Republicans: We Don't Need No Latinos!

Last month I noted a group of Latino Republicans who had spoken out forcefully against Marco Rubio and his virulent anti-immigrant policies that are being driven by the Tea Party. Somos Republicans took Rubio to task in a press release and put him on notice that a nativist approach to America's immigration headaches was not something that they could support.

Somos surely anticipated some push back from the Tea Party and last week they got it when Tea Party hack Javier Manjarres and his Shark Tank blog smeared Somos as "phony" and characterized them as a "Democratic front group." His proof?

Upon inspecting their website, in the top right corner you will also notice a sponsorship for the left-leaning voter registration movement Rock the Vote.

Rock the Vote is "left-leaning," of course, because they want more Americans to vote. A conservative ideologue like Manjarres knows full well that when more Americans vote, Democrats win. So this link constitutes all the proof Manjarres needs that this well-organized group of Latino Republicans is a Democratic front group.

On Saturday, the Tucson Citizen printed a letter from "Arizona Hispanic Republicans" that fired back at Manjarres...

Javier Manjarres is a tea party extremist from Florida who lives in his own little southeast bubble. He has no clue what is going on in the rest of the nation, nor does he understand what the rest of the Latin demographic views are. He is isolated to Cuban Floridian politics. He is livid that we do not support Marco Rubio’s immigration views because he is another apologist and shill for tea party extremists like Ann Coulter (on the record for referring to Muslims as “towel heads”), Allen West (who wanted to hire a radio show host who said “illegals should be hung”), and so forth.

Javier’s biggest beef is that we promote a strong Latin get out the vote via “Rock the Vote”. He thinks “Rock the Vote” is left leaning, but loses sight of the fact that we want ALL 21 million eligible Hispanic voters to participate in our political system and be responsible voters. He thinks Hispanic Republicans who register Latinos via Rock the Vote are phony Republicans but yet we don’t see Javier willing to go out to the Latino neighborhoods while rolling up his sleeves to help Latinos empower themselves via the vote.

Javier is a restrictionist. He doesn’t understand that you have to put People before Party. It’s unfortunate that his need to feel wanted by the Republican party takes priority over getting people involved and politically aware. What he is really concerned about is how we are hell bent on voting out all tea party anti-immigrant extremists — that includes his hero Senator Marco Rubio.

I suspect that the real reason that Manjarres believes that Somos Republicans is a Democratic front group is simply because it's made up of Latinos. Everybody knows that unless you're white, straight, wealthy, paranoid or Cuban-American, you really have no business voting Republican.

Now that's an argument that would have made sense.

In the meantime,  it's heartening for me to see right wing extremists like Javier doing their best to disenfranchise everyone in their party who isn't .

You go, Javi!

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