Raul Damas — a smart pollster and a nice guy — <A

HREF=”http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/03_08_03_corner-archive.asp#012012″>disagrees

with my views on the so-called Hispanic vote.

Overly large political shorthand can obscure real targets of

opportunity. Raul mentions “pro-life voters.” They are just as

non-monolithic as are “Hispanic voters.” Congressman Dennis Kucinich

(Dem-Ohio) can readily target “seamless garment” pro-life, anti-death

penalty Catholic voters while President Bush would be wiser to seek

pro-life, pro-death penalty conservative Protestant and Catholic voters.

In a long-ago piece for NRO, <A

HREF=”http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-boulet082101.shtml”>”Assimilation,

not Amnesty”, I quoted from a Wall Street Journal story on

conflicts in New York City between more established Puerto Rican immigrants

and Mexican newcomers: “the nation’s Hispanic communities are not a

cohesive unit. Often, they are united by little more than Spanish and a

Census Bureau definition.”

Yet “one size fits all” Hispanic politics led Republican political

consultants in the late ’90’s to decree that the way for the GOP to win the

Hispanic vote was to make Puerto Rico our 51st state. Never mind that

Mexican Americans and Cuban Americans had little interest in Puerto Rico.

By contrast, the Castro dictatorship is not much of an issue among

Hispanics in Texas or California. But Janet Reno’s decision to send Elian

Gonzalez back to Casto’s Cuba <A

HREF=”http://www.sptimes.com/News/110500/Worldandnation/Elian_swings_Cuban_vo.shtml”>caused

Florida’s Cuban American voters to back Bush in 2000. Elian, not Spanish

campaign speeches, made George Bush our President.

Finally, there are some Hispanic voters who intensely resent getting

campaign literature addressed to them in Spanish. These

highly-assimilated, English-speaking Hispanics are natural

Republicans. Today’s bipartisan Spanish-first campaign style repels those

folks. Does the GOP truly wish its message to be “assimilation is a bad

thing”?