Jaimes: Better listen to the white liberal … or else

Responses to a recent AP article show that Hispanic GOP voters are the biggest mystery to the Democratic Party.

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A man hoists a sign during a rally of about 100 of Donald Trump's Latino supporters outside Anaheim City Hall on Aug. 28, 2016. (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

Marina Jaimes, Opinions Columnist

An Associated Press article titled “Latino support for GOP steady despite Trump immigration talk” sparked many questions by Twitter users, with the most popular thread being penned by the article’s author, Nicholas Riccardi.

While he was judging the sources for his piece in the thread, he blatantly showed his bias by asking why Hispanics can’t just vote like blacks. It’s liberal for, “Why can’t every dark person think the way I want them to?” Twitter users’ name-calling of the subjects interviewed in the article was even worse than Riccardi’s soft bigotry.

Many referred to the 2018 midterm elections as a referendum on the Trump administration — and that they were. The GOP, like Riccardi, would see how Trump’s hardline stance on immigration would affect the party’s Hispanic voters. Even Iowans wondered if Gov. Kim Reynolds’ critical reaction to the death of University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts, whose alleged killer is an undocumented immigrant, would hurt her chances of winning a very tight gubernatorial race.

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As highlighted in Riccardi’s article, Hispanics are not a monolithic voting group, but they are also not reliable voters for either party. Democrats still have a strong pull  on a large percentage of Hispanic votes, but GOP support from the group is stable. Talks of immigration reform did not make the Democratic Party as attractive as Democrats thought it might have, according to the article.

This information was not enough to satisfy Twitter users, many being white liberals, who wondered just how much Latino citizens have to hate themselves to vote Republican. Riccardi’s leftist analysis of his own article appeared numerous times on my timeline, and he attributed religion and and rural settings to brainwashing Latinos into voting Republican. Even after interviewing numerous sources, he still could not wrap his head around why a brown person wouldn’t want to vote Democrat.

The answer to Riccardi’s question exists in his article: the word “immigrant.” Riccardi interviewed numerous immigrants who most likely legally migrated to the U.S., fleeing dictators and powerful governments. When Riccardi wonders why all minorities can’t just vote Democrat, he pays no attention to the demographics of voters who do not believe the government is a lifeline; they’ve lived that. And they no longer wish to be subjected to it.

Latinos will continue to be a mystery to the Democratic Party because it cannot decide if they are the one minority group not worth using as political pawns if they legally migrated to the U.S., believe in the right to life, and vote in favor of economic freedom.

Just last week, Nicolas Maduro began his second term as president of Venezuela. His experiment in socialism is a perfect example of hell on Earth as his people starve, inflation skyrockets, and critics are jailed for demanding basic human rights. He mimics the political leanings of other Latin American countries who force their citizens to seek economic freedom and relief from corrupt regimes.

Latinos will continue to be a mystery to the Democratic Party because it cannot decide if they are the one minority group not worth using as political pawns if they legally migrated to the U.S., believe in the right to life, and vote in favor of economic freedom.

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So, to the many Twitter users wondering how Trump’s Latino support remains steady, screams of racism and self-hate will not be sufficient enough to persuade those supporters to switch their political ideology. For me, it is better to not cave into a white liberal’s demands if it means maintaining freedom and avoiding the powerful hand of government that my family once ran away from. I find that denying these demands comes with being called a multitude of names, just like the sources in the aforementioned article. The “better vote the way I want … or else”  attitude stands no chance against a group that cherishes everything denied to them back in their home countries.