Mecedes Olivera, Dallas Morning News

Hispanic Republicans are an endangered species.

That’s not wishful thinking on the part of Democrats. It’s a growing concern by Hispanic Republicans themselves, and they say the GOP leadership seems oblivious to it.

“The underlying current in Hispanic communities is that Democrats are capturing the hearts and minds of Hispanics wholesale,” said Jason Villalba, president of the Dallas chapter of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly. “Republicans will not be able to win any national elections if they don’t do something soon. But the problem I’m having is breaking through to them with this message.”

Texas seems to be following the same trajectory as California, with its burgeoning Hispanic population. After Republicans began policies that Latinos believed targeted them unfairly, Hispanic leaders organized massive voter registration and citizenship campaigns. The result: California is now a solidly blue state, with no indications of turning red anytime soon.

Texas has seen significant demographic shifts in three major urban centers – the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Harris County and Travis County – where Hispanics have become a third or more of the populations. At the same time, these areas have seen a sharp rise in the number of Democrats elected to city and countywide offices.

That trend is spreading nationwide, Villalba said.

Even a cursory look at the November election results appears to confirm his concerns: Most of the Southwest and battleground states such as Colorado and Nevada, with sizeable Latino voting blocs, leaned Democrat. Even Florida, which has been reliably Republican in the past, went Democratic.

“It’s no longer a theory, it’s a reality,” agreed Ana Navarro, a senior adviser to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign who continues to advise him on Latino issues. “If Republicans don’t start doing something with Latinos, they will be a minority party for a long time.”

Every year, more – not fewer – Latinos head to the polls, Navarro said. It’s one reason McCain is now working to recruit more Latino candidates to run for office.

“He firmly believes that’s the key,” she said.

But how do Republicans recruit more Latinos when a vocal minority is doing everything to antagonize Latinos?

Both Villalba and Navarro said the GOP must tone down anti-immigration rhetoric.

Navarro said the GOP doesn’t understand that more people watch Spanish-language Univision News than ABC, CBS and NBC combined.And every time some of the more strident anti-immigration advocates were quoted on Univision or in a Spanish-language newspaper, she said, it helped Barack Obama.

Popularity: 17% [?]

State Representative John LaBruzzo of Metairie said many of his constituents are tired of paying for children from poor families and that is why he is considering proposing legislation that would pay women on government assistance $1,000 if they choose to be sterilized.

“You have these people who are just fed up with working their buns off to try to provide for their own family and being forced by the government o provide for others’ families who just want to have unlimited kids,” he said.

LaBruzzo said he is studying voluntary sterilization for women whose sole financial support comes from the government in the form of welfare or other public assistance. His idea would be to give the women $1,000 if they had their tubes tied.

His proposal has come under harsh criticism by some civil rights groups.

The ACLU called it a misguided and mean-spirited attempt to eliminate poverty by eliminating the poor.

LaBruzzo said his office has been flooded by emails, many supporting his position.

“We have more in favor, saying, ‘good job, keep it going.’” he said. “Of course we have a lot saying you’re going in the wrong direction.”

LaBruzzo said that in addition to the sterilization of women, he would consider vasectomies for welfare dads and tax incentives for higher income families with children in private schools.

Popularity: 17% [?]

ST PAUL, Minnesota (AFP) — Nine million Hispanic voters scattered across battleground states pose a dilemma for Republican White House hopeful John McCain: how to win their support without angering his party’s base.

According to the polls, some two-thirds of Hispanic voters back the Democrats and their White House hopeful Barack Obama compared to a third for the Republicans.

And that sliver of support is falling since McCain sought and failed twice to get two projects to reform the country’s immigration laws and bring some 12 million illegal immigrants out of the shadows through Congress.

Yet in deadlocked states, Hispanic support could be the factor which tips the scales in favor of one party or the other on election day, November 4.

The balancing act facing McCain, who Thursday accepted his party’s nomination to be its presidential nominee, is how to attract more Hispanics without eroding his support among core conservatives.

“It’s going to be very interesting and very difficult to see how he can do this,” said George Mursulli, head of a non-partisan group called DemocraciaUSA, set up to encourage Hispanic citizens to vote.

“We will have to see how he can appeal both to the Latino community as well as the party’s base which has been anti-immigrant and anti-Latino.”

Very little attention was paid to the issue of immigration during the Republicans’ four-day convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, something which might not bode well as the White House race hurtles into its final stretch.

McCain only alluded to the issue once in his address to the convention saying: “We believe everyone has something to contribute and deserves the opportunity to reach their God-given potential from the boy whose descendants arrived on the Mayflower to the Latina daughter of migrant workers. We’re all God’s children and we’re all Americans.”

Indeed the official party platform adopted by the delegates calls for tougher law enforcement, including a crackdown on illegal immigrants and for a fence being constructed along the Mexico border to be swiftly completed.

The debate on US immigration laws is seen as a determining factor for Latino voters in which way to vote, Mursulli said.

Last year McCain co-authored with Democratic senator Edward Kennedy a bill designed to legalize the status of millions of illegal immigrants, many of whom have lived for decades in the United States, working and raising families.

But the proposal, which included provisions for a path to citizenship for illegal workers, failed to win passage in the face of criticism from conservatives, who said it rewarded illegal immigrants with an amnesty.

McCain came under attack from the Obama camp for allegedly flip-flopping on the issue, when during a debate McCain said he would no longer vote for the bill.

Instead he maintained the first priority was to secure American borders.

Conservatives however had been unhappy McCain’s initial stance on immigration, Mursulli said.

And the debate on immigration within the Republican party “just seemed to turn in a circle and became quite anti-immigrant and anti-Latino with the vast majority of immigrants leaving the party,” Mursulli said.

“Those comments echoed around the Latino community, across the country.”

Latino support for the Republicans, which reached some 44 percent for President George W. Bush when he sought re-election in 2004, has consequently fallen dramatically.

The Pew Hispanic Center in Washington noted recently that only 23 percent of Hispanics support McCain, with two-thirds throwing their weight behind Obama.

Traditionally the Hispanic community had overwhelmingly backed Obama’s former rival Hillary Clinton.

“Obama is a man who has no historical ties to the Latino community, and has only gradually to begun to build up some support,” said Mursulli.

“But the partisan perception among the Latino community is that the Democratic Party is paying more attention to such issues (as immigration) and is more interested in who we are.

“The kind of comments we have heard from the Republicans about the Latino community has left us with a bad taste in our mouths.”

He said it was still not too late for the Republicans to claw back support among Hispanic voters, but argued: “The Republicans have to choose. The party base or Hispanics?

“And how can they connect with both? Everything is possible in politics, but I think it will be super difficult.”

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By NANCY BENAC – AP

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The Republican National Convention showcased a Native American color guard, a black preacher and video footage of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, all part of its effort to present the GOP as a picture of diversity. What it hasn’t offered is many minorities speaking from the podium in prime time, or sitting among the delegates.

The convention has a decidedly homogenous look to it, coming hard on the heels of a Democratic gathering where minorities were prominent on the podium and in the crowds, and the spotlight focused squarely on Barack Obama’s historic racial breakthrough.

Not that Republicans have been deliberately denying broad exposure to prominent party members from minority groups — there just aren’t that many.

The party had hoped to showcase Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, the country’s first elected Indian-American governor. But he stayed home to help coordinate the state’s response to Hurricane Gustav. The Republicans have no black governors or members of Congress to put on stage.

It’s a problem for the party that goes deeper than the challenge of coming up with a diverse speaker’s lineup.

“It is what it is,” said Michael Steele, Maryland’s former lieutenant governor and the first black elected to statewide office there. “You can’t sugarcoat this stuff.”

Steele, who chairs GOPAC, which recruits and trains Republican candidates nationwide, got 10 minutes on the podium in prime time Wednesday night.

Earlier in the evening, a number of blacks and Hispanics had a chance to address the convention, albeit briefly. Among them: a nurse from Pennsylvania, a California state senator, the head of a Hispanic medical organization an entrepreneur whose mother was an orphan of Mexican descent.

Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams, who is black, also spoke, and later had the opportunity to place McCain’s name before the delegates in nomination. He alluded to the historic significance of Obama’s breakthrough as the first black presidential nominee for a major party, a nomination he accepted at the Democratic convention in Denver.

“But I am here with you in St. Paul, rather than being in Denver last week, because I believe values and ideas take precedence over the politics of demography and identity,” Williams said. “And because I know John is ready to lead.”

It is a message the Republicans hope will be embraced more broadly among black Americans, so many of them captivated by Obama’s path-breaking course.

The predominance of white faces on the podium in St. Paul was reflected in the faces staring back from the audience in St. Paul. About 13 percent of GOP delegates identify themselves as belonging to a minority group, according to convention organizers, who provided no further details on the ethnic breakdown.

Joanna Burgos, a spokeswoman for the convention, said that figure is more than double the minority participation at the Republicans’ 1996 convention.

“We look forward to continuing and expanding these relationships — and nominating John McCain, a Republican leader who values the diverse backgrounds of all Americans and will lead on issues important to them,” she said.

However, minority representation is down from 2004, when about 17 percent of delegates and alternates were minorities.

Joseph Woods, a black delegate from Arkansas and treasurer of the state Republican Party, said there are more important things to consider than how many minorities are standing on the podium.

“Would we like to see more now at the senior level at the conventions?” he asked. “That would be great, but we already know that they’re in prominent positions in the Cabinet under George Bush and his dad and Ronald Reagan. I’m not sure we’re missing anything at this meeting just because there’s not a whole platform onstage of minorities.”

Nearby, fellow Arkansan Robert E. Smith Jr., another black delegate, labeled it “a short-term problem.”

“You just haven’t dug deep enough. Because at the grass-roots level there are those who can articulate” a strong message to minorities, he said.

Steele, the GOPAC chairman, said McCain has demonstrated his ability to connect with blacks and other minorities in his appearances before groups such as the NAACP and the Urban League, although he doesn’t always get credit for it amid all the focus on Obama’s history-making candidacy.

“God forbid you say a Republican has juice with black people,” Steele said. “I think he has more juice than people give him credit for. People will probably laugh at that, but let them keep on laughing. I think they’ll be surprised at how well he’ll connect.”

Popularity: 20% [?]

As Published on The Houston chronicle

The night’s partying had stretched past midnight at the honky-tonk-themed party that AT&T threw for Texas delegates in Minneapolis.

So Houston tutor Vergel Cruz was not surprised to see at Wednesday’s delegation breakfast that some of his less nimble fellow GOP delegates had not yet two-stepped out of bed.

Republicans want more young Hispanics like him to fill its banquet chairs — and to vote conservative in the presidential election and the following years. In Houston and elsewhere, that growing category of voters is expected to swing many political contests.

But several polls show that the places at the table remain vacant. Barack Obama leads among Hispanics by a 2 to 1 ratio or higher over Cruz’s choice, John McCain. Immigration policy debates and economic doldrums have lowered Hispanic appetites for the GOP message, according to those who analyze the polls.

Offering change

Cruz, 29, who studied economics and linguistics at Rice University, is tripping through the convention with undeterred verve and briskly spoken observations, however.

When not taking photos, tapping his Palm digital handheld device and checking his handwritten spreadsheet of convention activities, Cruz looks at how his party can offer change Hispanics can believe in.

“To bring up the Hispanic vote, McCain-Palin just need to talk about what’s important to everyone,” he says while eyeing GOP souvenirs at a gift shop later in the day. “A strong economy, education — returning to local school districts.”

Firmly conservative since his teens, when he was class president at St. Pius X High School, Cruz says Democrats pander with tailored messages to ethnic voter blocs while Republicans offer a consistent message.

“I always say, Texan first, American first,” he adds while purchasing McCain-Palin T-shirts and buttons. “Skin color and ethnicity comes later. When you divide your message up, I think it’s less effective.”

Cruz checks a button that says “Hispanics for McCain.”

“I may get one. But that would totally contradict what I just told you. But I don’t think outreach (to undecided Latino voters) is inconsistent.”

He leaves the button behind.

Conservative parents

Cruz’s mother Lilia was born in Texas on the Mexican border. His father, also named Vergel, is from Manila, Philippines. They’re not apostles of the GOP, he says, but because of their conservative outlook he is not part of what he calls the Democratic fantasy of a monolithic youth vote that backs Obama.

“It’s kind of pandering when you say all young people are liberal or this way or that way,” he says. “Young people are worried about economics, and they disagree about social issues.”

Now Cruz joins other delegates in a trip to Minneapolis, his second in 12 hours, to participate in a convention service project for those displaced by Hurricane Gustav: packing donated toiletries and snacks into care packages.

“It was cool,” he says as he leaves the project center about 45 minutes later.

Cruz was an alternate delegate to the 2004 national convention. This year he’s a step higher, a delegate. He says he’s less harried this time, less guilt-ridden about missing every single activity.

Now it’s time for Cruz, in his blue blazer, white shirt, red Texas GOP necktie, trousers and commemorative cowboy boots from the 2004 convention, to join the delegates for the session capped by Gov. Sarah Palin’s first speech to the nation.

Cruz is eager, invigorated, ready with some political analysis and, because of fatigue and travel, “addicted to eyedrops.”

“I think Palin’s speech is more important than McCain’s,” he says. “McCain is a known. She is a new figure.”

The third session of the four-day gathering begins.

Popularity: 18% [?]

As Published in The Sacramento Bee

By Maria Elena Salinas:

I respectfully disagree with those who say that political conventions are not important. I sometimes wonder why some of my colleagues in the media are shooting themselves in the foot by questioning the validity of the conventions as they are covering them. It’s like saying: “Here I am wasting my time and yours, and getting paid to do so. Don’t watch our television shows, don’t listen to our radio programs, don’t read our newspaper articles that report on conventions.”

I say: If you can, watch the convention coverage wall to wall, listen to every radio show and read every article written about it. Better yet, go to C-SPAN or a webcast of the convention and listen to what each of the speakers has to say, unfiltered. If you want some perspective, then you can go to a news source that you trust and hear its take on it.

Some of the criticism is valid. Gone are the days when these huge party meetings held the mystery of who the presidential candidate would be and the excitement of having each state delegation argue for and against the issues.

Now, by the time the conventions come around, the presidential candidate and even his vice-presidential pick already have been decided, and the platform has been written by party officials and is merely ratified on the convention floor. Conventions have become a sort of crowning ceremony. It’s a four-day public-relations campaign.

But you see, that is part of the democratic process. The parties raise money and receive the government funds due to them by law to conduct their campaigns. The conventions play an important role in that campaign.

Too many voters feel disenfranchised, either because they don’t understand the system or are not interested in it. The conventions become the parties’ opportunity to try to catch the voters’ attention a couple of months before they have to make the crucial decision of whom to vote for. They are an opportunity for the parties to introduce themselves and their candidates to the voters and announce what they stand for.

The conventions also serve as a motivating factor for delegates and superdelegates, whose job it is not only to vote for the party ticket and its agenda, but to go out to their communities and campaign for their respective party.

In trying to attract a specific voter bloc, the parties need to show how diverse and inclusive they really are. In the Democratic Convention, there were more than 600 Hispanic delegates – a record number – and several Latino speakers went to the podium, including Federico Peña, who served in two Cabinet positions under President Clinton, and several members of Congress. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson had a prime-time role on the last day of the convention.

As I was writing this, Republicans had not yet released the number of Hispanic delegates who would be attending their convention, but they had lined up Latino speakers such as Sen. Mel Martinez, former U.S. Treasurer Rosario Marin and Miami Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

Democrats have the upper hand when it comes to the Latino vote, with about 65 percent supporting Obama, according to the latest polls. In the most recent survey of Latino voters by the Pew Hispanic Center, 55 percent said that the Democratic Party “understands the concerns of their community,” while only 5 percent say Republicans do. Prove them wrong, Republicans.

The best thing that can happen in a democracy is that the voters are engaged and well-informed. It is the responsibility of the voters to get to know the candidates and listen to their positions on the issues that affect them, and to make up their own minds about whom to vote for. Take advantage of the conventions, because after the party is over, you’ll be bombarded with negative ads. And that is no way to elect a president.

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By LARA JAKES JORDAN – AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales mishandled highly classified notes about a secret counterterror program, says a memo by his legal team, which touches on one of the most contentious episodes of high-level infighting in the Bush administration’s war on terror.

The memo, obtained by The Associated Press, acknowledges that Gonzales improperly stored notes about the program and might have taken them home at one point.

Gonzales’ lawyers wrote in their memo that there is no evidence the security breach resulted in secret information being viewed or otherwise exposed to anyone who was not authorized.

Removing secret documents from specially secured rooms violates government policy.

The classified notes focus on a March 2004 meeting with congressional leaders about a national security program that was about to expire. Efforts to renew the program sparked an intense Bush administration debate that played out at the hospital bedside of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The memo was prepared by Gonzales’ legal team as a response to a report being finalized by the Justice Department’s inspector general. The report, which could be released as early as Tuesday, is expected to criticize Gonzales’ handling of sensitive compartmentalized information, or SCI, according to the memo.

Gonzales agrees with the inspector general’s findings that his handling of notes and other SCI documents “was not consistent with the department’s regulations governing the proper storage and handling of information classified as SCI,” concluded the legal team’s memo. “Judge Gonzales regrets this lapse.”

Sensitive compartmentalized information is one of the highest and most sensitive levels of classified documents and is deemed top secret. It usually relates to national security cases.

Gonzales’ lawyers acknowledge that he kept the notes in a safe in his fifth-floor office at the Justice Department, along with a small number of other highly classified papers, instead of in the special facilities accessible only by certain people with top secret security clearances.

He also may have taken the notes home at one point in 2005 as he was moving out of the White House counsel’s office, where he served until he was sworn in as attorney general at the start of President Bush’s second term, the memo says.

The inspector general’s report will be the latest in a series taking Gonzales to task for his management of the Justice Department. He resigned under fire in September 2007. At least two more reports, including one looking at Gonzales’ role in the ouster of nine U.S. attorneys, are expected in coming months.

It also could re-ignite a simmering controversy about Gonzales’ role in urging an ailing Ashcroft to continue a national security program the Justice Department had deemed illegal.

Preparing for the criticism, Gonzales’ legal team fired back with the 12-page memo and a three-page addendum accompanying it. The documents indicate the attorney general was merely forgetful or unaware of the proper way to handle the top secret papers.

Both documents were written by Gonzales attorney George Terwilliger, who served as the Justice Department’s No. 2 official between 1991 and 1992.

The classified notes, according to the lawyers’ memo, focus on a March 10, 2004, emergency meeting in the White House Situation Room with Gonzales, other high-ranking Bush administration officials and the eight House and Senate leaders and intelligence committee chairmen. It was held to brief the bipartisan group of lawmakers about a sensitive counterterror program that was set to expire the next day.

Then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who was running the Justice Department while Ashcroft was hospitalized for pancreatitis, had refused to sign off on the program because he questioned whether parts of it were legal. At the Situation Room meeting, administration officials asked the congressional leaders to consider creating legislation to let the program continue, according to the memo.

The exact nature of the counterterror program is not clear. FBI Director Robert Mueller has said it was a terrorist surveillance program that allowed the government to conduct electronic surveillance on people in the United States without court oversight until 2007. Gonzales has denied that and maintains it involved other intelligence activities.

Gonzales’ notes themselves remain classified and have not been released. Gonzales took the notes of the meeting at Bush’s request, and kept them in a safe in his White House counsel’s office, which is a secure SCI facility, according to his lawyers.

Once he moved to the Justice Department, however, the memo says Gonzales kept the notes in a safe a few steps away from his desk in the attorney general’s office — which is not considered a secure facility for SCI data.

Gonzales’ “best recollection is that he always placed the notes in the most secure place over which he had immediate personal control,” the memo states.

He apparently was advised that his office safe was not proper storage for the notes or other highly classified material, the memo shows. However, there’s no proof that Gonzales intentionally defied that guidance, the memo states, arguing he acted “without conscious disregard” for the rules.

The memo also takes a shot a Comey, who in Senate testimony last year described the hospital visit as an attempt by Gonzales and then-White House Chief of Staff Andy Card “to take advantage of a very sick man.”

In the memo, Terwilliger calls such criticism “demonstrably hyper-inflated rhetoric without basis in fact.” He says during the hospital visit Comey was “seeking to interpose himself between the president and a high-level official communication to his attorney general on a vital matter of national security.”

Popularity: 17% [?]

Via CNSNews.com

A draft copy of the GOP platform, which was obtained by CNSNews.com on Wednesday, says “We oppose amnesty” for illegal immigrants.

But Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the presumptive presidential nominee for the Republican Party, has been a leading proponent in Congress for giving illegal aliens a “pathway to citizenship.”

The GOP platform is being written in Minneapolis this week in preparation for the Republican National Convention, scheduled for early September.

“It [the rule of law] does not mean driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, nor does it mean that states should be allowed to flout the federal law barring them from giving in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens. We oppose amnesty,” the draft says.

“Amnesty has to be an important part of [any immigration solution] because there are people who have lived in this country for 20, 30 or 40 years, who have raised children here and pay taxes here and are not citizens. That has to be a component of it,” McCain reportedly told the Tucson Citizen on May 29, 2003.

In June, McCain told the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials that comprehensive immigration reform is his “top priority — yesterday, today and tomorrow.”

In 2006, McCain worked with Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) to ensure passage in the Senate of a “comprehensive” immigration reform bill that would have given illegal aliens a path to citizenship while allowing 200,000 new “guest workers’ to enter the country each year.

Sources in Minneapolis told CNSNews.com that the GOP platform should be completed by Wednesday but it will not be officially released until Monday.

In other news, the Boston Globe reported that the Republican platform will not include a call to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That’s another area where Republicans differ with McCain, who opposes drilling in ANWR.

According to the Globe, some platform committee members said they’ll try to bring McCain around to their way of thinking after he’s elected president.

The platform does endorse expanded domestic oil drilling in general.

Popularity: 23% [?]