Présidentielle américaine/2012: Les hispaniques devraient être un électoral naturel pour les Républicains (Who needs two liberal parties?)

It’s very hard to make the economic argument to people who think you want to deport their grandmother. Marco Rubio

The irony, for those Republican primary voters who demanded tough stances on immigration, is that this is one problem Obama has inadvertently solved. The economy is so lousy under his stewardship that immigrants have stopped coming. Mona Charen

We have never quite had the present perfect storm of nearly half not paying federal income taxes, nearly 50 million on food stamps, and almost half the population on some sort of federal largess — and a sophistic elite that promotes it and at the same time finds ways to be exempt from its social and cultural consequences. For an Obama, Biden, Kerry, Pelosi, or Feinstein, the psychological cost for living like 18th-century French royalty is the promotion of the welfare state for millions of others who for now will be kept far away, in places like Bakersfield or Mendota. The solution, I fear, may be near-insolvency along the Wisconsin model, and self-correction after some dark Greek-like years, or, in contrast, in extremis blue politicians having to deal with the consequences of their own policies. In the manner that an Obama can vastly expand drones and renditions without a whimper of liberal angst, so too someone like him will have to deal with bounced Medicare reimbursements or free cell phones that can’t be replaced when they break, or long lines in federal health clinics emptied of doctors who have gone elsewhere. The laws of physics ultimately prevail. In Michigan in September I had a talk with a retired auto worker who did not care that the bailout cost $25 billion, was not sustainable, shorted the legal first-in-line creditors, shorted politically incorrect managerial pensioners, or ensured the Volt debacle. He simply said to me, “Obama saved my son’s job and I don’t care about much else.” That’s the rub in the short term that seems to the norm in at least the past and future few years. It means that the Republicans, without a once-in-a-lifetime Reagan-like perfect candidate — or some sort of national crisis in the manner that Iran once derailed Jimmy Carter, or Ross Perot once caused incumbent George H. W. Bush to implode — can’t quite get that extra 2 to 3 percentage points they need on the national scene to succeed. Victor Davis Hanson

Hispanics (…) should be a natural Republican constituency: striving immigrant community, religious, Catholic, family-oriented, and socially conservative(on abortion, for example). The principal reason they go Democratic is the issue of illegal immigrants. In securing the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney made the strategic error of (unnecessarily) going to the right of Rick Perry. Romney could never successfully tack back. For the party in general, however, the problem is hardly structural. It requires but a single policy change: Border fence plus amnesty. Yes, amnesty. Use the word. Shock and awe — full legal normalization (just short of citizenship) in return for full border enforcement. (…) Imagine Marco Rubio advancing such a policy on the road to 2016. It would transform the landscape. He’d win the Hispanic vote. Yes, win it. A problem fixable with a single policy initiative is not structural. It is solvable. (…) The country doesn’t need two liberal parties. Yes, Republicans need to weed out candidates who talk like morons about rape. But this doesn’t mean the country needs two pro-choice parties either. In fact, more women are pro-life than are pro-choice. The problem here for Republicans is not policy but delicacy — speaking about culturally sensitive and philosophically complex issues with reflection and prudence. (…) More Ford ’76 than Reagan ’80, Romney is a transitional figure, both generationally and ideologically. Behind him, the party has an extraordinarily strong bench. In Congress — Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Kelly Ayotte, (the incoming) Ted Cruz, and others. And the governors — Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, Nikki Haley, plus former governor Jeb Bush and the soon-retiring Mitch Daniels. (Chris Christie is currently in rehab.) (…) The answer to Romney’s failure is not retreat, not aping the Democrats’ patchwork pandering. It is to make the case for restrained, rationalized, and reformed government in stark contradistinction to Obama’s increasingly unsustainable big-spending, big-government paternalism. Charles Krauthammer

Susana Martinez, Nikki Haley, Marc Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Brian Sandoval …

Alors qu’après la courte défaite républicaine à l’élection présidentielle américaine suite à la défection, sans parler de la « surprise d’octobre » de l’ouragan Sandy, d’une partie de son électorat face au Père Noël de Chicago et ses cadeaux empoisonnés …

Tout le monde y va de ses appels à réformer, devant l’évolution démographique du pays, le prétendument néenderthalien GOP …

Remise des pendules à l’heure avec l’éditorialiste conservateur du Washington Post Charles Krauthammer …

Rappelant l’évidence de l’appartenance naturelle des hispaniques et d’ailleurs des autres minorités au parti de l’effort individuel et des valeurs familiales et judéo-chrétiennes …

The Way Forward

Charles Krauthammer

NRO

November 8, 2012

They lose and immediately the chorus begins. Republicans must change or die. A rump party of white America, it must adapt to evolving demographics or forever be the minority.

The only part of this that is even partially true regards Hispanics. They should be a natural Republican constituency: striving immigrant community, religious, Catholic, family-oriented, and socially conservative (on abortion, for example).

The principal reason they go Democratic is the issue of illegal immigrants. In securing the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney made the strategic error of (unnecessarily) going to the right of Rick Perry. Romney could never successfully tack back.

For the party in general, however, the problem is hardly structural. It requires but a single policy change: Border fence plus amnesty. Yes, amnesty. Use the word. Shock and awe — full legal normalization (just short of citizenship) in return for full border enforcement.

I’ve always been of the “enforcement first” school, with the subsequent promise of legalization. I still think it’s the better policy. But many Hispanics fear that there will be nothing beyond enforcement. So, promise amnesty right up front. Secure the border with guaranteed legalization to follow on the day the four border-state governors affirm that illegal immigration has slowed to a trickle.

Imagine Marco Rubio advancing such a policy on the road to 2016. It would transform the landscape. He’d win the Hispanic vote. Yes, win it. A problem fixable with a single policy initiative is not structural. It is solvable.

The other part of the current lament is that the Republican party consistently trails among blacks, young people, and (unmarried) women. (Republicans are plus-seven among married women.) But this is not for reasons of culture, identity, or even affinity. It is because these constituencies tend to be more politically liberal — and Republicans are the conservative party.

The country doesn’t need two liberal parties. Yes, Republicans need to weed out candidates who talk like morons about rape. But this doesn’t mean the country needs two pro-choice parties either. In fact, more women are pro-life than are pro-choice. The problem here for Republicans is not policy but delicacy — speaking about culturally sensitive and philosophically complex issues with reflection and prudence.

Additionally, warn the doomsayers, Republicans must change not just ethnically but ideologically. Back to the center. Moderation above all!

More nonsense. Tuesday’s exit polls showed that, by an eight-point margin (51–43), Americans believe that government does too much. And Republicans are the party of smaller government. Moreover, onrushing economic exigencies — crushing debt, unsustainable entitlements — will make the argument for smaller government increasingly unassailable.

So, why give it up? Republicans lost the election not because they advanced a bad argument but because they advanced a good argument not well enough. Although Romney ran a solid campaign, he is by nature a Northeastern moderate. He sincerely adopted the new conservatism but still spoke it as a second language.

More Ford ’76 than Reagan ’80, Romney is a transitional figure, both generationally and ideologically. Behind him, the party has an extraordinarily strong bench. In Congress — Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Kelly Ayotte, (the incoming) Ted Cruz, and others. And the governors — Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, Nikki Haley, plus former governor Jeb Bush and the soon-retiring Mitch Daniels. (Chris Christie is currently in rehab.)

They were all either a little too young or just not personally prepared to run in 2012. No longer. There may not be a Reagan among them, but this generation of rising leaders is philosophically rooted and politically fluent in the new constitutional conservatism.

Ignore the trimmers. There’s no need for radical change. The other party thinks it owns the demographic future — counter that in one stroke by fixing the Latino problem. Do not, however, abandon the party’s philosophical anchor. In a world where European social democracy is imploding before our eyes, the party of smaller, more modernized government owns the ideological future.

Romney is a good man who made the best argument he could, and nearly won. He would have made a superb chief executive, but he (like the Clinton machine) could not match Barack Obama in the darker arts of public persuasion.

The answer to Romney’s failure is not retreat, not aping the Democrats’ patchwork pandering. It is to make the case for restrained, rationalized, and reformed government in stark contradistinction to Obama’s increasingly unsustainable big-spending, big-government paternalism.

Republicans: No whimpering. No whining. No reinvention when none is needed. Do conservatism, but do it better. There’s a whole generation of leaders ready to do just that.

— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2012 the Washington Post Writers Group.

Voir aussi:

Can Marco Rubio save the GOP on immigration?

Scott Wong and Lois Romano

Politico

November 9, 2012

Barely an hour after Mitt Romney conceded the presidential election Wednesday morning, Marco Rubio laid down his marker for 2016: No, he wouldn’t be the candidate of the tired old white guy.

“The conservative movement should have particular appeal to people in minority and immigrant communities who are trying to make it,” the GOP Florida senator posted on his Facebook page at 2:16 a.m. “And Republicans need to work harder than ever to communicate our beliefs to them.”

This is indisputably Rubio’s moment, and how the 41-year-old senator and the most prominent Latino in national politics today carries his party’s demographic burden will define not only his own future — but the future of the Republican Party. He was the biggest Republican winner Tuesday, Republicans will tell you, as it became painfully clear that Romney would carry only 27 percent of the nation’s fastest-growing demographic.

Now, as fingers are pointed and blame is assigned, all eyes are on Rubio to help lead his party out of the political abyss with Hispanic voters. As Rubio positions himself for a 2016 run, his advisers are adamant that he not become merely the Latino candidate but a conservative leader with a compelling voice who can articulate to Hispanics that the Republican Party’s values are their values — family, social conservatism, free-market entrepreneurialism.

“He is without question a world-class political talent with the ability to lead the party into the 21st century … a party that has become synonymous with intolerance and loons to too many swing voters,” said Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, who ran Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.

“You know the media and the party — everyone is looking at this lifeboat with Marco written on the side of it and everyone wants to jump in,” said GOP political strategist Alex Castellanos. “We better be careful or we’re gonna sink it. We’re going to take one of our greatest assets and pigeonhole and typecast him. We need to move the conversation to the next generation, and he’s one of the people who understand that we have to be the party of hope.”

Rubio and his advisers are well aware of the risks: He must thread a needle as he tries to portray an open, tolerant party while not incensing the ultraconservative base who want tall fences, closed borders and nothing that looks like amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Rubio is already testing the national waters — he’s heading to an Iowa fundraiser next week — so he’s well aware of the complexity of moving the party to the left on immigration while appealing to the conservatives who rule the Republican primary process.

Rubio seems likely to approach potential immigration talks from a biographical standpoint. The son of working-class, Cuban-born parents, the bilingual senator often speaks of how his mom and dad toiled for decades as a hotel maid and bartender after moving to America, longing for a better future for their children.

“He is well-positioned to be a leader on this issue — but it will take courage and he can’t do it alone,” said Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles.

“This is a very, very dangerous area for Rubio if he has national aspirations,” said Roy Beck, head of the anti-immigration group Numbers USA. “You’ve had Republicans trying to do this in the past that really lost their status in the party once they did it.”

Rubio also has a potential problem inside the Senate. Two of the top Senate Republicans — Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and John Cornyn of Texas — are up for reelection in 2014 and have to be worried about a tea party primary challenge if they fire up the base on immigration.

In an interview with POLITICO last summer, Rubio made clear that he would like to move past immigration reform so that he can relay a broader message to the Latino community about his party. “If we could just get past that gateway issue of immigration policy and what it means about us as Republicans, I think we have a very compelling story to tell about how our economic policies are better for the Hispanic community than the Democrats’ economic policies,” he said.

“I think it’s a gateway issue, [which] in many ways, sends a signal about how a political movement, a candidate or a group of individuals feels about another group of people.”

The numbers behind the 2012 election tell the story of the party’s demographic challenge.

President George W. Bush, who was a strong voice for comprehensive immigration reform, won 44 percent of the Latino vote in 2004 and 35 percent in 2000. Romney took only 27 percent Tuesday.

“What I urge my Republican colleagues to do is to understand we have a demographic problem, the rhetoric around immigration has led to our reduction in Hispanic votes,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told POLITICO.

While Rubio will most likely be the GOP’s point man on immigration on the Hill, Bush’s brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, also is expected to help bridge the gap with Hispanics.

“They both have the stature and the credibility, and they both have the messaging talents to deal with an issue that has been a difficult issue for our party to drive consensus,” said Al Cardenas, chairman of the grass-roots American Conservative Union and a close friend of both men.

“A bipartisan version of the DREAM Act is not at this time the appropriate remedy,” he added. “We need to get this whole wedge issue off the table in order to be true competitors for that vote.”

Rubio declined to be interviewed. But spokesman Alex Conant said his boss had spent most of the year developing an alternative to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s DREAM Act and would try to pass it in the new Congress “if the Democrats are serious about permanently addressing the status of undocumented young people.”

Rubio never introduced legislation this year, but his ideas would give “non-immigrant” visas to undocumented children brought to the United States at an early age provided they have no criminal record and have completed high school. It would allow them to stay in the country and access the existing immigration system through which they could eventually become green-card holders or naturalized citizens

In the aftermath of Tuesday’s elections, many Republicans believe they need to recalibrate and listen to Rubio. But while Rubio may be able to sway his Senate colleagues, his influence among House members is less certain.

“My gut is there are not too many Republicans who have been against comprehensive reform who will change positions,” said longtime pro-immigration activist Rick Swartz, who founded the National Immigration Forum. Reform “is easy to talk about but harder to get it done.”

Rubio, who early on had been mentioned as a possible Romney running mate, played the role of surrogate and loyal foot soldier during this year’s presidential campaign. From April to November, Rubio stumped for Romney at nearly 60 events — in virtually all the battleground states, including states with big Latino populations such as Florida, Nevada and Colorado. He also provided star power for another 40 fundraisers and campaign events for Senate Republican candidates in states from Massachusetts to Nebraska.

The rigorous schedule kept his name in the news, raised his profile in key states and gave him a taste of a presidential campaign. As the GOP searches for a new standard-bearer for 2016, Rubio is continuing to make moves toward a possible run, wooing party leaders and voters in the all-important primary state of Iowa.

On Nov. 17, Rubio will headline the annual birthday fundraiser for Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad at the Palace Theater in Altoona. He stumped for Romney in the Des Moines area back in July. And at the invitation of Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Rubio addressed nearly 200 members of a Des Moines business group in May during their annual visit to Washington.

Manu Raju contributed to this report.

Voir enfin:

Le phénomène Nikki Haley: une ex-sikhe élue gouverneur?

Richard Hétu

La Presse

21 juin 2010

(New York) En jetant leur dévolu sur Barack Obama lors de l’élection présidentielle de 2008, les États-Unis ont aboli ce qui semblait être la plus haute des barrières raciales ou sociales. Or, il faut se demander si la Caroline-du-Sud, un des États américains les plus conservateurs, n’est pas en voie de réaliser une première encore plus remarquable: élire en novembre au poste de gouverneur une candidate indo-américaine élevée dans la religion sikhe qui a été accusée d’adultère deux fois plutôt qu’une au cours des dernières semaines.

Le phénomène en question, Nikki Haley, née Nimrata Nikki Randhawa il y a 38 ans à Bamberg, une ville de Caroline-du-Sud, a d’excellentes chances de remporter demain l’investiture républicaine en vue de cette élection dont elle serait favorite en raison de son appartenance au parti le plus populaire de son État. La plupart des observateurs semblent avoir besoin de se pincer pour se convaincre qu’ils ne rêvent pas.

«Je suis très surprise», dit Laura Woliver, directrice adjointe du programme d’études féminines à l’Université de Caroline-du-Sud. «Cela me fait penser à l’histoire de Bobby Jindal en Louisiane, avec en supplément le facteur du sexe», ajoute-t-elle en faisant référence au premier politicien d’origine indienne à se faire élire au poste de gouverneur d’un État américain.

«Ce sera un grand changement», dit de son côté David Woodard, politologue à l’Université Clemson et coauteur d’un livre avec Jim DeMint, sénateur très conservateur de Caroline-du-Sud. «Mais le facteur ethnique est moins important que le facteur du sexe. La Caroline-du-Sud est l’État américain qui compte le moins de femmes parmi ses élus. Le fait que Nikki Haley ait autant de succès tranche avec l’histoire de l’État.»

Comment cette comptable de profession, dont le père porte le turban, en est-elle arrivée là? Après avoir travaillé pour l’entreprise familiale et s’être mariée à Michael Haley, un chrétien rencontré à l’Université Clemson avec lequel elle a eu deux enfants, Nikki Haley a entrepris sa carrière politique en se faisant élire à la Chambre basse de Caroline-du-Sud en 2004.

Au fil des ans, elle est devenue une alliée du gouverneur républicain Mark Sanford, dont elle a épousé le discours libertarien en faveur d’un État minimal. Cette approche, combinée avec un aplomb et une éloquence incontestables, a fait d’elle la favorite des militants du Tea Party de Caroline-du-Sud et lui a permis de passer de la quatrième à la première place dans les sondages parmi les quatre candidats engagés dans la course à l’investiture républicaine pour le poste de gouverneur de l’État.

C’est alors que Will Folks, ex-porte-parole du gouverneur Sanford devenu blogueur, a lancé la première accusation d’adultère contre Nikki Haley, affirmant avoir eu une liaison «déplacée» avec la candidate. Un lobbyiste ayant travaillé pour un rival de Haley lui a emboîté le pas en prétendant également avoir couché avec celle-ci.

Nikki Haley a vigoureusement nié ces allégations. Et, après avoir reçu l’appui de Sarah Palin et de Mitt Romney, deux candidats potentiels à la présidence en 2012, elle a fini en tête lors de la primaire républicaine du 8 juin avec 49% des voix contre 22% pour son plus proche rival, le représentant Gresham Barrett.

Les deux candidats s’affronteront demain dans un deuxième tour.

«De toute évidence, les électeurs n’ont pas accordé beaucoup de crédibilité aux allégations des accusateurs de Nikki Haley, dit David Woodard, politologue de l’Université Clemson. En fait, selon un de mes sondages, seulement 15% d’entre eux y ont cru.»

Nikki Haley a également dû faire face au racisme qui persiste au sein même de son parti. «Nous avons déjà une tête enturbannée à la Maison-Blanche, nous n’en avons pas besoin d’une autre à la maison du gouverneur», a déclaré un élu républicain au Sénat de Caroline-du-Sud.

Et la candidate doit répondre aux questions persistantes des journalistes et des électeurs sur sa religion. Elle dit avoir abandonné la foi sikhe de son père pour embrasser la religion méthodiste de son mari. Certains de ses adversaires ont mis en doute la sincérité de sa conversion.