Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus unveiled a new strategy Monday in hopes of capturing minority voters after a worrisome 2012 turnout among this demographic.
The plan involves comprehensive immigration reform and spending $10 million on going “household-to-household” and placing more “boots on the ground” in minority communities.
This push to reach minority voters comes over four months after the 2012 election and possibly a few months before Congress starts to consider a bipartisan immigration plan.
When evaluating his party’s problems with minority voters Priebus said,
“Focus groups described our party as narrow-minded, out of touch and quote ‘stuffy old men,’ I’m only 41 by the way, today. The perception that we’re the party of the rich unfortunately continues to grow. That’s frustrating because we care about every voter. We’re the party of growth and opportunity. We want families that are strong, children that are well-educated, we want to lift people up from poverty — to put the American Dream in reach for everybody.”
Priebus adds,
“We’ve never put this many paid boots on the ground this early in an off year. We’ve also never been this dedicated to working at the community level to win monitory votes household-to-household. So I’m approving an initial 10 million budget for this work, for this year.”
The Republican Party might run into some problems with their “outreach” if they push too hard against Perez, who is a Latino and currently U.S. assistant attorney general.
Perez will more than likely face a tough time being nominated because of his stance against the controversial Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his hard line approach when it comes to illegal immigration.
According to The Washington Post, Congressional Republicans have already “slammed” Obama over the selection of Perez.
With Obama looking to expand voting rights, raise the minimum wage and reform immigration laws, this selection has already proven to be a dicey, but potentially well-calculated political move, putting the pressure on Republicans to make a choice between either backing their new platform or sticking to the same behaviors of the 2012 election cycle.
The most important issues among Latinos, according to an Oct. 11, 2012 Pew Research study are education (55 percent), jobs and the economy (54 percent) and health care (50 percent).
Immigration is the fifth most important issue (out of six) to Latino voters.
When discussing immigration reform and the GOP’s new guide for minority outreach, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) told the USA Today,
“Right now, we need to forget about who is going to get credit and have both parties serve the people’s interest.”
I usually don’t do posts like this because I think it’s a waste of time pointing out a person’s inconsistent statements if their following is exponentially larger than yours and if that person would never consider statistics or facts.
The 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is a 501(c)3 charity hosted annually by the American Conservative Union Foundation.
This year, as the party tries to regain ground lost from the 2012 election, the party has actually held on tighter to their core beliefs while drawing from the same minds that more than likely lost them last election.
Who doesn’t still remember this?
A familiar face at this year’s CPAC was conservative columnist and New York Times best-selling author Ann Coulter.
There’s not really much that needs to be explained about Coulter’s speech. Not only is her speech filled with such vitriol toward minorities and the most vulnerable among us, but her speech is shallow and hardly based in truth.
But Coulter deserves credit where it’s due. She knows what makes many of us “tick.” She understands innate human desires and is therefore able to take advantage of it for her own benefit.
Unsurprisingly, Coulter doesn’t care about the human consequence of her beliefs. Our beliefs are important in defining our lives because they eventually turn into actions. What we believe and what is engrained into our culture inevitably manifests as what is “real” to us.
“If amnesty goes through, America becomes California and no Republican will ever win a national election.”
The thing about this statement is that there are valid arguments against amnesty that Coulter could have made (like putting their concerns before legal immigrants, the initial cost to taxpayers to house them through building communities, etc.), but her reason for why we should continue to assist in ruining young Latinos’ lives is because the Republican Party needs saving.
Coulter is not against amnesty because she feels it might save the country or because it’s the right thing to do, but because she only cares about “winning.”
Coulter even makes note of this win-at-all-costs attitude at the 6:37 mark when she says,
“Show me one example in the last ten years of the Democrats giving up a winnable seat — no that hasn’t happened. Passion is great, but in politics, remember, scoring is all that counts.”
Coulter then goes on to say the only state that has given the Republican Party Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, California, will never elect a Republican again if amnesty occurs.
I want to know why Coulter is defending a president in Nixon, but that might take some time.
Anyway, California ia a big state. Is Coulter saying the reason California produces some of the more prominent liberal candidates is because of the small percentage of illegal immigrants? In a slick way, Coulter links amnesty of illegal immigrants to the woes of the Republican Party.
The math just doesn’t add up if you say that California is liberal because of illegal immigrants (who the majority of are Mexican). Yes, California is more progressive, but it is only so at the state and federal level. If you call California a liberal state, you have to include the voting preferences of the vast majority of Latinos who are not just Mexican. (By the way, the AP Stylebook refers to Latinos as being from Central America, South America and the Gulf.
The fact of the matter is by 2014, California’s population will be predominately Latino. In this political environment, it’s important for political leaders to dilineate Latinos in general from illegal immigrants, which happen to be Latino. Just like the purpose of black appreciation holidays, it’s past time to parade Latino accomplishments and contributions to the American population. More importantly, it should be the people who educate themselves on this subject.
Illegal immigrants only represent 6.8% of California’s population, however California’s Latino population is pretty much a majority of the state’s population. Why not ask why the majority of legal Latinos in California back more progressive issues?
Coulter not only trivializes the immigration debate, but creates an immediate negative reaction between frustrated Americans, illegal immigrants and Latinos.
“The falloff in the stock of unauthorized immigrants has been driven mainly by a decrease in the number of new immigrants from Mexico, the single largest source of U.S. migrants. As the Pew Hispanic Center reported earlier this year, net immigration from Mexico to the United States has stopped and possibly reversed through 2010. At its peak in 2000, about 770,000 immigrants arrived annually from Mexico; the majority arrived illegally. By 2010, the inflow had dropped to about 140,000—a majority of whom arrived as legal immigrants, according to Pew Hispanic Center estimates.”
Even though the amount of illegal immigrants in 2007 was a legitimate problem, that problem is no longer a major concern as Cohn and Passel allude. Amnesty would legalize 11 million illegal immigrants out of America’s 315 million residents, which is .035% of the total population. But Coulter thinks this would spell doom for the Republican Party?
These statements from Coulter encompass why the party is struggling: it’s only about winning to its leaders, which makes it more transparent that they are only about keeping power and not representing the people, which is what politics should be about.
People want to see a difference and experience a society that is continually evolving. People don’t want what to hold on to the burdens of ignorance from previous generations, but that is what the establishment of both parties continue to push because change is a threat to their reign.
Coulter represents the establishment in every sense.
Moving away a bit from amnesty, but staying on the topic of legal and illegal immigrants, at the 18:08 mark Coulter says,
“Teddy Kennedy specifically designed his Immigration Act of 1965 to change America demographically without checking with the American people. It’s virtually impossible to immigrate here from Europe now. About 80% of our immigrants for the last 30 years have come from the third world. About 60% of them go on welfare — much higher percentage than native-born Americans. This is so Democrats get themselves more voters. We have a more dependent society, we have people who want welfare and we cannot get the votes of a dependent society without changing our principles.”
According to Coulter, there was a conspiracy led by Ted Kennedy to legislate amnesty to Asians and Latino while depressing European immigration numbers in order to drastically change the demographic of the country (without the “country’s” permission).
Does that statement even need to be dissected? Yes actually, it does.
Coulter continues to degrade illegal immigrants (and Latinos, remember she has lumped them together by saying “illegal immigration is why California is so liberal” when we know the state comprises various backgrounds of Latinos that still vote more progressive) by saying they vote Democratic because most of the ones who come here vote in favor of “entitlement programs” due to an independence deficiency.
Illegal immigrants represent a higher percentage within the workforce than they do as a percentage within the total population. For those who might not understand percentages, this means these are some hard-working immigrants.
Coulter has successfully created a cognitive link between illegal immigrants and Latinos to why the Republican Party is struggling with minority demographics. Coulter is basically blaming illegal immigrants for the fall of the Republican Party and the American economy all while trying making us favor white European immigration over brown. Here, Coulter plays the “us vs. them” card well, pitting native-born Americans against Latino immigrants and the vulnerable children of illegal immigrants. But people like Coulter still wonder why Latinos, blacks and young people don’t agree with their stances.
Coulter is riling up racial insecurities by telling white conservative they should be afraid of “the other.” Why does Coulter point out that there is a sinister plot to limit European immigrant numbers while inferring America doesn’t enforce the rules when it comes to Mexicans and Latinos? Talk like this is how race riots and conflicts spark. Blaming the poor and minorities for the economic woes of white and black Americans is not a smart move by Coulter.
So let me get this straight, we are a country whom ruins the lives of people who come to American to live a better life (and unfortunately many do it illegally due to their dire situation that America has contributed to, but that’s a different conversation) and while literally doing our shitty jobs we demonize them, blame them for our poor institutional decisions, label them as criminals and savages and stereotype the whole Latino population with a small percentage of illegal immigrants?
The other day, I came across this disturbing memo (courtesy of the Huffington Post) from Corrections Corporations of America (CCA). The CCA wants to buy up state-owned correctional facilities in exchange for cash in order to help states ease budget shortfalls due to the Great Recession.
CCA wants to purchase state-owned prisons in exchange for cash to alleviate budget shortfalls as long as the state can guarantee the prisons would be filled to at least 90% capacity.
Hold up… rewind. Yep, you heard that right. The state must guarantee that the prisons stay full. This is code word for putting more cops in the streets looking for crimes that may not even exist and passing more legislation aimed at minor drug offenses. This, of course, incentivizes corruption and improper incarceration.
However, this is nothing new to those who have payed attention the last 20 or so years. There has been a push to make prisons a mainstay in America. From the immigration debate and SB 1070 in Arizona to Florida politicians receiving millions of dollars from GEO Group and CCA, prisons are becoming big business nowadays (Oh and let’s not forget the successful War on Drugs).
This is becoming a problem in America because not everyone who goes to jail is guilty (yea I know, crazy, huh?). Not everyone who goes to jail is guilty because the system is biased. Some people may say the prison idustrial complex is racist and that is definitely debatable. The system most likely is racist, but the system becomes a larger problem when we start throwing people in jail for minor violations like having a personal amount of marijuana or being a drug abuser. This act of incarcerating these people goes beyond race. It hits everyone. Plus, drug abusers don’t need to be placed in prisons, they need medical help because they are sick.
Incarceration Statistics
Since the Nixon administration started the War on Drugs, you would figure that incarceration rates and drug use would have gone down. I mean, the purpose of building prisons is to deter violent crimes and drug peddling; It’s supposed to give people the time to think about the wrongs they’ve committed onto others. So we should see less prisons being built and less crime committed. That should be an agreeable product of success.
But history supports that the War on Drugs and the prison industrial complex work hand in hand—With lobbyists’ hands in the pockets of prison-profiteering politicians.
Let’s take a look at the crime numbers according to the New York Times,
The odds of being murdered or robbed are now less than half of what they were in the early 1990s, when violent crime peaked in the United States. Small towns, especially, are seeing far fewer murders: In cities with populations under 10,000, the number plunged by more than 25 percent last year.
That’s good news, right? Violent crimes are decreasing so the prison system must be working. But if that’s the case, why are our incarceration rates increasing at alarming numbers?
Even though crimes rates are falling, incarceration rates are steady on the uptick because prisons equal profit. It’s a sad reflection of the times we live in, but it’s the truth nonetheless.
And with the system being inherently racist, this means that our tax dollars are being used to fund a failing War on Drugs and a racist prison system that is ruining the culture of millions of minorities in America. It’s tearing families apart, but do we even care?
And I don’t mean to point out the potentially racist system to make any one culture feel guilty. I point this out because if the weakest among us are being unjustifiably imprisoned, it’s going to have an effect on all of us, regardless of race, creed or income.
For a so-called Christian nation, we have our values twisted.
This is the state that epitomizes what you think of when you see a Clint Eastwood movie: Guns, machoism, lawlessness and no remorse.
It’s a beautiful land once inhabited by Native Americans, Chicanos, Mexicans and Mayans. A state full of history, awe-inspring landscapes and deep, unforgiving wounds of America’s dark past.
This is a state that historically opposes the integration of races. From the decision by Governor Evan Mecham to fight for the state’s right to not celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. day to Tucson’s banning of a Mexican history class in a district because they claim it promotes the “underthrow of the government” and “resentment towards a race of class [white people] of people.” Also, let’s not forget that Arizona has also banned any history book that tells of the brutal oppression of the Native Americans and Chicanos. Tucson mandates that teachers stay away from books that focus on “race, ethnicity and oppression as central themes” (Keep these things in mind as I talk about Representative Giffords later).
Funny how Arizona was okay when the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, threatened to secede from the union after Obama’s health care legislation began gaining ground, Arizona was okay with that form of government disobedience. When Arizona politicians don’t get their way, they’re okay with going to war against the federal government and vowing for martial law, but they’re not okay when them Marxist Mexicans do it.
As we move back to Giffords, health care was being modified under president Obama. From 2009-10, the rhetoric became extremely heated, even hostile at times. And the main reason this health care vote was so politically dangerous (besides the fact that it was something Obama actively supported) was because of the wedge issue of abortion. Somehow health care got entangled with illegal immigration, abortion, Mexicans and communism. This is the spark needed to enrage an already unhinged radical base the Republicans were so ready to pander to.
Republicans were clamoring that this legislation would force doctors to perform abortions at the expense of the taxpayer. By repeating this over and over, Republicans were able to rile up their voters, eventually giving birth to the tea party and their 2010 takeover of Congress.
Here are examples of the rhetoric and fear tactics being used by the opposition to health care:
&
That’s just a taste of the fear tactics being used during the health care debate. Lastly, here is an example of how childish and unruly Republicans were during the health care debate:
Now Giffords, a vibrant and passionate person when it came to servicing her community, had a tough decision in voting for the health care law. I know she knew how tough this would be, but she felt that it was the right thing to do.
Soon after her vote, she was targeted by Republicans. Sarah Palin made a map of representatives that had she felt had to go. On that map, she had crosshairs over several of the representatives’ districts who voted for the law. Palin championed this at first, but soon took down her Facebook post after Giffords was shot. Palin, known to cause a ruckus in the media, has never been afraid of attention so why did she take her illustration down with the quickness? Because she knew she messed up.
Sarah Palin's crosshair illustration over Gabby's district
As soon as Giffords casted her vote, she had a brick thrown through her office and reported multiple threats to the police. More similarly, threats toward several House Democrats became a trend (Links to all the stories will be provided at the bottom. There is simply too much to hyperlink them here). Representative Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and former police officer had to resign after receiving multiple threats for his health care vote. I remember following the rhetoric closely and I couldn’t believe the things being said after Stupak casted his vote. People were furious.
Giffords was a bit shaken up and she had this to say to MSNBC after her office was vandalized:
Every time I watch that video I get chills. Giffords knew what was coming, but she proved how brave she was. Being a Democratic representative and an abortion doctor in today’s world has become a dangerous job. People will kill you because they have been radicalized and they are hopeless. They have so little faith in the system, that they’d rather kill people to have their way than to play by the rules.
They are cowards.
Soon after this speech, we all know what happened to Gabby. Gabby was shot in the head from three feet away by Jared Lougner.
I want to take this time out to thank Rep. Gabrielle Giffords for her bravery and service to make this country a place that can hopefully transcend political boundaries.
The experience that she has gone through since that tragic day was a larger reflection of the way she handled herself in politics. As a Democrat in a historically conservative state, Giffords was obligated to be a moderate. Being a moderate during heated political times is a rare thing nowadays, but being a moderate is not what makes this woman so special.
What puts Gabrielle above many other politicians is her fearless service to her community. It almost cost her her life, but I do believe that everything happens for a reason. She is a reminder that light will always outshine the darkest parts of this world. If we haven’t learned anything from this debacle, we have to learn to be civil and respectful. We have to be adults.
Gabby is truly an angel on Earth.
RIP to all the victims that died on that dreadful day on January 8th, 2011.
Christina-Taylor Green, 9, of Tucson.
Dorothy “Dot” Morris, 76, a retired secretary from Oro Valley.
John Roll, 63, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for Arizona, named to the federal bench by President George H. W. Bush in 1991.
Phyllis Schneck, 79, homemaker from Tucson.
Dorwan Stoddard, 76, retired construction worker, died from a gunshot wound to the head.
Gabriel “Gabe” Zimmerman, 30, community outreach director for Giffords, and a member of Giffords’ staff since 2006. Zimmerman was the first Congressional staffer killed in the line of duty.
And here are the links I promised about the increase in the amount of threats around the country after health care votes:
Last week, comedian Katt Williams went on a rant where he might have hurt some feelings. He definitely called out people of Hispanic decent (Mexican in particular) and hurt some people’s booties. Here’s the thing though. As a human being, I recognize that there are always multiple sides to a story. So far, the only side of the story I’ve heard is the one where people who are screaming that Katt Williams is a racist. And the one side of the story makng the most noise sounds about as truthful as Anthonty Weiner in his CBS Interview (that was pretty persuasive though). Supposedly, Williams hates Mexicans and he speaks for the black community when it comes to race relations between blacks and Mexicans. Yea… he doesn’t speak for me or any of the black people I know from Maryland. I’m sure some black people can’t stand Mexicans for no reason, but then again, I can’t stand those blacks who are being xenophobic for little reason.
Let me rebut by saying this, we all love and enjoy the contributions of Mexicans and people of all backgrounds (Some of us especially love their females…). I also enjoy the fact that Mexicans come to this country with a hunger to succeed and provide for their families who may be struggling. They take the jobs that most Americans would’t be caught dead doing. But what I do not love about the human race is the people who come to this country and talk trash about how bad the country is while claiming allegiance to their home culture. Now there is a fine line to walk here. There’s not a problem with foreign-born persons remembering and celebrating their culture as they move forward and progress through another culture like the U.S. People get upset at foreign-born persons when they claim to still be affiliated with the country they left all while talking about how America is the worst. This is an acceptable complaint.
Katt Williams is a comedian that will push the envelope. He’s been known to get under people’s skin. This rant he went on was nowhere near the level of Michael Richards’ fail. Katt Williams didn’t lose his cool and start calling Hispanics racial epithets because he was a slow comedian. Katt Williams went on a history lesson! That one Hispanic audience member lost his cool and asked for it.
Williams was doing a comedy tour in Phoenix, Arizona. The heckler wanted to point out that that area is still Mexican territory. Obviously, this is incorrect. The area is a United States territory. Was the land taken from the Mexicans in the past in an unlawful way? Yes. But is this land considered Mexico today? Hell no. So please people, don’t get ahead of yourselves. And most importantly, if you decide to interrupt a comedian during his act and provide him with false information, be prepared to have your ass handed to you.
I think a lot of Americans are tired of being politically correct all the time when the evidence supports otherwise. Of course, purely racist remarks without any provocation are unnecessary in this society (and doesn’t advance racial consciousness) but comedy is a much-needed profession in America. To laugh at others is relieving, but to laugh at yourself is a necessary spiritual step in all of our lives. America is supposed to be the land of the free, yet we allow people we don’t even care about to affect the way we perceive ourselves. How many people who watch Katt Williams consistently are complaining about his recent routine? How many people who don’t watch Katt Williams are now complaining that he’s racist? I think the latter is more populated than the former. I don’t know, you be the judge (of course).
Thanks for checking me out. I appreciate all who do. I will make the next post more interesting… only if I’m up for it… :S
