Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seemed to make a pretty emphatic play for the race card yesterday:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid questioned on Tuesday how Hispanics could be Republicans.
Speaking with Hispanic supporters Tuesday at Hermandad Mexicana in Las Vegas, Reid took several shots at Republicans, blaming them for the fact that comprehensive immigration reform has not yet been passed.
“I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican, OK,” Reid said, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
“Do I need to say more?” he asked.
Reid went on to claim that it was because of Republicans that Democrats have been unable to pass immigration reform in Congress. The truth, of course, is that Democrats haven’t even attempted to bring an immigration reform bill to the floor of either chamber, largely because the issue is as controversial for them as it is for the GOP.
The Majority Leader was no doubt speaking to a sympathetic audience when he made those remarks, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few Hispanic Republicans in Nevada come forward in response to this.
Update: And that didn’t take long, here’s what one Hispanic Republican has to say:
Well Harry, let me introduce myself. I am the daughter of Cuban exiles who have seen first hand the failures of liberal and socialist policies in their native country. My father in fact, was a political prisoner in Cuba for five years because the government deemed his speech against repression and dictatorship “hateful and dangerous.” Sort of like what you democrats say about the tea parties, although you have not thrown their members in jail… yet.
The United States, with President Richard Nixon at the time, welcomed Cuban exiles. Only in the United States was there a country where they would allow immigrants of oppressive and regressive nations, come to make a better life for themselves and their family. A country that was the antithesis of the misery and desperation of Cuba. My father looked at the platform of the republican party that endorsed small government, lower taxes, and strong defense, while the democrat party embraced Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, murderers and tyrants, as some sort of folk heroes, and endorsed larger governments taking power away from the people.
Although I wasn’t born in Cuba, I witnessed for myself liberals governing the state of New Jersey. I saw the failed policies of former Governors Jim McGreevy and Jon Corzine. Unions ran the show, uncontrolled and limitless spending, massive corruption, and the highest property taxes in the nation. I, as a thinking, tax-paying citizen, can not fathom why I would support democrats that have ran this state to near bankruptcy. Heck, I see it in a larger scale in Washington, DC. Yes Harry Reid, I do think and watch the news.
Also Reid, in case you didn’t know, Latinos have a mind of their own. As much as I think your a bigoted, lazy thinker, you might have admitted what all democrats think of Hispanics who are on the right side of the aisle. You belittle us, think we need the nanny state to help us with our woes. Hispanics are actually a religious, pro-life, pro-business, and hard-working poeple. You know the stuff Americans are made of. I know many Latinos who work more than 12 hours a day, seven days a week, to earn their keep and give their children the life they couldn’t have in their native countries.
And Marco Rubio, Republican candidate for Senate in Florida isn’t too pleased either.
Reid’s comments strike me as the some sort of belittlement you see from the left directed toward black conservatives/Republicans. It seems that they can’t understand when someone doesn’t fit into one of their neat little ethnic/racial stereotypes.
