Hispanics

Gender, Racial And Ethnic Diversity Of Republican Presidential Candidates Will Not Affect Voting Patterns In 2016 Presidential Election!

Ronald 11 Comments

The Republican Party, which has done very little to promote gender, racial or ethnic civil rights is now bragging that they are a “diverse’ party with Presidential candidates of gender, racial and ethnic identity.

It is true that Carly Fiorina is female; that Dr. Benjamin Carson is African American; and that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are Hispanics of Cuban ancestry.  It is also true that in the 2012 Presidential election cycle that Michele Bachmann was female and Herman Cain was African American.

Having said that, none of these candidates in 2012 or 2016 represent the interests of their “groups”!

The vast majority of women would not have backed Michele Bachmann and will not back Carly Fiorina, if somehow, she was to win the Republican Presidential nomination.  She is totally against the kind of issues and legislation that most women want and expect, and most women will back Hillary Clinton if she is the Democratic nominee.

The overwhelming number of African Americans will, most certainly, reject Dr. Benjamin Carson were he to become the GOP Presidential nominee, as he has no concern about the plight of lower middle class and poor people of his race, and has sold out to the “white Establishment.”  And the same applies to Herman Cain in 2012.

And neither Ted Cruz nor Marco Rubio would do well among Latinos, as only three and a half percent of people of Spanish ancestry in America are of Cuban origin, while about 65 percent are Mexican Americans and 18 percent are Puerto Rican Americans. Neither group nor other Hispanics of other national origins would support these two Senators with their harsh, hard line attitudes on immigration reform.

So the GOP can “brag” all they want about their “diverse” pool of candidates, but it is all a facade and an insult, really, to women, African Americans, and people of Hispanic ancestry in America!

Anti Immigrant (Nativist) Sentiments And The Republican Party, 1920s And 2010s: Will History Repeat Itself?

Ronald 2 Comments

In the 1920s, the Republican Party was dominant and worked to undermine immigration to the United States, which had reached record levels from 1880-1920, bringing into America millions of immigrants of Catholic and Jewish origin, as well as smaller numbers from Asia, particularly Japan.

In the early 1920s, under Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, stringent immigration laws were put into place, cutting down the so called “new” immigration of these groups, who mostly had settled in the major urban centers, and become Democratic strongholds.

The growth of these Democratic strongholds in the cities helped to bring about a Democratic majority during the Great Depression, and led to the rise of the Democratic Party as the majority party, with the Republicans seen as the party of white Anglo Saxon Protestants.

While in future generations, the Republicans would gain a percentage of about one third to 40 percent of the Jewish and Catholic vote, they never were able to appeal to these groups and gain a majority, due to their clear cut nativism.  This was a major blunder on their part, which undermined their ability to become the majority party that they had once been from the Civil War to the Great Depression.

Now in recent years, the new nativism has occurred, as the Republicans promote and advocate anti Hispanic and anti Asian propaganda, and therefore, those groups overwhelmingly support the Democrats, along with African Americans, who realize that while some Republicans supported the Civil Rights Acts in the 1960s, no longer do Republicans concern themselves with the plight of African Americans.

So the new nativism is in play, and the Republicans cannot win the White House, and will have trouble retaining control of the US Senate, as long as they spew forth nativist propaganda.

The Republican Party knows they are in a bind, but with Donald Trump using anti Hispanic propaganda, and other candidates showing insensitivity toward legal immigrants and undocumented immigrants, they are definitely doomed to fail, and lose the White House for the long term, with the growing number of people of Hispanic and Asian ancestry, who are not about to vote for the party that trashes them.

Once Texas turns “Blue”, and Georgia and North Carolina eventually, and with Virginia and Florida becoming more reliably “Blue” in Presidential elections, the Electoral College will favor the Democrats.  The Republican Party, if it survives in is present form, will be doomed for many decades to be unable to win the Presidency!

Marco Rubio Emerges From “Pack” Of Republicans As “Officeholder” And “New Generation” Of Leadership!

Ronald 4 Comments

It is interesting that in the midst of the “non officeholders” —Donald Trump, Carley Fiorina, Dr. Benjamin Carson—together gaining a majority of the support in most public opinion polls for the Republican Presidential nomination, that we are seeing the rise of Florida Senator Marco Rubio, and to a lesser extent Ohio Governor John Kasich, in the polls, while others, including Jeb Bush, are losing support.

Rubio is taking advantage of the situation to point out that he is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and that he is a “new generation” of leadership, surpassing his own “mentor”, Jeb Bush!

Rubio has many weaknesses, but the fact that he is Hispanic, is from the  leading “swing” state, Florida, and makes a good personal appearance, are all factors in his rise.

The question is whether he can overcome the “non officeholders” and continue to improve enough in debates to end up as the leader in the polls in the next few months before the Iowa Caucuses occur on February 1.

Hispanic Influence Predates That Of Other European Cultures on America, Something Forgotten By Many Conservatives!

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Listening to Donald Trump, and also to many conservatives and Republicans in general, one would think that Hispanic and Latino influence in America is somehow dangerous and “foreign”, and something new.

In reality, Hispanics and Latinos are the largest “minority” in America, and only German immigration outnumbers Mexican immigration in numbers to have come to our nation.

Also, one can forget or be ignorant of the fact that it was Spain which made the first settlements in what became the United States, 450 years since the establishment of St. Augustine, Florida as a Spanish colony in 1565.

It was Spain which settled the entire Southeast and the Southwest of the United States.

It was Spain which established settlements in Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and California.

It was Mexico that once controlled the entire Southwest, and lost it to the United States between 1836, 1848 and 1853 by rebellion, war and treaty.

But there was always a Spanish influence in America even after this, and people of Spanish heritage have played a major role in America throughout the nearly two centuries now since the original Texas “rebellion” against Mexico.

So to attack Spanish or Latin American influence in America is to show prejudice, ignorance and lack of recognition of Hispanic significance on America and its history!

The Likely “Best” Choice For The Republican Ticket In 2016: John Kasich And Marco Rubio

Ronald 30 Comments

The first Republican debate is long over, and Donald Trump is monopolizing all of the oxygen in the room, but he is a calamity waiting to happen to the Republican Party.

It is clear already that the best ticket the GOP could offer the American people, in November 2016, would be to nominate Ohio Governor John Kasich for President and Florida Senator Marco Rubio for Vice President.

This would offer the American people a 64 year old Congressional veteran, with 18 years in the House of Representatives and 6 years as Ohio Governor—a man who is a clear cut conservative but centrist in nature, accepting Medicaid; accepting gay marriage as established and tolerant of gays and lesbians; having an element of compassion toward the poor working class, drug offenders, and mentally ill people; great experience in balancing budgets as head of the House Budget Committee; great communications ability, including six years as a talk show host on Fox News Channel; a very popular Governor of the crucial state for any Republican to win the White House; who has accepted that climate change exists; has supported gun regulation in the past; has supported criminal justice reform; is open minded on illegal immigration and eventual citizenship; and has an enlightened view of Christianity and its doctrines, so that recently he has been called a Pope Francis type personality.

However, others have said that Kasich has a “prickly” personality; that he has a “hair trigger” temper; that he is condescending, arrogant, and manipulative, which is, of course, quite disturbing. It also has been pointed out that he has weakened labor unions in Ohio, and has undermined public education in Ohio, in favor of charter schools. So, as with any candidate, he has definite shortcomings, but there is also the reality that, in comparison to his rivals, he stands out as having more potential as a candidate, and to have some, if not all, of the proper character traits, with no one having all, unfortunately.

So it is clear that Kasich is not preferable to a Democratic nominee, any of them in reality, but he comes across as the best person in the race on the Republican side at this writing.

At the same time, Marco Rubio, at age 45 in 2016, might be the best choice for Vice President. He has charisma; good looks; is Hispanic (Cuban American); represents another swing state like Ohio is, but Florida is the largest state to be a swing state; and while he is much more conservative than Kasich, he has potential for growth and maturity in his views over time. Rubio would not be thrilled to be Vice President, but it is a stepping stone to the Presidency when he is older and more seasoned. Besides, he has given up his chance to hold his Senate seat, so it would be more enticing for him to accept the Vice Presidency if he fails to win the Presidential nomination of his party.

This would be a team that would easily give the Republican Party their best shot at winning, but if they do not appeal to women, African Americans, Hispanics, the young, and to working class Americans, they have no chance of winning, so they need to moderate their image.

This team of Kasich and Rubio could accomplish what no other combination would be able to do–win the White House for the Republicans!  Having said that, the odds for the Democrats to keep the White House are excellent, and if Trump runs as an independent or third party candidate, it is guaranteed that the Democrats will win, and likely be certain to regain the Senate, and possibly,. even the House of Representative!

50 Years Of The Voting Rights Act, And Reluctance To Enforce It By Supreme Court And Many States Now A Sad Reality!

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On August 6, it will be 50 years since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, overcoming a near century of the denial of the right to vote to African Americans, despite the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870.

The Southern states denied African Americans the right to vote through all kinds of methods for three quarters of a century, but finally it was a Southern President and many Congressional Republicans joining with Democrats that caused that denial of democracy to be overcome, finally.

And Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, all Republicans, continued to endorse, promote, hail, and extend the provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

But then the Supreme Court majority under Chief Justice John Roberts weakened enforcement in a Supreme Court decision in 2013 (Shelby County, Alabama V. Holder), effectively giving license to states run by Republican governors and legislatures to pass new restrictions on voting, that would not only hurt African Americans, but also Hispanics, poor whites, the elderly, college students—all being required to make onerous efforts to meet the new restrictions on voting rights, when there was no earlier evidence of voting fraud.

This sad reality has pained John Lewis, Georgia Congressman, who was involved in the movement for voting rights in Alabama (the Selma-Montgomery March), and was seriously beaten, along with others who were killed, fighting peacefully for the basic right to vote.

So while we celebrate the 50th anniversary of this path breaking legislation, we have to hope that the Supreme Court will revisit what it has done by a 5-4 vote in the next term, with the hope that they will reconsider what they have done, based on the discrimination now being practiced in many states across the nation.

Promotion Of Equal Justice: Barack Obama And Prison Reform

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President Barack Obama yesterday did something no President has ever done–visit a federal prison In Oklahoma, and talk with officials and inmates who are in prison for long periods of years for nonviolent criminal offenses realted to drugs.

The fact that we have about one percent of the population in prisons, many of them for drug offenses, has become a national issue, with Republicans, such as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky joining Democrats such as Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey calling for reform.

Obama is making this a national commitment to reform our entire justice system, which sees so many more African Americans and Hispanics languishing in prison, while whites are able to avoid the large percentage of drug convictions.

The War on Drugs of Richard Nixon was made more strict and harsh under Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton in particular, putting people with nonviolent offenses, who committed three such crimes, being sentenced to life.

Now Obama has commuted the sentences of 46 drug offenders in prison for a long time, and has done close to 100 such commutations, making him the moat active President since Lyndon B. Johnson in that regard.

Equal justice is his mission, and he is well on the road to that accomplishment, through the hard work of Attorney General Loretta Lynch, following up on the excellent work in this area of former Attorney General Eric Holder!

Proper Republican Strategy: Attack Donald Trump Or Ignore Him? Neither Will Help GOP Brand!

Ronald 13 Comments

The Republican Party is in deep trouble, as Donald Trump has now emerged in first place in some public opinion polls, passing Jeb Bush, and leaving everyone else far behind.

This brings up the issue: What is the proper Republican strategy to deal with Trump, attack him or ignore him?

In reality, neither will help the GOP brand!

If the decision is to attack him, Trump will be infuriated, and will strike back and set out to destroy the GOP totally. He will bluster and bloviate, and will have the means to form an independent movement or third party.

If the Republicans choose NOT to attack and, therefore, to ignore him, they will be complicit in his racist and nativist viewpoints, which many of them actually agree with.

No political party can succeed now or in the future which sets out to demonize ethnic minorities, because, like it or not, the nation is becoming more diverse, and will be minority majority within three decades, counting Hispanic and Latino Americans, African Americans, and Asian Americans.

There is no way to bring back, even if people wished it, a mostly white Anglo America, as that is not going to happen.

The rapidly aging white Anglo population is dying off, and the nation and the Republican Party MUST face reality.

But is that likely to happen for 2016?

The answer is NO, and therefore, the GOP is rapidly becoming a dinosaur, and trying to make voting more difficult will require more effort to overcome such restrictions through the courts and through political action to register voters and meet the onerous requirements that some Republican governed states have put on the elderly, the poor, college students, and racial minorities in a purposeful manner.

And with a Democratic President, a likely Democratic Senate, and a possible Democratic House of Representatives, the Republicans will be marginalized further. And a Democratic President will have the ability to insure that the Supreme Court and lower federal courts move to the left, and overcome the conservative influence of Ronald Reagan, and the two Presidents Bush.

Once constitutional law goes back to the Warren Court image of the 1950s through the 1970s, the country will have been transformed in a way that the Republicans will never recover, until they abandon the far right image they have developed over recent years. Only then will the Tea Party influence finally dissolve and disappear!

24 Years Of Justice Thurgood Marshall; 24 Years Of Justice Clarence Thomas: The Contrast!

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Hard to believe, but it has been 24 years since Clarence Thomas was nominated for the Supreme Court by President George H.W. Bush, with Thomas being chosen to replace the first African American on the Court, Thurgood Marshall, who had been selected 24 years earlier (1967), by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Marshall had made it clear that he wanted to stay on the Court until a Democrat was elected President, but despite his desires, his poor health forced him to resign. Marshall stands out as having been a quality member of the Court, one of the top 15 Supreme Court Justices of the 20th century.

Thomas, the second African American in Court history, would face severe attacks on his competency and on charges by Anita Hill that he had sexually harassed her when she worked for him at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during the 1980s.

The Thomas nomination became a major controversy, and led to the passage of sexual harassment laws affecting all employees in America, both in government and out of government.

It also led to a bitter and close nomination battle, with Thomas winning his seat on the Court by the closest margin in modern history, 52-48.

It caused Thomas to become embittered, and he has expressed this bitterness toward liberals ever since, and he has pledged he will not leave the Court until he is 86 years of age in 2034, doubling his age of 43 when he came to the Court.

Thomas has made his mission on the Court to oppose civil rights and civil liberties wherever he can, despite the fact that he benefited personally from Affirmative Action, and his race helped him to gain his job, even though his accomplishments were far less than Thurgood Marshall. Many well qualified African Americans were passed over for Thomas, because he was an outlier, a conservative, who did not care about what had happened to people of his race.

So Thomas has been an extreme right winger on the Supreme Court, along with Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito, but in many ways more hard right than even them, without the intellectual brilliance of Scalia for much of the time he has been on the Court.

Thomas has almost never asked questions in oral arguments, and his history on the Court is just about the least impressive of all nine Justices.

But at the same time, he has had conflicts of interest that should disqualify his Court membership, and his wife has been a big power player with Right Wing groups that present many conflicts of interest, but no concern or explanation or apology from Justice Thomas, who has no concern as to how he is perceived or reported in the news media.

Thomas has come across as arrogant, but also dense about discrimination against African Americans, Hispanics and Latinos, women, gays and lesbians, organized labor, and the environment.

Thomas is seen as certain to work against Affirmative Action, as in several cases in the past, despite the advantages he has had in his own life.

When one compares him to Justice Thurgood Marshall, it is clear that the appointment of Thomas was just about the worst decision President George H. W. Bush made in his term of office.

And if in the afterlife, someone can look down on the world, it would be clear that Justice Marshall, who was known for being blunt, would be furious that Thomas replaced him as the African American member on the Court, with no likelihood of his early departure anytime soon!

From Strom Thurmond To Paul Thurmond: Is The Civil War Finally Over In The South?

Ronald 4 Comments

South Carolina, which started the Civil War at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, MAY have finally conceded defeat on June 23, 2015, with the courageous speech by State Senator Paul Thurmond, son of the notorious segregationist and racist Governor and Senator Strom Thurmond, who made his career on racial division.

A burden to the Democratic Party, when Lyndon B. Johnson was able to overcome Southern Democrats and conservative Republicans, and courageously get through Congress the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Senator Strom Thurmond quickly switched to the Republican Party, and over the next generation, the Confederate South transferred its loyalties to the Republican Party, despite their hatred of the party because of Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.

The Republicans welcomed and embraced the segregationists, and did whatever they could to appeal to the prejudices of many Southern whites, rather than elevate them to a level of tolerance and open mindedness.

And when the Supreme Court damaged the Voting Rights Act in a 2013 decision, it was Republican state legislatures and Governors who rushed to pass voter restriction laws, designed to harm African Americans and other minorities, as well as the poor, reminding us of what had happened after Reconstruction ended in the late 19th century. They were not afraid to show their purpose, to deny people the vote on flimsy grounds, and showed no conscience.

This sudden transformation after the Charleston Massacre is what finally brought out the truth, that the Republicans have been promoting racism, and even after the disaster, many Republican office holders and Presidential candidates were slow to react.

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was hesitant to call for removal of the Confederate Flag, but finally did so under duress, but it was state Senator Paul Thurmond, son of Strom Thurmond, who showed true courage and guts in denouncing what his father had stood for, and saying the flag must be removed.

There are still plenty of bigoted Southerners in South Carolina and elsewhere, who rushed to buy Confederate flags, shirts, and other paraphernalia, but thank goodness that Walmart, Ebay, Amazon and other retailers announced the end of such sales yesterday.

It is time for the Republican Party nationally to stop voting restriction laws, and truly compete for the African American vote and the Hispanic-Latino vote too, and also to stop the attack on women and on gays and lesbians, as they are now the party of so much hate. The white racist vote is rapidly declining, and the GOP is living in the past, reveling in its promotion of narrow mindedness and intolerance!

We are all in this together as a nation, and the Republican Party must change dramatically, and must repudiate the Tea Party Movement whackos, or it will expire in the near future!