LatinaLista — Over the weekend, former Vice President Dick Cheney made a couple of remarks during an ABC interview, but only one of his comments really caught the media’s attention — that the choice of Sarah Palin by the McCain camp was a mistake.
Of course, McCain rebutted Cheney’s comment and came out in defense of his former running mate, still saying that he believed she was a good choice and could have run the country had something happened to him. It’s such a moot point there’s no sense in revisiting it. Yet, it’s the other comment that was made in passing that should have caught more attention.
When asked about how to choose a vice presidential running mate, Cheney said any consideration had to meet one big requirement: “Is this person capable of being president of the United States?” The interviewer, ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl, then asked if a campaign should take into consideration if a vice presidential candidate should be selected if it’s felt they can bring in certain states or demographics, “like Hispanics.”
Cheney said that while those were important issues they shouldn’t override the main proposition of whether or not that person is capable of being president.
Though it wasn’t stated clearly, Cheney seemed to imply that a candidate like Marco Rubio wouldn’t qualify to be Romney’s running mate. And in truth, Rubio probably wouldn’t help Romney much anyway.
The Latino Decisions Poll that was released in part last week was officially released today where it shows that a Romney-Rubio ticket would only get a modest gain from Latino voters, mostly in Florida.
The poll also looks at whether Florida Sen. Marco Rubio would give Romney a boost with Florida’s Hispanic population — and finds that he would provide a modest boost. About a third of Florida Hispanic voters said Rubio as the VP candidate would make them either much more likely or somewhat more likely to vote Republican, compared with 17 percent who said it would make them less likely to do so. Still, almost half of those surveyed — 47 percent — said putting Rubio on the GOP ticket would have no effect on their vote.
The same poll also showed Obama has a “huge advantage” with Hispanic voters across the nation.
It seems the poll validates Cheney’s remarks — ethnicity aside, Latino voters, like every other American voter, just want someone in Washington who puts the needs of the community first and their political agenda second.
