Presidential elections can be learning moments or lead to moments in which the electorate can transcend history. In 1960, Americans came to know quickly that the world would not soon end when a Catholic became President. Perhaps, too, this year’s election can lead some uniformed voters to learn a thing or two about Mormonism – and about Mexico. Odd, often contradictory moments in life can teach important lessons, educate people and move them out of self-induced ignorance. Sometimes the news that informs people can be mundane, sometimes riveting.
Some Republican voters who were once head-over-heels in love with Newt Gingrich are still reeling from the news that this schlock anti-government conservative politician took millions of dollars from semi-governmental agencies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to act as a historian. The mundane should be amusing at best. That Mitt Romney’s father was born in Mexico should not be shocking – in another time and place, that is.
In today’s Republican Party, however, anything associated with Mexico, immigration and the Dream Act that would help immigrant students is electric to GOP voters. And Mitt Romney is personally associated with all three in deed and in concept: With a father born in Mexico of a family that emigrated there and then emigrated back to the United States and that received government aid to get them started upon their return, Romney perhaps ought to consider using the ˜ over the ‘n’ in his name. In an age when an anxious public pines for authentic men and women to lead them into the future, spelling his name Romñey would be a more accurate representation of who he is. On so many levels, Romñey’s candidacy is so wrong, and it would be indeed interesting years from now to know when he writes his memoirs if he reveals any angst about how he would address his family’s immigrant and HispanicLatino background beyond his Mormon religion. This would be especially interesting to know if the HispanicLatino vote does what so many expect it to do and deliver a mortal blow not to his candidacy personally but to the Republican brand that to many HispanicLatinos is becoming what the Confederate flag is to blacks.
But there is a long way to go yet before the general election. If the past is prelude, it will not be long before Americans will be recruited to participate in focus groups so that the GOP can figure out a way out of the corner into which it is painting itself. Just the very mention of the word ‘Mexico’ elicited boos from the Republican audience at the South Carolina presidential candidate debate on Monday. In any diverse focus group, potential voters will be reticent to emit the hate and vile that comes so easily to too many people in the South. GOP strategists who really want to gauge the power of the issue, however, will convene only voters who are non-HispanicLatino to figure out how to maximize an anti-Democratic vote.
And that, sadly, could tell us more than what we need to know. Some of us already know enough about Mitt Romñey and the true nature of a significant part of the GOP to know what to do. But anything that expands the informational base of voters – especially in places like South Carolina – is good practice. If he loses his run for the Presidency, Romñey could take his quest to Mexico. The Mexican Constitution grants citizenship status to the sons of daughters of Mexican citizens. With the dollar at 1:13 to the peso, the Detroit-born Romñey with his wealth could be his own super political action committee.
It is something to know.
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