GOP committing political suicide — again

(Photo: Matt Rourke – AP)

Judging from the anti-immigrant rhetoric from Republican hopefuls in the Iowa caucuses, the Republican Party is marching straight to its third consecutive defeat in the November presidential elections.

The three Republicans who received the most votes in Iowa — Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, in that order — competed to woo extreme-right primary voters by claiming to be the toughest against undocumented immigrants, and promising to build a wall on the border with Mexico. They seemed oblivious to the fact that Republicans lost the most recent elections because they alienated too many Hispanic voters.

The three “amigos” — Cruz, Trump and Rubio — are following the steps of failed Republican candidate Mitt Romney, who famously proposed the “self-deportation” of undocumented immigrants in 2012. Romney lost the 2012 elections in large part because he got only 27 percent of the Hispanic vote, compared to the 71 percent obtained by President Barack Obama.

By comparison, former President George W. Bush — the last Republican to win a presidential election — won the 2004 election with 44 percent of the Hispanic vote. Bush, a former governor of Texas, had campaigned as a friend of Hispanics, and of Mexico.

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