Freedom Line Blog

Setting aside the horrendously bad policy outcomes embedded in the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill, some elite Republicans still support the measure because they think voting in favor of mass legalization will help the GOP win over enough Hispanic voters to reclaim the White House in 2016.

Alas, it just isn’t so.

Using an innovative electoral calculator created by polling expert Nate Silver, Byron York shows that Mitt Romney “would have had to win 73 percent of the Hispanic vote to prevail in 2012.”

For comparison, Barack Obama won 71 percent.

In 2004, George W. Bush, to date the Republican presidential candidate with the highest ever Hispanic vote share, netted only 44 percent.

It’s simply not reasonable to argue, as some Republican supporters of the Gang’s bill do, that a vote for this proposal will make enough of a difference in Hispanic vote preference to change any upcoming election.

Instead, what’s far more likely is that Republican support will give the legislation the veneer of bipartisanship while paving the way for an 11 million person increase in Democratic voters.

For anyone interested in whom the Texas Democratic Party will look to for leadership in the very near, consider rising twin brothers Julian and Joaquin Castro.  Both are Stanford and Harvard Law graduates.  Both represent San Antonio – Julian as mayor; Joaquin as a state representative.  Each is being groomed for higher office.

From his perch as San Antonio mayor, Julian could very likely seek the Democratic nomination for governor in 2014.  By then, current Republican Governor Rick Perry will either be in the White House or in an uphill battle for election to his fourth term in office.  (Perry doesn’t have a history of landslides.  In 2006, he won a four-way race with 36% of the popular vote.  In 2010, he won just 51% in a three-way primary after more than a decade as governor.)

For his part, Joaquin just announced a primary challenge to nine-term Democratic congressman Lloyd Doggett.  A new redistricting map connects south Austin with San Antonio, making the state legislator a natural fit to represent the two cities he’s spent the most time in since being elected to office.

Texas’ demographic trend mirrors California.  Currently, no race is a majority in Texas, but by the end of the decade, Hispanics will be.  With the state and federal legislative delegations increasingly split between Anglo Republican and minority Democrats, don’t be surprised if someday Julian Castro becomes governor while his brother Joaquin serves in the U.S. Senate.

With a Rice University demographic expert projecting that only 20 percent of the state’s public school enrollment being Anglo by 2040, the makeup of the Lone Star State’s population will be decidedly more Hispanic.

Reflecting on the fact that Anglos are already a minority in Texas (at 42% still the largest minority), a group at Texas State University, San Marcos announced a new scholarship offer for white males with at least a 3.0 GPA.  Says the group’s leader, “We’re not looking for blond-haired, blue-eyed, stereotypical white males.  My feeling is that if you can say you’re 25 percent Caucasian, you’re Caucasian enough for us.”

Welcome to a new America.