Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Why Republicans Should Attack Latinos by Frum

Here is the recent David Frum article that outlines how to save the Republican party by attacking immigrants. He is basically saying that the middle class is being harmed by Latinos and the Republicans need to protect the middle class against the immigrant wave.

"The poverty rate for post-1970 immigrants and their native-born children is almost 50 percent higher than for the native born. No mystery why this should be so: one-third of adult new immigrants have not finished high school. And there is reason to fear that this poverty will become entrenched: barely half of Latino students complete high school on time; 48 percent of births to Latino women occur outside marriage. IN SHORT, the trend to inequality is real, it is large and it is transforming American society and the American electoral map. Yet the conservative response to this trend verges somewhere between the obsolete and the irrelevant. Conservatives need to stop denying reality. The stagnation of the incomes of middle-class Americans is a fact."

3 comments:

CJ said...

My feelings towards this article are that it lacts facts and its argument consist of comments that could come off as somewhat racist - how would this be a good "campaign ad" - if that is even what he is going for. Who was he trying to win over, if at all? If it was the general public - he would cause me to think negatively towards the republican party. I don't agree that imagrants effect the middle class in this way...of course, I don't have a lot of knowledge in the matter he perticularly speaks of. Okay...that is about as far as my brain is going for the evening...which may have not been that far. How is my spelling? There are many more ways we can "cure" the "problems" within the middle class - jobs/money - than blaiming it on imagrants so easily.......

Brandon Valeriano said...

One of the problems with the article is that it is full of facts, but the facts are either used incorrectly are have been surpassed by other studies that have found the 'facts' claimed here are wrong. Either way, the article suggests that an 'other' is needed to mobilize the Republican party, and that other is the evil Latino apparently.

CJ said...

Yes, I see what you are saying and didn't you mention in class your distaste for statistical facts at some point. As I read my comment now - I think I was a bit tired. :)