Has Romney Given Up On Hispanic Vote ?

Back in 2008, Republican presidential candidate John McCain got about 31% of the Hispanic vote. That was not nearly enough to make him competitive in the election, especially since women and young people also voted in large percentages for Barack Obama. As of right now, it looks like the same dynamic is starting to take shape in the 2012 election.

Due to his support of the congressional Republicans "war on women", women are abandoning Willard Mitt Romney (aka Wall Street Willie) in droves and moving to support the president. And he's not doing much (if any) better with young people. Romney showed his disconnect with the young (and their parents) the other day when he told them that all they had to do to go to college or start a business was to borrow $20,000 or more from their parents.

It still hasn't registered on him that millions of those parents are out of work, and millions more have wages that have lost a ton of buying power over the last few years. Most parents simply don't have the money to loan to their children (or they would have already done it). Since he has never been without oodles of money, Romney simply doesn't comprehend how most Americans have been forced to live -- thanks to the Republican economic policies that favor the rich (like him) over everyone else.

Now a reasonable person might think that since Romney, and his Republican cohorts, have been busy alienating women and young people, surely they are reaching out to Hispanic voters in an effort to best the numbers that John McCain got. After all, you can't win a national election with only the votes of white men. But that doesn't seem to be happening. The Romney campaign is not reaching out to Hispanics at all. Here's how McKay Coppins at Buzzfeed puts it:

Romney has exhibited little urgency in building a relationship with the Hispanic press, according to Latino reporters, activists, and political surrogates on both sides of the aisle.

A full year after Romney launched his presidential bid, the campaign doesn't have a Spanish version of its website, nor has it hired a Spanish-speaking spokesperson. Romney boycotted a primary debate on Univision, leading to the event's collapse, and, to date, he has only done one sit-down interview on a national Spanish network. The apparent apathy has left Latino advocates — and more than a few Republicans — baffled, wondering whether the campaign has already written off one of the fastest-growing demographics in the country.

And here's what msnbc.com has to say:

Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney Super PAC, is up today with a $4.3 million ad buy across nine battleground states. But what’s been amazing is that even though the president is getting outspent by outside groups left and right, the one place opponents aren’t even COMPETING is on Hispanic media outlets.Republicans are not on air on Hispanic media AT ALL so far, according to NBC/Smart Media Delta. President Obama, on the other hand, is going unchecked for two weeks, spending $435,000 – and $730,000 total so far this cycle – through mid-May with Hispanic media buys in Denver, Las Vegas, Orlando, Tampa, and Miami. If the president is wining by huge margins with Hispanics and women (more on that below), the math becomes very precarious for Romney. 

Frankly, it makes me wonder whether Romney has just given up already on trying to get any Hispanic votes. Or maybe he realizes that he's already put himself between a rock and a hard place. To appeal to Hispanic voters, he's going to have abandon the positions on the Dream Act and immigration reform that he took to appeal to the ultra-right -- and if he does that, he stands the chance of driving right-wingers to a third party (or having them just stay home on election day).

I don't feel sorry for him at all. he knew what he was doing when he lurched far to the right. I am a little surprised though, that with his history of flip-flopping, he wouldn't try to do it one more time.