Hispanic Republicans

Wednesday night’s Fox Business and Univisión Republican primary debate offered some of the most amusing attempts to pander to Latinos on record. Five seconds in and moderator Stuart Varney half had a stroke pronouncing his co-moderator’s last name, Calderón. Additionally, Varney, who also has a funny accent and wasn’t born in the US, couldn’t properly pronounce "Univisión," an even less forgivable faux-pas. Didn’t he practice? Couldn’t he ask for the teleprompter to read “uh-knee-bee-sion”? Initial blunders aside, the inclusion of Jorge Ramos’s sidekick, Ilia Calderón, as a moderator was not bright at all. There are are hundreds of great Hispanic journalists out there that have good pronunciation, went to college in the US and don’t hate Republicans.

A coveted working-class demographic that has been loyally Democratic for generations stands poised to vote Republican in record numbers. Its voters are upwardly mobile, having risen from the deep poverty of their immigrant ancestors to a decent middle-class life. Their incomes are rising quickly and are soon expected to reach the national average. They start businesses at rates that exceed the native born. Recent government data shows them moving into the suburbs from ethnic enclaves in the cities. All of this has coincided with their political shift to the right. This demographic is family-oriented and deeply religious.