Commentary: How Romney could help himself with Hispanic voters - KansasCity.com

One of the key things to watch in this week’s Republican national convention in Tampa is whether the Romney-Ryan ticket will be able to connect with Hispanics and improve its dismal approval ratings among Latino voters. There are some things they could do — but I doubt they will.
According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll of Hispanic voters released last week, the first that was conducted after presumptive Republican candidate Mitt Romney picked congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) as his running mate, President Barack Obama leads Romney by a whopping 63 percent to 28 percent among Latino voters.

To make things worse for Romney, the Republican platform scheduled to be approved at the convention has adopted a hard line on immigration, calling among other things for a fence along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, ending in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants, and prohibiting so-called sanctuary-cities that accept people without immigration papers.

While the platform will include language supporting a guest-worker program, anti-immigration extremists persuaded the Platform Committee to use the term “illegal alien” instead of “illegal immigrant” throughout the document, according to an Oct. 22 Tampa Bay Times article. “Illegal alien” is a term that many see as dehumanizing undocumented immigrants.

In an effort to win over more Hispanics — and get closer to the 40 percent of the Hispanic vote that former President George W. Bush got in 2004, or the 31 percent that former Republican candidate Sen. John McCain got in 2008 — the Republican campaign is scheduled to feature an impressive lineup of Latino politicians at the convention.(There will be not one single Latino performer, though, according to the convention’s entertainment lineup announced Friday.)

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/08/30/3781312/commentary-how-romney-could-help.html#storylink=cpy