Republicans haven’t paid serious attention to Hispanics in the United States. I think it has to do with blunt ignorance of Hispanics’ core values.
“Latinos are Republicans. They just don’t know it yet,” said President Ronald Reagan in 1980 when running for the presidency.
I am not sure whether Reagan knew indeed what he was talking about or if he was just bluffing or just uttering a trivial political statement as politicians do in the heat of a campaign. Perhaps Reagan attempted to commensurate with Hispanics hoping to grab their vote.
What I am sure about, however, is that there are instances illustrating that Hispanics have transcended their over emphasized allegiance to the Democratic Party. In 2004, they cast roughly 44% of the Hispanic vote to re-elect George Bush President of the United States. They may be shaped by language commonality, different socio-economic and cultural experiences, and inclination to liberalism. However, most Hispanics I know are most certainly defined by conservative beliefs encompassing strong family values, self-reliance and firm religious faith.
When I listen to Newt Gingrich’s rhetoric raising concerns about the lack of social values afflicting America today–regardless of his ongoing personal moral ordeals–, the importance of preserving our American faith-based institutions, our civic traditions, our rights to privacy, our visceral gumption for prosperity and self sufficiency, and to live a life free from too much government interference, I feel he is talking to me.
Listening to Gingrich brings me back to those yesteryears when I was a teenager in the 1970s growing up in a poor neighborhood of La Romana, Dominican Republic. I remember my dusty neighborhood where money was scarce, but my father, my mother and my neighbors went to work every day and to church every Sunday morning to get God’s blessing and strength.
“El que sea saludable y no trabaje, que no coma” (“he who is in good health and does not work, does not have the right to eat”), my father used to say, criticizing those who preferred government handouts and depended on others to survive.
“No pises en rojo; lo que obtengas que sea por merito” (“do not transgress the law and live within your means in accordance to your merit”), my mother often said to me and my brothers and sisters.
Former South-Central Oklahoma Republican Congressman JC Watts’ speeches in the late 1990s and early 2000s also remind me of these sayings. Congressman Watts used to talk about growing up in Oklahoma with similar, values, beliefs and experience as I did in La Romana. I remember myself transcribing Watts’ speeches aired on C-Span, and reading one of his speech transcripts published in the early 2000 by the New York Times. I admit, I related to what he was saying then. He connected with me and my core values.
It is pretty easy for me to continue citing more instances denoting commonalities between Hispanics and Republicans, but I will stop here. Suffices to say that as a Hispanic, and considering my core values, my vote is certainly up for grabs by Republicans. I think also that the votes of lots of U.S. Hispanics are up for grabs by Republicans as well.
In many respects, Republicans relate to Hispanics and ideologically seem to behave, at times, as if they were Hispanics and vice versa, but both don’t know it yet.
