Compared to the last Republican debate, there was relatively little discussion of immigration. Congressman Tom Tancredo limited himself to mentioning illegal immigrants in only one of his answers. Ditto with Rudy Giuliani. And I think that was it.
Given the timing and the importance of Cuban American voters in the Florida Republican primary, I thought it odd that none of the candidates found a way to mention the Cuban ´election´ being held the same day as the debate. (Although Romney did send out a press release on this topic beforehand.)
Overall, as reported earlier, there was little mention of Hispanics during the GOP gathering and the debate proved to be no different.
This is not to say that health care, social security and national security are not of importance and interest to Latinos. (And on some social issues such as single-sex marriages, Latinos tend to be very conservative.) Rather, there are topics of unique interest to Hispanics and Orlando would have been a good venue to mention them.
Mike Huckabee who in the last debate compared illegal immigrants to pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers had this interesting exchange with Chris Wallace:
WALLACE: Governor Huckabee, I’m sorry to say we didn’t call the horse race between you and Senator Clinton, but you say that she will win next November if the Republican Party doesn’t do a better job of reaching out to minorities.
(APPLAUSE)
Was it a mistake for some of your colleagues on this stage to skip those minority-sponsored debates?
HUCKABEE: I think it was a mistake. We need to be making sure that the Republican Party is the most inclusive party for the simple reason that our message touches more Americans and helps more people from the bottom get to the next rung on the ladder than anybody.
Tags: Republicans
