Are Conservatives Creating Political Dissonance Amongst Hispanics?

Soon after our launch, our own Fred Lewis provided us a post on the slippery slope of discrimination in Texas. I will remind you that in that post, he told us that fear-based, bigotry-driven policies do nothing for Texas, especially help create jobs or help the state of our budget. Conservatives who support anti-Latino, anti-immigrant, anti-public education, and other policies which target specific groups of people have based their support of these policies on the fact that Republicans won the 2010 elections and that voters support these crippling policies. Well, just who is demanding these policies?

Well, those who conservatives are appeasing, right-wing groups such as "Immigration Reform Coalition of Texas," are making it quite clear why they want these policies (YouTube video). Their founder and Tea Party leader Rebecca Forest stated the following in a speech at the Capitol today:

“If you want to know why we can’t pass legislation in Texas it's because we have 37, no 36, Hispanics in the Legislature. All of the states that have passed legislation have a handful and I mean literally, some of them have NO Hispanic legislators, well, maybe 3 or 5 or something. So that's, umm, part of our problem and we need to change those numbers. Umm, we need to do something about that in fact, during the debate on  "sanctuary cities," several Hispanic legislators testified that their grandparents and their parents were migrant workers who came over here to work and that THEY even worked in the fields. And some of them even admitted that they had been here illegally and that they came illegally. So the problem is these Hispanic legislators...is that it's too close to them and they, umm... simply cannot vote their conscience correctly. So that's about all I have to say to you..."

Recently, the Tea Party began a campaign to recruit Hispanics to their divisive club through an all-new website called "Amigos de Patriots." Along with their usual anti-government rhetoric, the "Amigos" promote and defend Arizona's SB1070 (legalized racial profiling law).

Given today's speech which basically states that all Hispanic legislators are against the divisive legislation that the Tea Party supports, one would figure they are headed nowhere in their recruitment effort. One would think they would be targeting the 20 to 30 percent of Hispanic Texans who may still support the conservatives; however, some of the data on the website clearly targets the vast majority of Hispanic Texans who voted for Barack Obama in 2008.

It seems Tea Party conservatives are confusing themselves. They want to recruit Hispanics who voted for President Obama, yet are promoting divisive policies which threaten the well-being of Texas, and some policies specifically target Hispanic Texans. At the very least, they are attempting to create some dissonance amongst Hispanics with, I would venture to say, a goal to keep Hispanic Texans home on November 6, 2012.

Hispanic Texans must keep abreast of the rhetoric and the policies and make electoral decisions based on facts. SomosTejanos.org will keep you informed as we move forward. Meanwhile, we will continue researching this phenomenom called political dissonance.

[Photo Credit ~ Hutch News}