LatinaLista — Two things were made painfully clear last night in the CNN/Tea Party Republican debate — the majority of the GOP candidates don’t have a clue as to who are Latino voters and some Tea Party members aren’t afraid to show the depth of their intolerance and ignorance when it comes to the immigration issue.
As the debate progressed from one issue to another and one attack after another on Perry, leaving him to crawl his way out of the holes he had dug himself into, I knew that the real “shoot-out” among these candidates was yet to come.
GOP candidates gather on stage in Tampa for CNN/Tea Party debate.
Sure enough when the issues of border security and illegal immigration were brought up, the candidates piled high on Perry for giving undocumented students in-state tuition and being against building a wall across the entire US-Mexico border.
Ironically, none of the candidates challenged the pathetic Tea Party questioner who seriously asked how any of the candidates was going to “get rid” of all the undocumented immigrants in the country.
To his credit, Perry stood his ground in his defense for allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition and not building a border-to-border wall. To their discredit, his fellow candidates showed their dismal lack of knowledge about Latinos in general.
Some seem confused about who are Latinos. It seems pretty clear that Michelle Bachman thinks all Latinos have just recently arrived. This woman, who gives the impression of being a champion for children because she’s been a foster mother, stood at her podium and said it was “not the American way” to provide in-state tuition to undocumented students, no matter how long they’ve been in the country.
To her, undocumented students are expendable and not worth educating.
Yet, perhaps the most insulting remark from a candidate came from Mitt Romney. In a question about how to attract Latino voters, Romney answered by saying Latino voters are attracted by “telling them what they know in their hearts — they or their ancestors did not come here looking for a handout. If they’re looking for handouts they’d vote for Democrats. They came looking for opportunity and freedom…”
This statement is highly offensive because it singles out Latino citizens and makes it sound that Latinos are not hard workers and only look for ways to scam the government.
Why would a political candidate purposely segregate the largest demographic of color in their remarks and imply such an insult?
Or the better question is why haven’t Latinos gotten mad enough to talk back?
