Trump’s nativism may cost Republicans Senate seats this year in Arizona and Nevada, as well as several House seats
QUE NO SE TE PASE
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The Daily 202: Trump systematically alienates the Latino diaspora — from El Salvador to Puerto Rico
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2018/01/09/daily-202-trump-systematically-alienates-the-latino-diaspora-from-el-salvador-to-puerto-rico-and-mexico/5a53c50830fb0469e883ffb1/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.d7adf8c290a8
By James Hohmann
Washington Post
THE BIG IDEA: A Manchurian Candidate who was secretly trying to alienate Hispanics would be hard pressed to do as much damage to the Republican brand as President Trump.
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Outside Washington, Trump’s pardon of Joe Arpaio after he was convicted of contempt of court for ignoring a federal judge’s order to stop racially profiling spoke volumes to Hispanics who see the former Arizona sheriff as a boogeyman. The president is also expected to travel later this month to look at prototypes of possible border walls, creating a visual that his base will love but will further galvanize Latinos.
More consequentially, Trump threatened to abandon Puerto Rico’s recovery in October if people on the island didn’t express more gratitude for his efforts in the wake of Hurricane Maria. He has downplayed the death toll, thrown rolls of paper towels at people who lost everything and personally attacked the mayor of San Juan. Meanwhile, many still don’t have power — and electricity might not be fully restored until May. Adding insult to injury, Puerto Rico is one of the biggest losers in the GOP tax bill.
The continuing humanitarian crisis has triggered a massive influx of Puerto Ricans to the mainland, specifically the perennial political battleground of Florida. Unlike those who benefit from TPS, the Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. So they can easily register to vote. Their collective anger at Trump makes that likely.
— Trump’s nativism may cost Republicans Senate seats this year in Arizona and Nevada, as well as several House seats across the Sun Belt. […]
But the much bigger issue is the long-term damage that Trump is inflicting on his adopted party. When they look back a century from now, historians will likely write that immigration and health care were the defining issues of our time. Five years after the Republican National Committee’s “autopsy” of the 2012 election highlighted the urgency of appealing to Latinos, Trump is driving his party down the same path that Pete Wilson followed in California when he embraced Proposition 187 to get reelected in 1994. He won a Pyrrhic victory. The Golden State GOP can’t even field a credible candidate for governor or Senate in California this year.
— None of this is surprising. Trump literally kicked off his campaign in June 2015 with an attack on Mexican immigrants. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,” he said. “And some, I assume, are good people.” Trump made dozens of similarly ugly comments before the election, from calling for a “deportation force” to saying that a federal judge who was born in Indiana couldn’t fairly adjudicate a fraud case against Trump University because his parents immigrated from Mexico.
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