Latino Voters Risk Being Taken for Granted by Democrats

FOX NEWS LATINO (Opinion)

By Rosario Marin

July 24, 2012

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2012/07/24/rosario-marin-latino-voters-risk-being-taken-for-granted-by-democrats/#ixzz21a0g49Fi

I was mentoring a young Latina Democrat last week.

With her beautiful smile and those big dark brown eyes, she asked, almost innocently, why Latinos do not get respect from the two parties.

My answer seemed to rattle her – I said to her, so long as we (Latinos) follow the same steps as our African-American friends, we will continue to be taken for granted by the Democrats and disrespected by the Republicans.

But what if the Hispanic community were to divide their vote 50-50? Or 55-45?

Then, I believe, we truly would be catered to; both parties would romance us, both would listen to us and most likely our best interests would be addressed.

Case in point -- an overwhelming 97 percent of African-Americans voted for President Obama in 2008 and everything seems to indicate that this year about the same percentage will vote for him to reelect him.

This is the case, even though that community has the worst unemployment rate of all groups, and a staggering number receive food stamps.

To top it off, the President didn’t even bother to show up to the annual convention of the venerable NAACP.

Why should he bother when, by all indications, he is going to get the same percentage of their vote?

My fear is that the Hispanic community is on track to do exactly the same thing.

All polls within the Hispanic media (which, by the way, behaves pretty much like a Democratic bloc) seem to indicate that the same percentage of the Hispanic community will vote for the Democratic nominee as they did in the last election.

Back in 2008, Sen. John McCain had gone above and beyond any other Republican on the issue of immigration. Did the Hispanic community reward Sen. McCain for his valiant efforts?

No.

They favored Sen. Barack Obama, who opposed the compromise immigration bill that both Sen. Kennedy and Sen. McCain had worked on. Candidate Obama just promised he would have immigration reform in his first 100 days in office.

Yet, they are in line to vote for him, even though the President broke his immigration promise, has broken more Hispanic families by deporting the greatest number of non-violent individuals, and has created the worst economic conditions, whereby 500,000 more Latinos are unemployed than when he took office.

To be fair, the president has thrown a few crumbs to the Hispanic community of 50-million strong – about 150,000 Pell grants for students, and oh yes, far many more Hispanics are on welfare than ever before.

He did ask his Secretary of Homeland Security not to deport some students, which by the way, he was supposed to have done before he deported so many non-violent immigrants -- but who is looking?

Tragically, as long as the Latino community continues to reward Democrats and the President for their unkept promises, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

There is an old adage I told my young friend -- fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Rosario Marin served as the 41st US Treasurer under President George W. Bush. She is the author of "Leading Between Two Worlds Lessons" from the first Mexican-born Treasurer of the United States.