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Tea Party Official on How to Win Over Latinos: Don't Mention GOP
Reuters reports:
"Whenever the word 'Republican' is used, it was almost like an automatic wall that falls," George Rodriguez, president of the San Antonio Tea Party, said at a conference organized by the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation. "Yet when we used the word 'conservative,' people were more responsive."
Warned off by fiery Republican rhetoric lashing out at illegal immigrants in the last electoral cycle, U.S. Hispanics voted by a two-to-one margin for President Barack Obama over Republican rival John McCain in 2008. And in the 2010 Texas gubernatorial race, 61 percent of Latino voters chose Bill White, the Democrat, over Republican Governor Rick Perry, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
To reverse that allegiance, Rodriguez said that conservative Texans have to overcome established voting patterns. "For some reason, these folks continue to vote liberal, only because their parents did," he said. "When you ask them, 'Why do you vote like that?', they don't know, they don't know, they just do it."
