same shit those clowns say about Black voters and look at how well that works.

I've been wondering about that conservative claim for a while. I'm guessing it comes from the fact that a large majority of Latinos are Catholic, and the Catholic church doctrine is anti-gay and anti-abortion. But in practice most Catholics in the US aren't particularly conservative, and many ignore some of the stricter elements of church doctrine. Heavily Catholic Ireland recently passed marriage equality by popular vote, so they're not particularly conservative either, regardless of church policy. Why should we expect Latino Catholics to be any different?

@2: They're not. Like most Catholics in the USA, they're much more socially liberal than the evangelical (frequently Baptist) southern Protestants which make up the GOP's base these days.

Conservatism is a missused word. As much by Republicans as Democrats. It's a philosophy about governance, where the individual is paramount over the state.

@4, I've been wondering, and perhaps you can help me understand, why is anti-choice a conservative position? To me, it is no different for a govt to disallow an abortion than it is to require it (as the repressive govt in China is known to do.) Why is a doctrine that requires govt interference in the most private personal matters considered conservative, if conservative means opposing govt imposition on freedom? It sounds totalitarian or Stalinist or something un-American like that.

Donald Trump is single-handedly killing the GOPs chances in 2016 at picking up anything but the dwindling white male vote. I honestly wonder if he isn't a secret agent for the Clintons.

I do find the polling numbers illuminating - I'd personally half-bought the notion that they could be appealed to on the basis of reactionary social values.

@1 - I live in the rural south, and I watched an African American man getting out of his SUV at the grocery store yesterday - his SUV with Tea Party license plates. The Tea Party is less racist that it is social-reactionary; it is the unreconstructed social reactionaries who formerly branded themselves as Evangelicals, a label which became passe after 2008 because they were tarnished by their association with Shrub). Those people will not vote against an African American, but you better believe they'll sit on the hands if the Dem. nominee is another white person.

@6,7

Well, at least Mehlman isn't pretending to be conservative anymore. So that's one good thing coming from Savage's insane blathering.

Liberals are the ones with the low divorce rate.

@5: You're right, anti-choice is an example of its misuse. Same as NJ Governor Christie going against Washington and Colorado on legalizing cannabis - it's states right's after all - a conservative pillar of our republic.

Liberals are the ones with the low teen pregnancy rate.

@19 Nope Mehlman is still conservative. It is you who are not.

After the presidential election in 2012, the GOP produced a somewhat candid postmortem, which noted Democratic support among Latino voters, and called for more GOP outreach to the Latino community. I believed that it was implausible that the GOP could turn around its fortunes with Latino voters in one four year period, but since then the GOP has fought immigration reform, and now has started the 2016 campaign cycle slurring Latinos. Simply put, a concerted effort over a four year period may have allowed the GOP to increase support among Latino voters, however, there is no way to undo this damage between the end of the current primary season and the general election. And don't believe that just because someone named Cruz or Rubio is on the ballot that Latino voters are simply going to vote for the GOP.

Eh, I can get you any study you like, as Sarah Harding told Francis Urquhart (in the second installment of the REAL House of Cards trilogy, To Play the King).

Thank God that Walker has finally put the spotlight were it really needs to be. We must protect ourselves from the Canadians!

Seriously, the GOP is spinning so far away from center that literally walling in our country is a reasonable topic. 7,500 miles of border! These people are lunatics.

I am increasingly convinced that Trump is actually a deftly disguised liberal, who has spent decades creating this cover persona to destroy the right-wing from the inside. That is the only plausible explanation. He just keeps cranking the crazy knob, and the rest of the field sprints away from reality to try and keep up. By the time the Republican nomination is settled, the last candidate standing is going to have to be put down for rabies.

Nice work agent Trump.

Dream on. Mark Udall lost his Senate seat to a Republican challenger who polled well among Hispanic voters in Colorado. It's not a monolithic block. Until Trump popped up, I would have said the GOP still could garner a decent share of the Hispanic vote, if the Democrats continued to take it for granted the way they do with the black vote.

What's with deleting Seattleblues's posts, anyway? He's funny when he's working himself into a froth over something without having anything useful or rational to say.

@9 - Ken Mehlman was always more concern-troll than conservative, though I suspect the society in which he would ideally live would be as sexless and artless as the one you envision, given his contemptuous apathy for creatives' struggle to live in an ever more expensive city.

@22 Agreed the Subhuman one is amusing let it spin out of control.

@22, 24 and moderators: Plus you're handing him the Victim Card on a silver platter.

@25 Yep, that victim card and four bucks will get him a cup of coffee.