Mini Swartz writes today about liberalism's apparent rise in Texas. I'd argue that this isn't quite true. Democrats seem to be making a rebound, but your daddy's Democratic Party was a conservative organization, this year's model is not.
She usefully points out that the Democrat's rise has been facilitated by negative reactions within the Republican Party to President Bush's efforts to reform immigration policy. Republicans had an opportunity to bring Latinos into the fold and blew it. This is stereotyping of course, but the typical latino is more conservative socially than the typical Democrat. They may well have felt more at home in the Republican party if that's all there was to politics, but the anti-immigration rhetoric--must of which was couched in nationalistic/anglo tones--trumped social issues.
Here's an excerpt from her piece:
But another reason for our predicted Democratic surge has to do with some shifting demographics that Karl Rove also saw coming: the tidal wave of Hispanic voters. It was assumed here for many generations that, yes, we had lots of Mexican-Americans in our midst, but it was also assumed that they didn’t vote. Mr. Rove, however, saw that these immigrants had become stakeholders — they now own homes, send their children to college and have 401(k)’s, and therefore know how important it is to vote their interests. In other words, if Republicans couldn’t bring them into the party tent, the dream of an All-Republican-All-the-Time state government was doomed.
But within the national Republican Party, Mr. Rove’s clever analysis ran into ingrained attitudes. President Bush’s reform efforts spawned an anti-immigrant reaction among Republicans that Mexican-Americans found despicable, and helped put Texas in play again. Latinos may not come through for Senator Clinton on Tuesday as she had hoped — anecdotal evidence suggests Mexican-Americans are split now along generational lines between her and Senator Obama — but they have shown little to no enthusiasm for the Republican Party.
