Republicans are trying to delicately strike a balance for this Fall’s election as they try to look tough on the issue of immigration while not further alienating Latino voters.
In the 2008 Presidential election, Barack Obama garnered nearly 70% of the Latino vote reversing trends over the past two election cycles that saw George W. Bush increasing Hispanic support for Republicans.
According to a story in the Capitol Hill publication, The Hill, Senator John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, and other GOP leaders are under pressure from the grassroots contingency of their party to make Arizona’s controversial anti-immigration measure a national issue. Cornyn is chairman of his party’s Senatorial Campaign Committee. His Democratic counterpart is Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the only Latino currently in the US Senate.
As Cornyn said of the issue in an interview with the New York Times in April, “It’s a very sensitive subject. A third of my constituents in Texas are Hispanic.”
A republican consultant who did not want to be named said he does not believe that Cornyn will follow the will of some of the more extreme voices in his party “for fear of offending Hispanic constituents at home, “ saying, Sen. Cornyn is stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/104629-gopfacing-dilemma-on-arizona-law?page=1#comments
Recent Comments