Madfloridian's Journal - Howard Dean, Rev. Luis Cortes join to ask GOP to tone down immigration rhetoric.

Howard Dean, Rev. Cortes join to ask GOP to tone done immigration rhetoric. The GOP is overplaying their hand on this issue. Reverend Cortes was a supporter of Bush in 2004 but is very concerned now.

Also today, Democrats scored a coup when a powerful Latino clergyman joined with party chairman Howard Dean to denounce the Republicans' harsh rhetoric on illegal immigration.

The Rev. Luis Cortes, a political independent who founded the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast and a visible ally of President Bush's re-election campaign in 2004, joined Dean on a conference call with reporters, including the Times Peter Wallsten, to lambaste the GOP's presidential candidates. Cortes predicted that many evangelical Latinos who backed Bush in 2004 are likely to abandon the GOP in 2008.

Cortes' remarks came on the eve of Sunday's Spanish-language debate, to be televised by Univision, among the top Republican contenders. In recent encounters, two of the leading candidates, Romney and Rudy Giuliani, have jockeyed to appear the most fervently opposed to illegal immigration.
Pew study sees growing power of Hispanic vote

From the DNC website:

Republican Anti-Immigration Rhetoric Hurts The GOP

On the same day the Pew Hispanic poll and the LA Times released the details of a new poll showing Hispanic voters are more inclined to vote Democratic than they have been since the late 1990's, Governor Dean met with Reverend Luis Cortes to call on the Republican presidential candidates to tone down their anti-immigrant rhetoric.

The DNC also launched a website detailing the over-the-top rhetoric of the Republican candidates about the immigration problem. It looks like a good resource.

Republican Immigration Legacy

More from the DNC site today about the polls.

Some 57% of Hispanic registered voters now call themselves Democrats or say they lean to the Democratic Party, while just 23% align with the Republican Party -- meaning there is now a 34-percentage-point gap in partisan affiliation among Latinos. In July 2006, the same gap measured just 21 percentage points -- whereas back in 1999, it had been 33 percentage points.

Countdown had some good information on this immigration issue the other night. I found it in the transcript.

The latest “Wall Street Journal”/NBC News polls suggests the topic is only the fifth highest priority among American voters at 11 percent. The latest Pew Poll says it‘s only the sixth priority of Republicans.

Countdown transcript

I found this squib on a search for the poll mentioned above. It makes you wonder why both parties are using divisive rhetoric when such a small minority is really so terribly against common sense reform.

"In a Nov. 5 Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 11% of adults -- and 4% of Democratic voters -- said illegal immigration is their top priority. But members of that minority, organized on the Internet, have created political turmoil by flooding lawmakers' offices with faxes and regularly raising the issue on the campaign trail."
The poll in pdf format:
WSJ online poll

It also makes me wonder why our Democratic Hispanic Caucus is having to battle their own party to get that common sense legislation.

Angry Hispanic Democrats Confront House Leaders

Tensions between Hispanic Democrats and House leaders exploded Friday when a bloc of Hispanic lawmakers voted to derail a major tax bill, relenting only after an angry confrontation on the floor with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer , D-Md.

The rebellion was a response to votes by 36 Democrats Thursday night in favor of a non-binding Republican motion Hispanic members called offensive. It instructed House conferees on an appropriations bill to accept a Senate-passed provision prohibiting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from suing employers over certain English-speaking requirements.

That motion was the latest in a series of immigration- and language-related votes that Republicans have used to splinter Democrats, some of whom are nervous about GOP attack ads that could portray them as “soft” on illegal immigration.

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus said Thursday night’s vote was their breaking point.

It also makes me wonder why a Democrat from NC named Heath Shuler is featured on Tom Tancredo's website? It makes me wonder why Shuler is praised by local NC papers for not aligning with the Democratic Party.

Why is Heath Shuler being praised on Tancredo's website?

Dean once said the GOP would scapegoat immigrants this time around, and they have done a magnificent job of it. The GOP even has our Democrats often falling over themselves to go along. Kudos to the DNC for working so hard with the Hispanic community.