Realism, not Tokenism, is the Key to Winning Hispanic Voters

And those woes are well-established, with the proportion of Hispanic voters supporting a Republican presidential candidate peeking with George W. Bush receiving 40 percent in 2004, and steadily declining since, with Mitt Romney dismally obtaining 27 percent in 2012.

Meanwhile, the Hispanic population of the United States is growing, and this trend will continue, from 16.9 percent of the current population to nearly 20 percent of the population by 2025. As Hispanic voters become increasingly vital to electoral success, Republicans become increasingly inept at earning Hispanic votes. For its part, the Republican Party acknowledges that reversing this trend is vital to maintaining its influence in Arizona, Florida and the once-untouchable Texas and regaining competitiveness in national elections.

But the plan of action has been ineffective. The institutional focus has been on “outreach,” a buzzword repeated throughout the Growth & Opportunity Project, the Party’s 2013 self-assessment document. The Party also focuses on adjustments in “tone” to reach Hispanic voters, but this gives away that many Republicans view the problem as one of Hispanic voters’ inability to understand GOP positions, not that the positions themselves are objectionable. Finally, the party has focused on “elevat[ing] Hispanic leaders within Party infrastructure.”

In furtherance of the elevation of Hispanic leaders, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Gov. Susana Martinez (R-N.M.), among others, are increasingly at the forefront of Republican politics — and for good reason. Both are talented leaders and faithful to the basic conservative value of promoting liberty and prosperity through limited government intrusion. But it is not that Hispanic candidates will help the Party win the Hispanic vote, but that such candidates, influenced by the circumstances of their upbringing, make invaluable contributions to the Party’s perspective. It is the naive manifestation of tokenism to think that Hispanic voters will vote Republican because the candidate is Hispanic. Policy still drives politics, and for Republicans, the politics of realism can win the day.

So, what are the “politics of realism?” If the Democratic Party is the party of hope, change and the-village-built-that, the Republican Party is the party that bluntly acknowledges reality: that evil exists and being nice to despots won’t earn international respect, that entitlement programs will never fulfill their purpose unless they are solvent for future generations and that rooftop organic farming will never work on a large scale. The politics of realism resonate most with people who have ascended out of poverty because they understand the reality of what government can and cannot do. Many Hispanic people, who are either immigrants or the children of immigrants, share an aspirational ideology that fits the Republican party, but instead of capitalizing on commonality, the GOP has allowed immigration to become a wedge.

There are 11.7 million immigrants living in the United States illegally, and the reality is that rounding up and deporting 11.7 million people is impossible, unadvisable, unconscionable, unaffordable and undeniably not going to happen. While not necessarily advocating deportation, the no-amnesty wing of the GOP asserts that there should be no path to legal status for law-breakers resident in America, but this ignores the reality that people with families, jobs and children — many of whom are U.S. citizens even if their parents are not — who have obtained a better life, are not going to voluntarily leave the country. It ignores the reality of millions of stolen or falsified documents, and the absence of a mechanism for illegal immigrants to lawfully pay taxes or serve the military. It ignores the necessity of immigrant labor to agriculture. It ignores that the $17 trillion debt will saddle millennials with a lifetime of meager opportunities unless the population grows or there is significant inflation, and that among these, population growth is far more palatable. The politics of realism demand a common sense solution.

This is not to say that concerns about the rule of law, effective cultural assimilation and strains on social programs are not valid, but Republicans can be much more effective if they work within the confines of reality. There is nothing of the politics of realism in allowing to continue an illegal 11.7 million-person shadow society, with endemic identity theft, human trafficking and political and cultural isolation. Instead of doubting the necessity of action, Republicans should seat themselves at the table to tackle the challenge facing the nation.

In furtherance of real reform, several prominent Republicans should be applauded for their efforts. Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) supported a law that allows New Jersey high school graduates who are illegal immigrants to receive in-state college tuition, acknowledging that children should not be held responsible for their parents’ crimes, and that educational achievement reduces the likelihood of government dependency.

For his part, Jeb Bush set off a firestorm of controversy by acknowledging that people who bring their families to the United States to escape poverty do so out of love. This sentiment, genuinely shared by many Republicans, is not an act of “outreach” or an adjustment in “tone,” nor is it the deliberate elevation of any ethnicity or interest group. Instead, it is an uncommon appreciation for reality, espoused by Rubio, Martinez, Christie, Bush and others, that can be the Party’s greatest asset and restore competition to national politics.