Dear Mary, Joseph and the wee donkey. Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, just asked Tony Parker, the RNC treasurer, to get in touch with me.
Yeah, he did. I got the letter in the mail today. Had a handwritten note from Tony himself, promising that if I’d send him a pledge for $35-$50 he’d personally tell good ol’ Reince I’d anteed up the dough. Tony made it real easy for me; included a charge card form and all. He even shared with me Reince’s email.
“Tony,” it said, “please try to contact Ms. Linda G. Cunningham for me. If we are going to be able to give our Republican presidential nominee maximum support, I need Ms. Cunningham to send a Pledge of Support …. We must have the support of every Republican … or we won’t be able to provide all of our vital support services like voter registrations drives, phone banks and TV and internet advertising … You may just want to print this email and send it to Ms. Cunningham. Those reports we’re seeing about Hillary Clinton and her allies raising $2.5 billion for her presidential campaign — to smear our Republican candidate … have me worried. Tell Ms. Cunningham we need every Republican to pitch in or get ready for four years worse than Pres. Obama’s term.”
Bless his heart. Must be particularly awful to be Reince and Friends right now, days after Super Tuesday when The Donald ran the table and is now spending a few days in Florida before the March 15 Florida presidential preference primary. There’ve been Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz sightings, but who’s kidding whom? It’s Donald Trump that’s got the GOP national committee shorts in a knot.
The last time I checked, Trump didn’t need the financial support of the GOP, nor was he asking. He certainly doesn’t need my $35. And, the GOP national committee must be out of its collective mind if it thinks we registered voters will swallow a faked email, complete with computer-assisted handwriting, as the real deal.
Aside: For all those who think I am a far-left wingnut who’d never side with the elephants, I get these GOP mailings because the national committee hasn’t updated its databases in years. One ends up there when one pulls a Republican ballot in open primary states, which I’ve done frequently over five decades. And, yes, I’ve gotten similar entreaties from the donkeys; just not this campaign season.
So, nope, I’m not sending cash to Reince and Friends, though I will provide a re-write of the solicitation email.
Send money now. Please. We know you would never vote for the two scariest Republicans on the planet, Trump and Cruz. We know you Florida people aren’t exactly excited about Rubio either. We know all that because we feel exactly the same. So, if you send us money, we promise to use it to get a Democrat elected to the White House — because four more years of Hillary or Bernie is the best the GOP can do right now. Please help us. We’re drowning over here.
I’d keep the last sentence of the original “email”: “Tell Ms. Cunningham we need every Republican to pitch in or get ready for four years worse than Pres. Obama’s term.”
That’s the only truthful sentence in the whole faked-up email marketing campaign.
Linda Grist Cunningham is editor and proprietor of KeyWestWatch Media, a digital marketing company in Key West. She has already voted in the March 15 presidential preference primary. Despite the hanky-panky of redistricting and the tossing up of roadblocks for voter registration (and both are legendarily ridiculous), Florida makes it easy to get an absentee ballot mailed to one’s home for every election. If you haven’t voted, get out there to the early voting polls or show up on March 15. Your vote matters more than cash to national committees.
Time for Rubio to “get right” on immigration, Creationism — or his Cuban surname won’t help
The national Republican Party, casting about for ways to mend its abysmal track record with Americans of Hispanic descent, ought not pin its hopes quite so naively on Florida’s U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio.
There’s no such thing as a Latino voting block in the United States, and if there were, it’s likely these days to be dominated by the surging immigration of Mexicans into the country’s West, Southwest and Midwest. Wooing and winning the future Mexican American voter demand the Republicans change up their immigration, economic and jobs policies. Success will be about policy — not last name.
Rubio ought to be allowed to rise or fall on his merits, not his parentage. Barack Obama ought to have been allowed the same, not because of, but despite of his skin color. And, as Hillary Clinton plays her cards for the 2016 presidential election, watch for web worlds filled with “first woman who …” headlines — and data-dumps of information about an imagined “block of women voters.”
Americans appear to understand that one white Alpha male doesn’t represent all men. We’re not so savvy about ethnicity, race and gender. We’re just aware enough not to say it aloud in polite company, but most of us haven’t moved too far past “some of my best friends are (feel free to fill in the blank.)
The Republican and mainstream media conversation about Rubio during and following the presidential campaign feels just too much like the “best friends,” pat ourselves on the back approach. The allure of Rubio’s Hispanic surname, his conservative credentials and his “rising star” moniker among the national media make him virtually irresistible to Republicans. One can hear them chortling in the backrooms: “We’ve got the trifecta here.”
There’s a problem with that. Three of them actually, and unless Republicans up-end their unsophisticated approach to America’s multinational Hispanic population, they’ll have little ballot box success.
Ruben Navarrette Jr., a long-time advocate and columnist for American Latinos, puts it this way in a column entitled “Why Marco Rubio can’t save the GOP”:
When you’re a Cuban-American politician who is being put forth by your party to help get votes from Latino voters — the majority of whom are Mexican or Mexican-American — things can get complicated.
First, let’s stop with the idea that any-Hispanic-surname will connect with potential voters.
Rubio is of Cuban descent, which may continue to play well in Cuban-dominated Florida, but that ethnic heritage is unlikely to appeal to the 63 percent of American Hispanics whose family trees are rooted in Mexico. Even in Key West with its 21 percent Cuban American population, Rubio fans are hard to come by. Why? Because as one multi-generational Cuban American told me: “Miami Cubans and Key West Cubans had different paths to the United States,” she said. “We’ve always lived here; we weren’t political refugees.”
If Rubio be disconnected from at least some Cuban-descent Key Westers, how much more so will he be disconnected from Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans and Hispanics from South and Central America and the Dominican Republic?
Second, Republicans must get their immigration policies straightened out. Cubans and Mexicans simply don’t share the same immigration challenges, and the GOP’s current hardline policies — staunchly supported by Rubio — aren’t going to work.
Third, Rubio’s Creationist, hate-the-science, Tea Party approach to governing are simply out of touch with pretty much every voting block except the neo-cons. It’s time for a platform update.
Rubio can’t connect the GOP with the ill-defined, virtually unshaped Hispanic voting block. Not solely because he’s Cuban, but because his immigration and public policies are out of sync.
