Senate votes to protect Merica from Mexicans

If you want to get to the heart of the matter on why the U.S. Senate’s recent try at immigration reform failed, listen to the perspective of Stephanie Ursey of Gainesville, Ga.

Ursey, a 39-year-old stay-at-home mother, was shopping at her local Wal-Mart recently when she came to a startling revelation.

“That was the first time I looked around and said, ‘Man, I didn’t realize how many Mexicans were here,’” Ursey told The Washington Post. “I just felt very encroached upon.

“It was like an instant feeling of I’m in the minority, and if we don’t get control over this, pretty soon all of America will be outnumbered,” Ursey said.

Ursey’s view is what U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., meant when he explained why the Senate compromise bill on immigration ultimately failed.

“People feel like they’re losing their country,” Corker told The Washington Post.

Here’s the translation: America, it seems, has too many Mexicans.

And not just Mexicans, mind you, but Mexican-Americans, Latinos, Hispanics, Cuban-Americans, Dominicans, and residents from all parts of the Western Hemisphere. But it’s mostly too many Mexicans.

That message has been reverberating for many months now on right-wing hate radio. Take a listen to some fool named Neal Boortz, a syndicated talker, who recently had this chestnut of an observation.

“I don’t care if Mexicans pile up against that (border) fence like tumbleweeds in the Santa Ana winds,” Boortz said, as reported by The New York Times.

The Senate bill really never had a chance. Our current president was all for it, but he also has approval ratings in the 20s, and a war that’s going horribly bad.

The Democrats, with their slim majorities, were in no rush to hand George W. Bush a domestic accomplishment he so badly wanted.

And besides, why mess up their party’s chances to win back the White House in 2008?

Democratic Party leaders know the stridently anti-Hispanic gospel Republicans are preaching these days could hand their presidential candidate victory next year.

A USA Today article last week reported that Hispanics, (the ones who are ’Mericans and not Mexicans), are leaving the GOP in droves, and have little intention of coming back soon.

Gauging the GOP’s current attitudes toward Latinos, Gilda Lopez, a speech pathologist from San Antonio, gave USA Today a preview of what Republican candidates can expect in the near future.

“I cannot understand how a Hispanic person could vote Republican,” Lopez said, referring to that party’s views of immigrants.

What a change from just three years ago when Bush received an impressive 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in the 2004 presidential election.

It’s a far different story these days. USA Today reports that only 11 percent of Hispanics now identify themselves as Republicans, with the proportion who call themselves Democrats climbing from 33 percent in 2005 to 42 percent two years later.

In a match-up of current presidential frontrunners, Democrat Hillary Clinton trounces Republican Rudy Giuliani among Hispanics by a margin of 66 percent to 27 percent.

If there were Hispanics only in regions like South Texas, no one would care. But as comedian George Lopez points out, “we’re everywhere now, even Nordstrom’s (high-end department store chain).”

Florida Sen. Mel Martinez, who’s also general chairman of the Republican National Committee, sees all of these numbers and trends, and he’s worried about his party. Martinez, a Cuban immigrant, says his party can’t win the 2008 presidential election with today’s level of Hispanic support.

“It would be in my view virtually impossible,” Martinez told USA Today.

Here’s why, other than the fact that Hispanics are the nation’s fastest-growing demographic group. With Republicans on an anti-Hispanic tear, states like New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and even Arizona are now in play for the 2008 presidential election.

Bush carried every one of those states in 2004 by narrow margins. Had his Democratic opponent carried just a couple of those states three years ago, President John Kerry would be sitting in the White House today.

In the Hispanic trending Southwest, Clint Bolick, a conservative scholar, told The Arizona Republic that all of this doesn’t bode well for his party.

“If they get their way and the (Senate) bill dies, so too may Republican electoral prospects for the foreseeable future,” Bolick wrote in the Arizona newspaper.

Well, Clint, they went and done it. The bullies on talk radio and the fatheads on cable television whipped up poor Stephanie Ursey and lots of other good Americans into a frenzy, and they called their good old boy senators up and warned ’em not to give their country away to the Mexicans.

Kudos, by the way, to our two Texas senators, John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, for voting to protect ’Merica from the Mexicans. Johnny Boy and Kay Bailey, you did us proud, and y’all will no doubt get a standing O at the next Republican state convention.

Even as the U.S. Senate was protecting America from the menacing immigrants who clean hotel rooms, build homes and pick crops, another section of USA Today reported some disturbing news. Univision’s Destilando Amor and La Fea Mas Bella were two of America’s top 20 television programs for viewers from the ages of 18-49 for the week of June 17.

Dang it. We beat the Mexicans in the halls of Congress but we can’t make ’em stop watching our American TV.

Is nothing sacred?

R. Daniel Cavazos is publisher of The Brownsville Herald and El Nuevo Heraldo. You can email him your comments at rdcavazos@brownsvilleherald.com.