At the California Republican Assembly convention two weeks ago actor and comedian Paul Rodriguez delivered a remarkable speech during the Saturday evening dinner. Rodriguez’s family farm has been hit hard by the judicial ruling that shut off water to the Central Valley because of the Sacramento delta smelt. My Townhall article this week is about Rodriguez and the government-inflicted water shortages hurting California farmers.
The state GOP needs to take note of the anger many Latino Democrats are feeling right now because their party won’t do anything to stop the insane government policies. Instead of merely talking about Hispanic outreach, the CA GOP should be in the Central Valley explaining to voters how Republicans believe in the principles of a limited government that won’t place the interests of a fish above the wellbeing of citizens. If you have the chance, I recommend listening to Rodriguez’s entire speech to the CRA, available on iTunes. It’s inspiring and offers the GOP a clear message on how to appeal to Latino voters.
May 15th, 2009 at 12:00 am
I was present when Paul Rodriguez gave his talk about the water shortage for farming in the Central Valley. People, this is absurd. We are preventing farmers from producing food to feed people to save the Delta Smelt. Environmentalists want to let people starve or die to save fish.
The Republican Party should make it a goal to bring common sense back to the water distribution problme in the Central Valley. Don’t let the Central Valley farmers be forced to close their farms because they can’t get water.
Thanks for reporting this Meredith.
May 15th, 2009 at 12:00 am
If you think about it, the only issue keeping Latinos out of the Republican Party is the issue of illegal immigration. On most other social and fiscal issues (religion, abortion, family issues, limited gov’t) they are pretty conservative as a whole.
I know that as a Latino Republican myself, I was drawn to the party mostly by the concept of “I don’t want the government to spend my money, I want to spend my money”.
If the party can find a way to move away from the issue of illegal immigration (or find a solution to it that makes everyone happy), then I think you’ll see an influx of Latinos register Republican.
May 15th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Gary,
But then the environmentalist extremists would get all mad and call the Republicans “anti-environment” and they might not like us!
At least that is what I suspect would keep from adopting such a strategy.