Rove’s plan won’t work: Don’t count on Latino social conservatism

Republicans think it will be easy to come back -- just appeal to culturally conservative Latinos! It will fail

BY IRIN CARMON

Drop the anti-immigrant rhetoric! Focus on the “family values” that Latinos supposedly share with the party! But that magic solution to Republicans’ demographic problem that some conservatives are touting — which conveniently allows the party to resist moderating on so-called social issues like gay marriage and abortion — is unlikely to pan out.

Two days after Latino voters broadly rejected the Republican Party, Charles Krauthammer saw reason for optimism. Latinos, he said, “should be a natural Republican constituency: striving immigrant community, religious, Catholic, family-oriented and socially conservative (on abortion, for example.)” George W. Bush and Karl Rove found a way to approach 40 percent of the Latino vote; Romney barely netted half that. So Republicans, facing a demographic time bomb as their base of white men ages, have comforted themselves by thinking all they really need to do is perform as well as Bush did among Latinos to get near the White House again.

Whether or not Republicans have any chance of capturing more than a tiny fraction of the Latino vote, Krauthammer (and the straw-grasping Republicans who echoed him) shouldn’t take Latinos’ conservatism, including their views on abortion, for granted.

First of all, being religious doesn’t mean you vote according to the dictates of your church, and Latino voters have consistently told pollsters that they don’t. Last December, a Latino Decisions poll found that 53 percent of Latinos said religion would have no impact at all on their vote. And only 14 percent agreed that “politics is more about moral issues such as abortion, family values, and same-sex marriage.” In fact, exit polling from the election this month showed that Latinos were more likely than other voters to support same-sex marriage recognition.

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http://www.salon.com/2012/11/23/roves_plan_wont_work_dont_count_on_latino_social_conservatism/