Opinion> Miguel Perez> Beyond The Point Of No Return

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Beyond the Point of No Return

Only a few months ago, the questions would have been easy to answer, before the GOP presidential candidates began to campaign. Yet they caused me a momentary brain freeze as I was sitting in front of a TV camera Monday morning in Manhattan.

"What do they have to do ... to win the Hispanic vote? What do they have to say about immigration so that the Hispanic community can consider them (acceptable) candidates for the White House?"

I was being interviewed, live before a national audience on Univision's "Despierta America," and I couldn't think of a way the Republicans could return from the abyss.

Already, on the issues that affect Latinos, they have gone so far to the right that trying to return to the middle would be tremendously hypocritical and void of credibility.

"Look, they would have to make such a huge about-face that at this time, I believe it is practically impossible," I told Univision news anchor Satcha Pretto. "They have declared themselves so anti-Hispanic, especially on the subject of undocumented immigrants, that it is practically impossible for them to return to the middle ... and to appeal to moderates and independents."

Had they not spent the last few months scapegoating undocumented immigrants to appeal to their party's right-wing extremists — had at least one of them displayed the courage to come out for real immigration reform — it might have been possible for a Republican to win the Hispanic vote for the first time in U.S. history.

Latino dissatisfaction with President Barack Obama was ripe for the picking. Unable to keep his promise to fix our broken immigration system, the "Si Se Puede, Yes We Can" candidate became the "No Se Puede, No We Can't" president. A moderate on immigration could have given Obama a real fight for the Hispanic vote.

It's not rocket science. Republican strategists knew this. Surely they advised the candidates that they had to walk a fine line to avoid alienating Latinos on one side or xenophobes on the other.

And yet, during this long season of GOP presidential debates, the candidates have gone out of their way to demonize Latino immigrants.

As if they hadn't already convinced us that the can be mean-spirited. In their last "forum," hosted Saturday by Mike Huckabee, some of them kept pandering to xenophobes and adding even more details to their long lists of anti-immigrant credentials.

Mitt Romney reminded us that as governor of Massachusetts, he opposed allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain driver licenses, to pay in-state college tuition and that he ordered the state police to enforce immigration laws that the federal authorities are in charge of.

Newt Gingrich reiterated that the "legalization without citizenship" plan for undocumented immigrants he outlined in a previous debate is limited only to those have been here for 25 years, which means that, aside from creating an underclass of legal residents with limited rights, his generosity only would apply to a small fraction of the 11 million undocumented immigrants estimated to be in the country. His plan still would leave us with millions of undocumented immigrants and with a broken immigration system.

Michelle Bachman, always seeking to be the most draconian among the extremists, confirmed that she would try to deport all 11 million people. Although she was told that it would cost $135 billion to conduct such a massive program. "The federal government needs to pay for the deportation costs," Bachmann said, apparently forgetting that, as the self-proclaimed champion of fiscal conservatives, she has been on a crusade against government spending.

Rick Perry bragged about having been endorsed by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the nation's most abusive immigrant persecutor, and he vowed to shut down and secure the border within a year.

In the Hispanic community, with an unemployment rate holding steady at 11.4 percent, President Obama only has one opponent: the economy.

When Latinos look at the economy, we wonder how Obama could possibly win re-election. But when we look as his potential opponents, we wonder how he could lose!

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.