Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative commentator and founder of conservative interest group Eagle Forum, has embarked upon a push to discourage the Republican Party from ramping up its outreach efforts among Latino voters. In an interview with a Bakersfield, California talk radio host last week, Schlafly dismissed the idea that Latinos' stances on issues like abortion gave them a natural affinity with Republicans.
"I don't think they have Republican inclinations at all," Schlafly said. "They're running an illegitimacy rate that's just about the same as the blacks are, and the plain fact is, they come from a country where they have no experience with limited government and the types of rights we have in the Bill of Rights."
Listen to the clip below.
"They don't understand that at all," she concluded. "You can't even talk to them about what the Republican principle is."
Schlafly hopes that the GOP will focus on courting the so-called "missing white voters" instead of minority voters. She told PolicyMic in May she believes Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential elections because "his drop-off from white voters was tremendous" and because the GOP doesn't "know how to relate to grassroots Americans." Also that month, Schlafly told radio show "Focus Today" that the GOP's need to reach out to Hispanic voters was a "great myth".
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"The Hispanics who have come in like this will vote Democrat and there's not the slightest bit of evidence that they will vote Republican," she said. "And the people the Republicans should reach out to are the white votes, the white voters who didn't vote in the last election and there are millions of them."
Sean Trende, a journalist and political analyst at RealClearPolitics who is known for his statistical prowess, has been the brains behind the theory that the Republicans could win elections on the strength of "missing white voters." The term refers to the 8 million or so white voters who stayed home on the 2012 elections -- a coalition of voters who, according to Trende:
"[stretch from northern Maine, across upstate New York (perhaps surprisingly, turnout in post-Sandy New York City dropped off relatively little), and down into New Mexico. Michigan and the non-swing state, non-Mormon Mountain West also stand out. Note also that turnout is surprisingly stable in the Deep South; Romney's problem was not with the Republican base or evangelicals (who constituted a larger share of the electorate than they did in 2004).
"For those with long memories, this stands out as the heart of the 'Perot coalition.' That coalition was strongest with secular, blue-collar, often rural voters who were turned off by Bill Clinton's perceived liberalism and George H.W. Bush's elitism. They were largely concentrated in the North and Mountain West..."
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Schlafly appears to agree. "The propagandists are leading us down the wrong path," she has said. "There is not any evidence at all that these Hispanics coming in from Mexico will vote Republican."
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