RSSOur Flagging Faith in the GOP
Carolyn Hileman - The Voice* | February 26, 2008
It’s immigration, stupid.
That’s the message from Hispanic faith voters — the de facto swing vote in this year’s presidential election. The candidate who hears and heeds it may well win the White House in November. And despite the patterns of the past, that candidate may not be a Republican.
Hispanic evangelicals won’t be squeezed into a Republican barrio. The question in our hearts and minds this election season is this: Is the Republican Party the party of xenophobia, nativism and anti-Latino demagoguery, or is it the party of faith and family values, regardless of skin color or language proficiency? Should we vote for Sen. John McCain because of his support for comprehensive immigration reform, or should Latino evangelicals shy away from a party that has refused to repudiate the polarizing and vicious rhetoric that has accompanied the immigration debate.
Hispanic faith voters include both evangelical Christians and Catholic charismatics. Many of us are the children of the Reagan revolution, the Moral Majority and the antiabortion movement. Where our parents championed the cause of economic equality and supported the Democratic Party, our generation wanted to connect the dots from the pulpit to the voting booth. Today, we also include large numbers from Generation X and Generation Y, younger adults who speak both Spanish and English fluently and hold strong social conservative beliefs but also embrace populist economic policies.
Without Hispanic faith voters, George W. Bush never would have won Florida in 2000 and 2004. Today, we play a major role in such swing states as New Mexico, Ohio, Arizona, Nevada and others. Without us, the Republican Party cannot succeed in a national election.
Until recently, the GOP stood ready to capture more than 50 percent of the Latino vote, thanks to evangelicals. In 2004, 44 percent of Hispanics voted for Bush — but among Hispanic Protestants (chiefly evangelicals), according to the Pew Research Center, this figure was 56 percent. Last year, a Pew survey revealed that Latino evangelicals are twice as likely as Latino Catholics to identify with the Republican Party (37 percent vs. 17 percent). And Latino evangelicals are far more likely than Latino Catholics to describe themselves as conservative (46 percent to 31 percent).
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