In the most recent City Journal (just online today), Heather Mac Donald has a fascinating piece laying out California’s rapidly changing demographics, and the consequences the state faces now that half of all births are Hispanics.
The entire piece is worth a read, but Mac Donald homes in on a particularly topical point now that we’re in an election year: the idea that Hispanic voters are a natural Republican constituency, given their work ethic and traditionally conservative social values. MacDonald provides strong evidence that this is nonsense:
Hispanics’ reliance on the government safety net helps explain their ongoing support for the Democratic Party. Indeed, liberal spending policies are a more important consideration for Hispanic voters than ethnic identification or the so-called values issues that they are often said to favor. “What Republicans mean by ‘family values’ and what Hispanics mean are two completely different things,” says John Echeveste, founder of the oldest Latino marketing firm in Southern California and a player in California Latino politics. “We are a very compassionate people; we care about other people and understand that government has a role to play in helping people.” That Democratic allegiance was on display in the 2010 race for lieutenant governor, when Hispanics favored San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, the epitome of an elite tax-and-spend liberal, over the Hispanic Republican incumbent, Abel Maldonado, despite Newsom’s unilateral legalization of gay marriage in San Francisco in 2004. La Opinión, California’s largest Spanish-language newspaper, cited Newsom’s “good progressive platform” in endorsing him. In the 2010 race for state attorney general, Hispanic voters helped give the victory to liberal San Francisco district attorney Kamala Harris, who was running against Los Angeles district attorney Steve Cooley, a law-and-order moderate—even in Cooley’s own backyard of L.A.
Republican political consultants routinely argue that California’s Hispanics were driven from their natural Republican home by a 1994 voter initiative—backed by then-governor Pete Wilson, a Republican—denying most government benefits to illegal aliens. But it would be almost impossible today to find a Hispanic immigrant who has even heard of Proposition 187. Jim Tolle, pastor of one of the largest Hispanic churches in Southern California, La Iglesia En El Camino, says that his congregation knows nothing about Prop. 187. The fact is that Hispanic skepticism toward the Republican Party derives as much from its perceived economic biases as from Republicans’ opposition to illegal immigration and amnesty. A March 2011 poll by Moore Information asked California’s Latino voters why they had an unfavorable view of the Republican Party. The two top reasons were that the party favored only the rich and that Republicans were selfish and out for themselves; Republican positions on immigration law were cited less often.
If economic self-interest is the main driver of political ideology, Republicans will continue to be in trouble with Hispanics. According to Mac Donald, Hispanics made up 60 percent of California’s poor in 2010, despite being less than 38 percent of the state’s population. Only 56 percent of Los Angeles ninth graders finish high school in four years, and, of the small percentage of Hispanics that do go to college, very few go into computer science or engineering. In 2008, the largest percentage of Mexican-American postgraduate enrollment was in education, where they will likely go on to become union-loyal Democrats.
Read the full article here.
— Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute and a co-author of the Campaign Manager Survey.
'Hispanic' as used in modern politics is an invented demographic term to combine Mexicans, Panamanians, Venezuelans, Columbians, Peruvians, Cubans, Guatemalans etc. into one "massive category that is clearly NOT really predictable as one thing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCorrect. The term "Hispanic" is a largely made-up, political term. Ethnically, most people "south of the US border" are essentailly what used to be known in the US as "Indians".
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFolks who are tired of living in and paying for the entitlement state California has become are leaving the state in large numbers. Left behind are millions of Hispanics of child-bearing age and white liberals who worship Planned Parenthood. You do the math. People think California is in good financial hands because of the wealthy entertainers who live there, but many of them keep their legal residences in tax-friendly states that allow them to keep more of what they earn. For all their huffing and puffing about paying higher taxes, many Hollywood millionaires are the "do as I say and not as I do" type.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJenna: Proof please that
(i) white liberals "worship" planned parenthood
(ii) rich republicans leaving in droves
But facts don't generally get in the way of your insightful analyses.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLighten up Kevin. This is a comment section on a political commentary website - there's just a touch of anecdote and generalization going around. We're not writing doctoral dissertations.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJenna:
no response? if you can't defend your comments, why post them?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo the answer is.... Accept social democracy and a British type welfare state because we refuse to enforce our border? Never have I heard of people becoming Republican because because all of a sudden Republicans caved to their desires. But I have turned a number of friends by convincing them that not only is conservatism right, but they were conservative all along.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseResisting "free money" is hard for anyone to do. Voting yourself more and more of other people's money, it's the new Democratic constituency.
Maybe people that contribute less than they receive into the system should not be able to vote? I know that would never happen, but it would end the incentive for politicians to "buy" their constituents.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere's a little thing called TARP. Perhaps you've heard of it? The Wall Street speculators who wrecked the economy got a cool $47 billion of other people's money. I got laid off.
Maybe the job creators [sic] shouldn't be allowed to vote.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThank you for the comic relief, Moskow66. Wall Street speculators wrecked the economy, and your elaborate fantasy world where this is a true statement, are neither here not there regarding this topic. The mental exercise being meant to form a solution to the problem of people voting themselves more and more of other people's money and politicians more than willing to buy their votes.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLet me guess - it wasn't the folks on Wall Street who gorged themselves on CDOs and leveraged themselves out into stratosphere who wrecked the economy, it was Barney Frank.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCareful, your class hate is showing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo sad, so very, very sad.
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's ironic that the GOP is perceived as the rich party, when in fact most of the wealthy in the United States vote Left. Look at a county voting map of states like Utah or Wyoming. The whole state will be red except super rich blue beacons such as Park City and Jackson Hole.
What makes it doubly worse, is that Republicans are far more charitable with their money, and specifically to the poor, often through poverty programs at their respective churches.
The two best reasons to oppose government poverty relief programs are 1) they make poverty worse, and 2) they interfere with the charity that we want to provide ourselves. The Hispanic population is overwhelmingly Christian, and would be receptive to this point except the GOP is increasingly letting Ayn Rand types make our message. Such a message is going to repel Hispanic voters as it very well should.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAdding to what 'Jenna' said:
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCalifornia public schools are the hub for recruitment of Hispanics into the Democratic party . Liberal guilt- ridden white teachers use minority students and
their parents as depositors of their charitable in kind donations (teachers wouldn't part with their own bucks, only their tax payer funded work time) and successfully indoctrinate
the Hispanic community by subtly seducing their job seeking, upwardly mobile seeking mothers.
The GOP needs to tackle this problem. California schools led the nation in using
children as human shields in public protests against the war in Iraq just prior to the
2008 election. California students, under the ruse of "Field Trip", were bussed to public parks, handed professionally printed signs by their teachers who then marched them around and filmed them; students then ate their free bagged lunches in the park, and finally were bussed back to their local public schools. Many Hispanic mothers were invited as chaperones; they gladly participated and promptly were registered to vote by voter registrars (Acorn like) who were waiting at the parks.
The Democratic Party in California has built in outreach through the public schools.
Public health program workers in California are also the other very effective outreach
arm of the Democratic Party. If the GOP would cancel a few of their country club
lunches and show up on the ground of our communities maybe they would get a clue.
I see that in the Twin Cities. Immigrants move into Minneapolis and St Paul, where there basically isn't a Republican party. So the Democrats get their hooks into the new immigrants right away, and brainwash them with stories about the evil greedy racist Republicans.
That is how you get the odd alliances of pro-homosexual, pro-abortion democrats in bed with conservative Muslims from places like Somolia.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI find the issue of economics to be a good point of discussion. It should favor the Republicans if they can drive home the point of Democratic cronyism. Many rich people are Democrats. I find it interesting that immigration isn't as big of issue that it should have been. Perhaps even the Hispanics know the illegal immigrants hurt the Hispanic American citizens who need the low paying unskilled jobs that they're willing to do.
Republicans policies should favor the middle class that everyone aspires to. Helping the poor through self-help should be emphasized, but I guess everyone wants handout. In California, the Democratic model is breaking. The poor is getting much much less. The Union pensions have broke the budget. It can't continue forever.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs NRO's favorite Pat Buchanan is fond of saying............either the GOP will end mass immigration or mass immigration will end the GOP. Very true.
Poor, lowly educated, 3rd world peasants do not support nor vote for small, limited government and low taxes. Duh. But the Bush family doesn't understand this. Neither do most establishment/beltway GOP types.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLinda Chavez will be on the "rrraaaaacccciiiisssmmm" warpath any second now. She'll bleat about "family values" even as the numbers show us that to be a complete lie, with teenage pregnancies and families with multiple fathers skyrocketing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd we'll continue to be shocked that the least intelligent and least educated members of a third world country can't make it in the United States.
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