Ron Paul says Latinos are being made 'scapegoats'
Ron Paul says Latinos are being made 'scapegoats'
Politico
By JAMES HOHMANN |
LAS VEGAS — Ron Paul dropped his standard stump speech on Wednesday and aggressively courted Latino voters.
At a senior center in East Las Vegas, the Texas congressman told about 100 Hispanics that they have been unfairly made “scapegoats” for the country’s economic troubles. He said it’s “part of human nature” for newcomers to be shunned, but that prejudice toward outsiders worsens when unemployment is high. He said that illegal immigrants were being scapegoated in a manner similar to Jews in Nazi Germany because of tough economic times.
“When things go badly, individuals look for scapegoats,” he said.
“I just do not believe that barbed-wire fences or guns on our border will solve any of our problems,” he added.
In focusing on Latinos, Paul is reaching out to an important voter group that can help him make a strong showing in the state’s Saturday caucuses, which will award delegates on a proportional basis. But the tactic also revealed a new and softer side of the Texas congressman, who typically derides government in harsh terms and whose foreign policy is considered outside the Republican mainstream.
Paul was the only GOP presidential candidate to attend the morning event hosted by the nonpartisan group Hispanics in Politics. Afterward, he did a media availability exclusively for Spanish-language press. He also held a Hispanic Roundtable at a restaurant in the hotel where he’s staying.
Latinos make up a quarter of the Nevada’s 2.7 million population. They are closer to 14 percent of the electorate and an even smaller share of Republicans. Three-quarters of Hispanics voted for Barack Obama over John McCain in 2008.
In the 2008 GOP caucuses, Latinos accounted for 8 percent of the GOP vote and Paul nabbed just 7 percent of it, placing fourth among GOP contenders, entrance polls said. Mitt Romney won the state and the Hispanic vote.
The bulk of the growing Hispanic vote is in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. “You hunt where the ducks are, and there’s a lot of ducks in Clark County,” said Paul campaign chairman Jesse Benton.
Paul’s focus on winning over these voters also reflects his more professional operation compared with his presidential run in 2008, when he garnered 14 percent of the Nevada vote to finish second. He is trying to expand his traditional base of hard-core, small-government libertarians.
Paul hardly discussed the immigration issue on the trail in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. But he devoted almost half an hour to it at the Wednesday morning forum.
Tailoring a pitch to a specific audience is normal for most candidates, but Paul typically delivers a nearly identical speech regardless of audience or locale. He began this address by touting his opposition to abortion rights, something important to the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Latino population, before pivoting to immigration.
The Texas congressmen then said he opposes forcing residents to carry identification cards and papers because it could expand to similar requirements for the entire population.
On the issue of amnesty for those who entered the country illegally, Paul loaded his comments with uncharacteristic nuance. He said he opposes illegal immigration but quickly added that it would be “impossible” to deport everyone who unlawfully enters the country. He added that America needs to be “more generous about allowing people to come in.”
“We should have a legal and generous immigration policy,” he said. “I don’t think there’s an easy, perfect solution.”
Paul called immigration a “complex issue” and described struggling with how to write about it in a book chapter a few years ago. Unlike most functions it now performs, he says the federal government has a constitutional role in managing immigration.
After skipping Florida, Paul’s team is making an aggressive play in caucus states, including Nevada. They think they can win Nevada outright if their base turns out and they lure some nontraditional voters, despite Romney’s strong operation here. The campaign has had a Hispanic coalition since November.
“We think it’s a good natural constituency — not just for Ron Paul, but we think Republicans generally don’t do a good enough job reaching out,” Benton said.
In Nevada, the campaign is running targeted get-out-the-vote efforts focused on other constituencies besides Latinos. They’ve rolled out a coalition to appeal to Mormons, trying to divert some from Romney. In mailings and targeted calls, the campaign emphasizes a bill Paul introduced in Congress that would eliminate federal taxes on tips. The campaign is also touting Paul’s plan to streamline the process for getting travel visas, warning that Las Vegas is losing convention business to place like Abu Dhabi because of federal red tape. Benton said volunteers made 39,000 phone calls to Nevada voters on Tuesday alone.
But Paul’s message to Latino voters isn’t going down completely smoothly. He upset a a Latino woman with his opposition to the DREAM Act, which would grant citizenship to some illegal residents. But he registered his objections with sympathy, explaining that he simply opposes spending federal money to help one minority group over another.
“The DREAM Act was the only place where he was absolutely wrong,” said Fernando Romero, the president of the group that hosted the morning forum. Romero is a Democrat who said he worked as a political consultant for McCain last cycle.
Source: Ron Paul says Latinos are being made 'scapegoats' - James Hohmann - POLITICO.com
