It is interesting to see the national media try to make sense of the HispanicLatino vote in Florida before the Republican primary on Tuesday.  The media speaks of it as one vote, and it is in a sense.  The HispanicLatino vote next week could be as much as 80 percent Cuban American.  But most HispanicLatinos in Florida now vote Democratic, so the media would be more accurate to describe the group voting next week in the GOP contest as the Cuban Republican vote, and they should point out that it is shrinking as each day passes due to its aging nature. 

Cubans are not unlike Anglos.  They are not replacing themselves at a rate necessary to remain viable in the long term.  Cuban American eligible voters now make up only about one-third of all eligible HispanicLatino voters in the state.  Leaving the impression that HispanicLatinos care about the Republican primary is imprecise.

More interesting still is to hear the Republican candidates spend so much time talking about immigration – a subject about which most Cuban Americans and Puerto Ricans, the two largest groups of HispanicLatinos in the state, seem to care little.  Taken together, Cubans and Puerto Ricans make up about 70 percent of the HispanicLatino electorate in Florida.  Apparently unbeknownst to some Romney and Gingrich advisors and much of the media, Puerto Ricans are citizens.  So neither Romney nor Gingrich is likely to cause non-Cuban HispanicLatinos who usually do not vote in Republican primaries to head to the polls over immigration.  They can’t in many cases.  Florida is a closed primary state, meaning you have to be a registered Republican to vote in the primary.  Most Puerto Rican voters who mostly vote in the Democratic primary and who do not care about immigration are not going to jump up and go vote in a totally unfamiliar primary.

In a close race, the remainder 30 percent of the HispanicLatino vote that does care about immigration should be important, but most of it does not vote in Republican primaries either.  And neither Gingrich nor Romney – nor the Republican Party for that matter – has endeared themselves with them in any case.

The only question regarding immigration that could possibly matter is how Gingrich or Romney would handle a sudden flight of thousands of refugees from Cuba in the event of a change of government that could trigger another Mariela-style stampede.  What do the contingency plans at the Pentagon call for in the event of another installment of the 1980 spectacle in which a flotilla of small craft from the United States set sail to bring tens of thousands of Cubans standing at the docks at Mariel west of Havana to Florida?  Would Newt or Mitt allow a repeat?  The wrong answer between now and Tuesday could affect the “HispanicLatino vote” in the primary.  Nothing else will.

On another front:

Every time I see Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, my mind longs for Ann Richards of Texas instead.  The craggy faces and the brilliant hair are the only similarities.  I get a sense that Brewer fantasizes about becoming the GOP’s version of Ann Richards and become vice presidential material.  The theatric confrontation she picked with President Obama two days ago upon his arrival in Phoenix – in a state taut with tension – revealed much.

But Brewer has a long way to go. Richards was a genuinely likeable individual with a sense of community who in turn loved people.  Brewer is an angry white woman who hates – proudly.  She is a gauche wannabe in the way of the simplistic Sarah Palin.  Richards was an accomplished woman in the manner of Eleanor Roosevelt – and that about says it all.

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