After Latino voters overwhelmingly chose Barack Obama over Mitt Romney in the 2012 election, Republicans have been trying really, really hard to find ways of convincing them that the GOP is their true home– thirty-three long years after Ronald Reagan famously said: “Latinos are Republican. They just don’t know it yet.”
This won’t help:
Rep. Don Young [Republican of Alaska] released a statement Thursday that said he “meant no disrespect” by referring to farm workers on his father’s ranch as “wetbacks.”
“During a sit down interview with Ketchikan Public Radio this week, I used a term that was commonly used during my days growing up on a farm in Central California,” Young said, according to the Anchorage Daily News. “I know that this term is not used in the same way nowadays and I meant no disrespect.”
During an interview with KRBD on Thursday, Young said: “My father had a ranch; we used to have 50-60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes. It takes two people to pick the same tomatoes now. It’s all done by machine.”
Young’s fellow Republican, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, responded: “The comments used by Rep. Young [(R-Alaska)] do nothing to elevate our party, political discourse or the millions who come here looking for economic opportunity.”
This must come as a stinging rebuke to all those who believe that Young’s comments actually do something to elevate the Republican party, the political discourse and the millions of Hispanic immigrants.