your tax return for 2015. Specifically, we’d like to know why you didn’t file a W-2 for six months working as a waiter in Tempe, Arizona. Please explain why you failed to do so. Sincerely, your friendly Infernal Revenue Service.”

  60. DrDaveT says:

    @Jenos Idanian:

    Hillary set up her private e-mail server so she could conduct her business without being bothered by Congressional oversight or FOIA requests

    Unsurprisingly, you know as little about FOIA as you seem to know about everything else. The status of Hillary’s emails as “agency records” is unaffected by which server they were on, public or private.

    Indeed, by some interpretations of the law, putting the email server on her private machine created additional FOIAble records among her personal documents that would not have been subject to FOIA otherwise.

  61. Monala says:

    @Jenos Idanian: To extend your analogy, Cuban immigrants may come here legally, but they get to automatically go to the front of the line. Not so for potential legal immigrants from other Latin American countries, who face far more hurdles. So it’s not Cruz and Rubio looking at line-jumpers resentfully – it’s other’s looking at them that way.

  62. Monala says:

    @Jenos Idanian: liberals don’t hate people who are rich, white or Christian. In fact, plenty of liberals are part of those categories.

  63. Grewgills says:

    @Jenos Idanian:
    My issue is with you engaging with a comment, then when called on specific information in your comment pivoting to something entirely different to avoid uncomfortable truths. For instance my comment dealt with why Cuban Americans feel differently about immigration than non Cuban Hispanic Americans. You treated that comment as though I was questioning how Hispanic someone was. That is completely unrelated to the comment I made. You not only failed to address my comment, but you entirely misrepresented my comment. I honestly don’t care if you don’t respond to my comments, but don’t pretend you are responding to my comment while misrepresenting it as something entirely different.

  64. Pch101 says:

    @Grewgills:

    Jenos didn’t understand your comment. He just isn’t that bright — from his perspective, they all look alike.