Thread: Harry Reid doesn't speak for all Latinos

Harry Reid doesn't speak for all Latinos
Ruben Navarrette

Sunday, August 15, 2010


On behalf of all Hispanics, let me just say this: Muchas gracias, Harry Reid.

I was glad to hear that the Senate majority leader is willing to relieve me and every other Latino in the United States of the crushing burden of having to think for ourselves and make our own political decisions. Reid is kindly offering to do all the heavy lifting for America's largest minority and decide whether we should vote Republican or Democrat.

And, to make things easier, as far as the Nevada Democrat is concerned, there is only one choice for Latinos. Guess who?

The Democratic leader of the Senate is trying to win re-election by courting Latinos in his home state.

According to the book "Game Change" by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, Reid said privately during the 2008 election that Barack Obama could win because he is "light-skinned" and speaks "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." No doubt about it, Reid needs a filter. And he proved it again recently when addressing Latino supporters in Las Vegas. Declaring that Hispanic immigrants should not be treated any differently than previous waves of newcomers from Europe just because "their skin's a tone darker than ours," Reid criticized Republicans for being hostile to Hispanic concerns.

"I don't know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican, OK," Reid said. "Do I need to say more?"

Yeah, Harry. Actually, I think you should. Those patronizing remarks sound as if they came from the overseer of a hacienda. To substantiate his repugnant argument that Latinos should be one-party voters, Reid slammed Republicans in Congress for allegedly blocking immigration reform.

I say "allegedly" because what Reid said wasn't true. With so few seats in Congress, Republicans don't have the power to block much of anything as evidenced by their humiliating defeats on health care reform and, most recently, approving a new and massive $26 billion stimulus package. In fact, it was Reid and other Senate Democrats - including a freshman named Barack Obama - who killed promising immigration reform legislation at the behest of their patrons in organized labor. And why is that? First, the unions continue to make the absurd claim that guest workers take jobs from U.S. workers; and second, as a former union official told me recently, because guest workers usually aren't unionized, organized labor could consider it a symbolic defeat if it allowed hundreds of thousands of non-unionized workers to enter the United States when they could have stopped it. And so stop it they did - and immigration reform along with it.

That explains why nothing has happened on immigration and why nothing will happen until the Senate majority leader is mercifully sent into retirement.

Harry Reid can wonder all he wants about why any Hispanic could be a Republican. I've been wondering something myself: In light of such flagrant condescension and an obvious lack of regard, why would any self-respecting Hispanic - in Nevada or anywhere else - support Harry Reid?

www.sfgate.com

Harry's own words need to be HEARD FOR WHAT THEY ARE.

Unwise.

Enough is enough!

Nevadans have wondered for several years how he keeps getting into office, and many believe that the elections have been fixed.