During a brief, little-noticed speech in May, Rep. Mick Mulvaney implored Republican presidential contenders and their supporters to stop tailoring their rhetoric to satisfy true believers and instead prioritize expanding the conservative tent.
It was the kind of speech one would expect from Sen. Lindsey Graham, a fellow South Carolinian and 2016 candidate often tarred as a “Republican in Name Only” by Mulvaney’s compatriots in the Tea Party. But Mulvaney, the first Republican to represent his district in 130 years, is a staunch conservative who understands it is important for the right to compete in an ethnically diverse electorate.
Mulvaney, backing Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky for president because of his focus on engaging voters who usually don’t support Republicans, said he’s not encouraged by the tenor of the GOP primary campaign thus far, nearly five months since he delivered his plea for inclusiveness to a packed theater of party activists in Greenville, S.C., who were on hand for a long day of speeches from the presidential contenders.
“We’ve ended up talking to ourselves again. I think that’s the net result of the Donald Trump effect. We’ve sort of taken three steps back and now we’re sort of having this circular firing squad where all we do is beat up on each other, as opposed to try and figure out way to take conservative messages and drive them to new audience,” Mulvaney told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday.
Mulvaney, 48, a former state legislator, was swept into office by the Tea Party wave in 2010.
In case anyone thinks nearly five years in Congress have dulled his ideological resolve, think again. Mulvaney’s Heritage Action score is 91 percent, tying him with Rep. Mark Sanford for the highest ranking among all South Carolina Republicans on legislation key-voted by the conservative activist group. Mulvaney’s lifetime score with the Club for Growth, another major conservative advocacy group, is 96 percent, putting him ahead of every Palmetto State Republican except one.
Mulvaney understands data, and in 2012, it was unforgiving to Republicans.
According to exit polling from that race, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney won the battle for men with 52 percent and white voters with 59 percent. But President Obama cleaned up with African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, young voters and women, winning those categories with 93 percent, 71 percent, 73 percent, 60 percent and 55 percent, respectively. The white vote, still dominant, has been shrinking as a share of the electorate, a slide that is expected to continue.
That’s why the conservative stalwart spoke up in May, before Trump entered the GOP primary and dragged the party into a potentially damaging debate over both legal and illegal immigration.
“The largest voting demographic group in the 2016 election will be people between the ages of 18 and 30. The fastest growing demographic group will be Hispanics,” Mulvaney said then. “Look around you in this room: Convincing you is not the issue. Who can convince somebody else? Today, ask yourselves: Who can talk to those folks?”
This concern was clearly influential in his decision to endorse Paul. Comparing the Kentucky senator with rival Republican contender Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Mulvaney had this to say in an interview with the Associated Press: “Ted is not bringing anybody new into the party. Rand is.”
Trump, a New York billionaire businessman and reality television star, continues to lead the Republican field nationally, registering 23.3 percent in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls; he’s also No. 1 in the Examiner’s presidential power rankings. His immigration proposal includes limiting or reducing legal immigration, rounding up and deporting the estimated 11-12 million mostly Hispanic illegal immigrants and ending constitutionally protected birthright citizenship.
The impact on Trump’s favorability ratings with Hispanic voters, an important demographic in swing states like Colorado, Florida and Nevada, has been devastating. A late September poll found that 67 percent of Hispanics had a “very negative” opinion of Trump, up six points since a similar survey conducted in July. Overall, 72 percent of Hispanics view him unfavorably. Only 11 percent of Hispanics viewed Trump positively, with 15 percent saying they were “neutral.”
The survey was conducted jointly by Republican and Democratic pollsters working for NBC News, the Wall Street Journal and Telemundo. It relied on a sample size of 250 and had an error margin of 6.2 percentage points, but was in line with other polls taken since Trump announced his candidacy in June.
Despite his disgust with how the campaign has unfolded thus far, Mulvaney said he was not too worried about its impact on the general election, once the GOP has a nominee. Indeed, despite the undercurrent of concern across the party about the possibility of yet again alienating key voting blocs, Republicans remain optimistic that their nominee will have an opportunity to shape the political landscape once the primary campaign is in the rearview mirror.
“You have the Trump phenomenon, I get that,” said Rep. Mario Diaz Balart, a Florida Republican who is backing Jeb Bush and supports comprehensive immigration reform. “I do think, however, that Trump has such a brand name that I think a lot of people associate what Trump has said with what Trump has said.”
