Steve Schmidt should find a new line of work (immigration and the failed John McCain campaign)

Steve Schmidt - former chief strategist of the John McCain campaign - was interviewed by Ana Marie Cox about the various failures he was involved in and presumably he tries to defend himself against charges that he's completely incompetent; I didn't bother reading the whole thing (link) since this bit is all we need:

If you look at the returns from the southwestern and mountain west states, with rising Latino populations, it’s clear that Latinos are repudiating the party, their anger about the tone of the immigration debate, and the party has to figure out a way to communicate that wanting to have a secure and sovereign southern border and respect for Latinos are not mutually exclusive. But if the party does not figure out a way to appeal to Latino voters, it will become increasingly difficult, and maybe impossible, to ever again win a national election.

If McCain couldn't win over Latinos, one wonders which Republican could. McCain cost himself a large part of the GOP base due to his support for illegal activity in order to obtain votes. He spoke to the racial power group NCLR and, instead of taking them on for being far-left supporters of illegal activity, he went there seeking votes.

And, his Hispanic outreach director is a former cabinet-level official with the Mexican government.

Other than picking Vicente Fox as his running mate, it's unclear what he could have done different. No matter how much the GOP tries to pander, the Dems will always be able to buy more votes.

What the GOP has to do is stop putting crooked businesses ahead of their own self-preservation. And, they need to stop being Dem Lite by opposing corporate pluralism and by discrediting far-left supporters of illegal activity rather than capitulating to them.

Schmidt couldn't even beat the furthest-left major party candidate in history and someone whose past is partly unknown and partly very questionable. He should do us all a favor and find a new line of work.

UPDATE: Someone really needs to come up with a comprehensive list of all the ways that Schmidt's argument is wrong, since hacks will keep making the argument to sympathetic reporters until it's forcefully pointed out how they're wrong. One other argument against it is that the same people who got the GOP into trouble by supporting massive immigration are now offering their "solution": being "Latino-friendly", i.e., supporting even more massive immigration.

And, it looks like Schmidt's comments are part of a trend, an attempt by corrupt Republicans to signal to Obama that they want amnesty as much as the Democrats do.

The trend continues as Michael Scherer of Time Magazine's Swampland - the same site Ana Marie Cox works for - offers "The GOP's Big Hispanic Problem" (swampland.blogs.time.com/2008/11/10/the-gops-big-hispanic-problem/) which is basically a "news" report saying the same thing as Schmidt, but, of course, without even a hint at anything I wrote above. It links to this LAT article and also quotes Florida Sen. Mel Martinez (BTW: that last link is about another LAT article by the same "reporter") from an appearance on Meet the Press:

Governor Jeb Bush -- former Governor Jeb Bush last week made a comment that if Republicans don't figure it out and do the math that we're going to be relegated to minority status. I've been preaching this for a long time to my colleagues within my party. I think that the very divisive rhetoric of the immigration debate set a very bad tone for our brand as Republicans. The fact of the matter is I think in Florida there was not a great ideological shift, but I think there was plenty of room for improvement in how that state was looked upon. The fact of the matter is that Hispanics are going to be a more and more vibrant part of the electorate, and the Republican Party had better figure out how to talk to them. We had a very dramatic shift between what President Bush was able to do with Hispanic voters, where he won 44 percent of them, and what happened to Senator McCain. Senator McCain did not deserve what he got. He was one of those that valiantly fought, fought for immigration reform, but there were voices within our party, frankly, which if they continue with that kind of rhetoric, anti-Hispanic rhetoric, that so much of it was heard, we're going to be relegated to minority status.

Comments

He is culpable of the destruction of the GOP, yet he makes no apologies for his abject failure. Instead, he thinks more hispandering and ignorance of the majority white vote is the ticket to salvation. Anything less is "racist." The idiocy is indeed astounding given the landslide. But remember what the GOP told us before we elected Ahnold. They are so completely removed from the American people they really need to go to work for the Socialist DemoRats, all of them, since I don't see a real difference betrween the two when it comes to amnesty, treason and ignorance of the rule of law in this country. This guy just had his head handed to him and his solution is more of what got him there in the first place. This level of stupidity should preclude him from ever working on a campaign.

There are many reasons for McCain's defeat. If you want to simply blame one person, I'd pick Bush.

GOP = Got Out Pandered. By the Democrats, of course.

Why does everybody think McCain didn't set his own policy & surrounded himself with those who agree with him and instead think he was misled by traiterous opposition infiltrators. Nothing could be further from the truth, McCain is the king of the idiots, he owns both illegal immigration and fascist campaign finance rules. He was hoisted upon his own petard and he relished his own loss. If anything I have to credit the "McCain people" with mitigating the stupidity of their imperious leader. Palin gets the most credit, she almost made McCain palitable.

McMcain was told to toss it and get out of the way by his owner.