Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton fits in perfectly in Donald Trump’s ignorant GOP:
Cotton laid out an alternative argument [as to why Mitt Romney lost in 2012], citing data from exit polls and even margins of error. George W. Bush won his historic forty per cent of the Hispanic vote in 2004 almost without a mention of immigration. John McCain made immigration reform a centerpiece of his 2008 Presidential campaign and received thirty-one per cent of the Hispanic vote. Four years later, Romney talked about “self-deportation” and won twenty-seven per cent. “It didn’t seem to hurt him nearly as much as you might’ve expected,” Cotton said. “So, whatever it is that we can do to appeal to Hispanic voters, it would seem, is independent of what we do on immigration.”
Let’s unpack the stupid.
1) “George W. Bush won his historic forty percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004 almost without a mention of immigration”
Wrong. He mentioned it a lot. Also, he pretended to speak fluent Spanish, and the stupid anglo press went along with the fiction.
2) “John McCain made immigration reform a centerpiece of his 2008 Presidential campaign and received thirty-one per cent of the Hispanic vote. Four years later, Romney talked about “self-deportation” and won twenty-seven per cent. ‘It didn’t seem to hurt him nearly as much as you might’ve expected,’ Cotton said. “
The number of Latinos who voted in 2008 was 9.8 million, while 11.2 million Latinos voted in 2012.
If the exit polls are right, that means that McCain received the votes of three million Latinos, while Romney received the votes of … three million. How many did George W. Bush get in 2004 when about 7.5 million Latinos voted?
Wait for it … three million!
It’s like there’s a core base of Latino voters that the GOP can get every year! Problem is, while Democrats got 4.5 million Latino votes in 2004, Barack Obama got 8.2 million in 2008—or double the amount. And if you think that giving your opponent a free extra four million votes “didn’t seem to hurt him nearly as much,” then you’re a fucking moron and have failed basic math and Elections 101. Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and Virginia certainly beg to differ.
Donald Trump will bring out even more Latinos this year, thanks to immigration, and maybe he’ll get that three million to turn out for him (I doubt it), but it’ll do him a fat amount of good when another 10 million vote against him.
3) “So, whatever it is that we can do to appeal to Hispanic voters, it would seem, is independent of what we do on immigration.”
Wishful thinking, for sure. But I bet you’re currently wondering, what does Tom Cotton think appeals to Hispanic voters? Luckily, he tells us!
The corollary to this view of the effects of an anti-immigration platform is that Republicans can appeal to Hispanics with an economic message. “If you’re a first-generation Guatemalan working in northwest Arkansas, legal, you’re working for Tyson or something, maybe you’re working for a landscaping company or something, maybe your wife is a nanny or something, you have the same concerns as the white guy living down the road from you,” Cotton said. “By and large, you want a job that pays a decent wage and some benefits and some prospect for advancement. You want safety on your streets so you don’t have to worry about crime against your family. You don’t want radical terrorists to blow up the mall when you go shopping for back-to-school clothes for your kids.
Let’s unpack:
4) “If you’re a first-generation Guatemalan working in northwest Arkansas, legal, you’re working for Tyson or something, maybe you’re working for a landscaping company or something, maybe your wife is a nanny or something, you have the same concerns as the white guy living down the road from you,” Cotton said.
The white guy is worried about his friends and family being carted away by ICE agents? He’s worried about workplace discrimination? He’s worried about national political figures demonizing his entire demographic, accusing them of not being American?
Wow. Who knew?
5) “By and large, you want a job that pays a decent wage and some benefits and some prospect for advancement.”
Those immigrants are working at Tyson, working as nannies, or doing landscaping, so forget about decent wages and “some” benefits. And this is particularly rich from the same assholes who continue to fight a raise in the minimum wage—which would disproportionately help Latinos on the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder.
And advancement? Those same immigrants on the chicken slaughter assembly line aren’t being promoted into the corporate offices …
6) “You want safety on your streets so you don’t have to worry about crime against your family. “
You also don’t want to worry about your children or nephews or cousins being shredded to pieces at the local nightclub, movie theater, or school. But it’s not as if Tom Cotton is overly concerned about easy access to assault weapons and other instruments of war.
7) “You don’t want radical terrorists to blow up the mall when you go shopping for back-to-school clothes for your kids.”
I can guaran-fucking-tee you that this isn’t a concern among Latinos, where they live in fear of family destroying government SWAT teams, violent gang members, and racist fucks with military-grade hardware. Terrorism? How quaint! They wish that’s all they had to worry about. That would mean they lived in a world where violence and trauma were an aberration, rather than the norm.
But they don’t live in that world in huge part because of people like Tom Cotton, who are so self-deluded they think the current racist GOP agenda will do anything to expand their share of the Latino electorate beyond that base three million. And when they fail this year, and the next cycle and the one after, they can keep consoling themselves by saying “it didn’t hurt us much”—even as the White House falls further and further out of their reach.