Presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney speaks today at a meeting of HispanicLatino business owners in Washington, D.C., where he reportedly is going to chat with Marco Rubio.  Who knows what they will talk about or what Rubio’s chances realistically are of landing the second spot on the GOP presidential ticket but it should get the attention of individuals who do not think the HispanicLatino vote is not going to be important – much less potentially decisive – in November.

Believe it not, there are some “analysts” out there who still believe the HispanicLatino vote is irrelevant.  Several weeks ago a clueless writer expounded as much.  Even back in 1960 when it might have been only five percent of the population, the HispaincLatino vote had an impact.  Had it not been for the HispanicLatino vote in Texas and New Mexico, John F. Kennedy might not have just scrapped through into office.  Might is the operative word. Without those two states, his margin of victory might have been only five electoral votes – perhaps enticing Richard Nixon to ask for a recount that might have sunk the Democratic ticket in the end, given vote irregularities across the nation.  In 1976, the HispanicLatino vote held for Carter-Mondale.  Without Texas’ 26 electoral votes Carter would have won by a single electoral vote. By that time, the Republican Party had changed enough so that it would not have blanched at driving the nation into a constitutional crisis.  That would have been great fun on the heels of Watergate.  And, of course, in 2000 the HispanicLatino in Florida and New Mexico was unimportant, right?

But, of course, HispanicLatinos are more known for deciding elections by not voting.  Had HispanicLatinos voted in the same margins in 1968 and 2004 as non-HispanicLatinos, those races could have gone differently.

The only elections that HispanicLatinos did not matter as a group were in the wipeouts of 1964, 1972, 1980, 1984 and 1988.  The elections of 1992 and 1996 were odd affairs when the odd Ross Perot scrambled the election.  And in 2008, of course, the HispanicLatino vote pushed Florida, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada – and possibly North Carolina – into Barack Obama’s column – the very states Romney needs to wrestle back to win.

Given the polls, which probably in my opinion show an election that is not as close as it seems, the betting has to be, for it might yet turn out, that without a sturdy HispanicLatino vote, Obama loses the election.

If so, he will have lost it narrowly and, again, the HispanicLatino vote will not have mattered, when instead of forming five percent of the national population as in 1960 they form more than 16 percent, right?

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