It says a lot about the country today that the Republican nominee for President is being chosen without any meaningful participation by one of its largest population groups.  Aside from Florida where the HispanicLatino vote played some role, the HispanicLatino electoral quotient in the primaries and caucuses has been nil, which is in stark juxtaposition to the cover of Time magazine that has so many across the nation twitter.  Yesterday’s primary in Arizona – of all places – saw almost no participation by HispanicLatinos.  In a different world, HispanicLatinos should have rushed to vote for a more moderate Republican candidate win. But HispanicLatinos skipped the primary as if it never existed – a fact that speaks to how bifurcated the country is politically.

Years ago when it became evident that the HispanicLatino population was going to play critical roles in the big states with the most electoral votes – California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois – few commentators realized how vapidly it would participate in the primary stages of presidential elections.  In elections past, by the time the primaries and caucuses roll around on the Democratic side of the equation to the states with important concentrations of HispanicLatinos, the Democratic nominee had been long anointed.  And with a HispanicLatino vote almost non-existent on the GOP side, the question is moot.  Only in 2008 did the HispanicLatino vote figure prominently, holding fast for Hillary Clinton.

HispanicLatinos almost put Clinton over the top.  The 15 percent that supported Barack Obama won him the nomination.  It is from that 15 percent of the HispanicLatino population that emanates the most disappointment from what many see as his Administration’s lackluster approach to issues important to them.  The HispanicLatino vote was by far more important to Obama in the primaries than it was to John McCain in the general election.   Even so, the glaring absence of HispanicLatinos in the GOP primaries and caucuses has been generally convenient for both parties.  Democratic chieftans do not have to worry about the HispanicLatino vote until November and the GOP does not have to answer for anything policy-wise that affects the HispanicLatino community.  But convenience is often a foil, which is what made Time cover story important.

The HispanicLatino is not an issue constituency, that is to say, unlike the voter groups to which abortion is the end-all.  The HispanicLatino vote is almost non-ideological.  The GOP tries to attract the HispanicLatino population with appeals to its conservative nature – which is not altogether wrong except that most of the Republican message is a misstep that turns into mistake.  On the other hand, Democrats assume HispanicLatinos are largely progressives – which is also erroneous.

HispanicLatinos are a foil that by all standards will not last.  As the HispanicLatino population grows in importance, the tune of the Republican Party will have to change.  The mistake the GOP might yet commit is to think that it can wait for enough HispanicLatinos as they move up the social and economic ladder to join its side.  But as we are seeing today, that is not enough.  Many HispanicLatino Republican voters are as dismayed by the Republican anti-HispanicLatino message as pro-choice Republican women are to the party’s surge to the right on women’s health issues.  They look askance at a party that if it wins the White House might lead to the complete takeover of the Supreme Court and overturn a woman’s right to choose.

Could enough HispanicLatino voters swing from the Democrats to the Republicans in November?  Possibly.  But given the results in Arizona and Michigan yesterday, it would appear that the convenient anti-HispanicLatino message coming out of the Republican Party that will be repeated in contests that will not see much HispanicLatino participation was too convenient by half for the GOP nominee.

The GOP can only hope that a brokered convention might yet produce a ticket that could start anew with a blank slate upon which it could write a message of hope instead one of intolerance and hate.

Feel free to forward these blogs adapted from previous writings, with additional thoughts published invariably in between.