How Stupid Are Republicans That They Didn’t Get the Message? In particular about Immigration Reform?

Republican Party leaders are stupid enough to believe they don’t appeal to Hispanics because of the party’s position on illegal immigration and opposition to comprehensive immigration reform. Apparently, the Republican leadership believes that if they help to pass some form of immigration reform, Hispanics will vote for more jobs destroying, middle class exploding, tax breaks for the rich. They must believe that Hispanics will vote for more war, privatizing public schools, the military and other government services; that they will vote for destroying Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, shipping more jobs overseas and redistributing more income from the 99 to the 1 percent. Somehow, the Republican leadership believes Hispanics will vote for people who deny science if it happens to present bad news for corporate profits, like global warming; and that they’ll vote for nut jobs who believe in “legitimate rape.”

Here’s how stupid the Republican leadership is. Before the November 2012 election, a Fox Latino poll found that only 6 percent of Hispanics listed immigration reform as their number one priority, compared to 45 percent who listed the economy as their number one issue. A Latino Decisions election eve poll found 53 percent of the respondents thought the economy was their number one priority, compared to 35 percent who thought immigration reform should be number one. On a national level, Republicans tend to get between 17 and 35 percent of the Hispanic vote. Helping on immigration reform isn’t likely to change that.

In other words, the economy is the number one priority for most US Hispanics. They generally tend to vote Democratic, and there’s nothing the Republicans can do about this, since the positions espoused by the Republicans are aimed primarily at destroying the middle class.

In fairness to the vast majority of Republican politicians, the bulk of the national Democratic establishment has the middle class in their cross hairs, as well. Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden is classic example.

Maybe the Republicans should stop nominating far right, and ultra-right politicians for national offices. Maybe they should oppose the Democrats in their income redistribution plans, rather than aid and abet it. Maybe the Republicans should nominate people to national office with a platform for aiding the middle class, rather than redistributing middle class income to the rich. Maybe that would get more Hispanics to vote for the GOP.

Click below for more on this story from the Guardian of the UK.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/29/five-reasons-republicans-wont-win-over-latino-voters/

Click below for another lesson the Republicans didn’t learn from the election of 2012.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/26/maddow-republicans-taking-all-the-wrong-lessons-away-from-2012-drubbing/

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The Demographics of the Jobs Recovery

Hispanics and Asians are leading the pack in terms of job recovery. Whites and African-Americans lag behind. Here’s why.

click here for the full story

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How the Corporate Media of the One Percent Acts to Create Conflict Among the 99 Percent

Yesterday, the Department of Education released the results of a survey that showed Hispanic and African-American students were more likely than white students to be expelled or suspended. Racism was cited by some in the media as the reason for this, mainly because most educators are white, but I have my doubts, and that’s because something is missing in this survey–Asian students. How come they’ve been left out?

It turns out that in study after study white students are expelled and suspended at higher rates than Asian students. If racism is the problem, then it stands to reason that white educators are far more racist against white students than Asian students and that’s a problem that has to be dealt with. Of course that’s silly, but why do we assume that racism is the reason Hispanic and African-American students are punished more than whites?

If we include Asian students, then we have to look at culture and socioeconomic reasons for the difference in rates of punishment. That’s something the corporate news media of the one percent doesn’t want us to do, because then we’d begin to look at the one percent as the problem, not the solution.

If we look at Asian-Americans from a cultural point-of-view, we find that more of them live in two parent households than do whites, Hispanics and African-Americans. Studies also show that Asians on average value education and are taught respect for authority figures than the other groups.

We also find that socioeconomic factors play a big role in punishment rates. Poverty is more abundant among African-American and Hispanic families than among Asian and white families. That means we’d have to examine things like income and wealth distribution as a reason for the difference between punishment rates among the groups. That means we’d have to look at economic policies that have pushed 50 percent of Americans into a life of living at or near the poverty line during the last thirty years. That means we’d have to examine the legislation that has redistributed income and wealth from working Americans to the rich during the last three decades. We’d have to admit that enacting policies that allowed the one percent to extort 25 percent of the total national income nowadays compared to 7 percent thirty years ago was not good policy. But we can’t do that. The one percent control the corporate propaganda machines, called newspapers and television.

In its propaganda survey, the Department of Education is saying we need to let people know that government workers, those lazy teachers sucking the system dry with those wonderful pensions and other benefits, like health insurance, are the problem, not the solution.

That’s stupid, of course, but people are still going to believe it, because Asians aren’t counted in the report of the study. Right now there are plenty of Hispanics, African-Americans and liberal whites up in arms over this report. Teachers versus them. Nice. Perfect. The divisive issue has taken root and divided the 99 percent once again. Don’t let it.

Boycott the corporate propaganda organs that reported this story. Boycott the Oregonian newspaper. Boycott them all. Put them out of business!

Related Articles

The Christian Science Monitor: Are Blacks and Hispanics Singled Out for Punishment in School?

New York Times: Racial Disparity in School Suspensions

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Obama’s Poll Numbers Sink

September 7, 2011
Obama Approval Sinks to New Lows Among Whites, Hispanics
Blacks’ support remains high, but at 84% ties record for monthly low
by Lydia Saad

PRINCETON, NJ — President Barack Obama earned the lowest monthly job approval rating of his presidency to date in August, with 41% of U.S. adults approving of his overall job performance, down from 44% in July. He also received term-low monthly job approval ratings from both Hispanics (48%) and whites (33%) and tied his lowest rating from blacks (84%).

President Barack Obama Job Approval by Race

The latest results are based on Gallup Daily tracking throughout August and include telephone interviews with more than 12,000 whites, 1,100 blacks, and nearly 1,200 Hispanics.

Whites’ approval of Obama has trended downward thus far in 2011 after showing little change in 2010. Whites’ largest drop in support for the president within a calendar year — 17 percentage points — came in 2009, declining from 58% in February, the first full month of Obama’s presidency, to 41% by December.

Blacks have remained solidly approving of Obama throughout his presidency; however, 2011 is the first year this group’s monthly job approval has routinely registered below 90%, indicating a decline in blacks’ support, albeit a fairly minor one.

The president’s current standing with Hispanics reflects a rather steep decline since January, when 60% approved of him. This follows Hispanics’ less-pronounced drops in their support in each of the first two years of his presidency. As a result, the gap between blacks and whites in Obama’s job approval has been widening while the gap between Hispanics’ and whites’ approval has been narrowing.

Although Hispanics’ monthly approval of Obama dipped below 50% for the first time in August, more still approve than disapprove (48% vs. 37%) of his job performance. A relatively high 15% — typical for Hispanics — has no opinion.

Hispanics’ Approval of Obama Now Close to National Average

The gradual shift in Hispanics’ job approval of Obama toward whites’ level of job approval is also seen in the accompanying graph showing the differences between Obama’s job approval rating, nationally, and his ratings from each racial group, on a monthly basis since February 2009.

While blacks and Hispanics both expressed significantly higher-than-average approval for Obama throughout 2009 and most of 2010, Hispanics’ approval has been moving progressively closer to the national average and is now only single digits above it. Whites’ approval has consistently remained about eight points below the national average. As a result, blacks have become an extreme outlier — the only major racial group showing well-above-average approval.

Gap Between Racial Groups’ Approval of President Obama and National Average

Bottom Line

Despite launching his presidency with a large majority of Hispanics approving of his job performance, along with most blacks, Obama has seen significant erosion in Hispanics’ support. As a result, while Hispanics’ approval of Obama was at one time 20 points higher than the national average, at this time it is just 7 points higher. Two significant slips in Hispanics’ approval of Obama were seen in 2010, perhaps linked with the president hedging on campaign promises to make immigration reform a priority. However, that decline has continued into 2011 as the nation’s focus has turned more to the economy and federal budget problems.
Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone interviews conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking Aug. 1-31, 2011, with a random sample of 15,343 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point.

For results based on the sample of 12,254 whites, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage points. For results based on the samples of 1,137 blacks and 1,183 Hispanics, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Each sample includes a minimum quota of 400 cell phone respondents and 600 landline respondents per 1,000 national adults, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents for gender within region. Landline telephone numbers are chosen at random among listed telephone numbers. Cell phones numbers are selected using random digit dial methods. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.

Samples are weighted by gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, adults in the household, and phone status (cell phone-only/landline only/both, cell phone mostly, and having an unlisted landline number). Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2010 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older non-institutionalized population living in U.S. telephone households. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting and sample design.

The questions reported here were asked of a random half-sample of respondents for 30 nights in August on the Gallup Daily tracking survey.

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

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