http://vdare.com/sailer/050529_latino.htm


Don’t Worry, Democrats! This Hispanic Hype Is Hogwash

By Steve Sailer

"Latino Power" trumpets the cover of Newsweek. It features the newly-elected Los Angeles mayor, leftwing Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa, flashing his charismatic smile while cavorting on the beach.

Newsweek’s macho subhead: “A new mayor in L.A. A decisive showing in '04. Latinos are making their mark on politics as never before. Get used to it.�

But last Thursday the Census Bureau released its massive survey of who actually voted in the November, 2004 General Election. It painted a very different picture than Newsweek's cliché-ridden celebration of the cresting tsunami of Hispanic electoral clout.

The Newsweek cover features the triumphant face of Villaraigosa, an unrepentant former chairman of the UCLA chapter of the separatist MEChA organization and a past ACLU apparatchik. But the story on the inside, "A Latin Power Surge," (By Arian Campo-Flores and Howard Fineman ) is all about how the rise of Latino Power has been good for…the Republicans!

"’If the GOP maintains its current share of the Latino vote, says Simon Rosenberg of the New Democrat Network, 'then the Democrats will never be the majority party again in our lifetimes.' How did things become so dire for the Democrats?"

The subhead on the cover story (“A decisive showing in 2004") even implies that Latinos won the election for George W. Bush.

Does Latino Power benefit Republicans or Democrats? Whom should you believe: Newsweek's words or its cover picture of Villaraigosa?

Los Angeles, a city that as recently as 1993 and 1997 elected a Republican mayor (albeit a liberal one), has just given a landslide to Villaraigosa in a Tweedledee vs. Tweedledum struggle with another liberal Democrat, incumbent James Hahn.

So how can things be "so dire for the Democrats?"

My theory: Newsweek had its "Latino Power" articles prepackaged and has been waiting around for some Latino candidate to win something big enough to (almost) justify it.

And what about the disagreement between Newsweek's words and its own numbers about what happened last November.

"President George W. Bush captured roughly 40 percent (the exact figure remains in dispute) of the Hispanic vote …"

It's good to see that VDARE.com's investigative reporting on the errors in the original exit poll claim that Bush had won 44 percent of the Hispanic vote has made Newsweek wary of using that now discredited figureâ€â€