The following is an excerpt from an op ed written by Manny González for this past Monday’s newsletter:

The Fidel Follies

By Manny González

They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But when it comes to Republicans and Miami, it’s more a case of flaunting your escapades. Republican presidential candidates parade through the Magic City whispering sweet nothings to Cuban exiles and sternly repeating Fidel Castro is a naughty man. There’s no need for handlers to shape the message – just tell them what they want to hear.

No one exemplifies this craven Republican attitude better than Mike Huckabee, who went from holding a rational position against the Cuban embargo to passionately embracing it. What makes his political pandering so crass is that the circumstances which led him to take his previous stance have not changed one bit. As governor of Arkansas, Huckabee argued his state’s agricultural industry would benefit tremendously by selling its products to Cuba.

Read more …

Republican gains among Hispanic voters have eroded over the past year, according to a Pew Hispanic Center report issued today. A survey conducted for the “Hispanics and the 2008 Election: A Swing Vote?” report found 57 percent of Latino registered voters consider themselves Democrats or “lean” to the Democratic Party while 23 percent “align” with the Republican Party.

Most of the movement in this direction comes from those lean towards the Democrats without formally identifying themselves as members of the Democratic Party.

Last week, Howard Dean issued a statement regarding Hispanic, which included the following:

“Today Democrats are building momentum across the country, and building stronger ties than ever with the Hispanic community. The Democratic Party shares the Hispanic community’s values centered on family, faith, and hard work, and our candidates offer the new direction the American people want.

Today, Hessy Fernandez who is the Republican National Committee’s Director of Hispanic Communications sent me the following statement in response:

“Actions speak louder than words, and the Democrat Party have failed to put forward accomplishments that resonate with Hispanic working families. The reality is that Democrats would say and do anything to win political points and will conveniently forget their promises. Hispanics will continue to reject their policies, which propose dramatic spending increases, massive government growth and higher taxes for hard working families and small businesses. On issue after issue the GOP and the Hispanic community share the same values and priorities”.

The Republican National Committee sent out the following article as an “In case you missed it”, which is a tactic used by almost every candidate and both parties to highlight what they consider favorable press coverage:

“Republicans lost the governorship of Kentucky and the state senate in Virginia last week. But the elections were not as bad as they looked for Republicans. Knocked down and trampled on by Democrats in 2006, Republicans are at least back on their feet in 2007. “

…

“Taking into account Republican Bobby Jindal’s election last month as governor of Louisiana and the strong (but losing) performance of Republican Jim Ogonowski in a special House election in a heavily Democratic district in Massachusetts, Republicans are in considerably better shape now than a year ago.”

According to campaign staff, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has agreed to participate in Univision’s Spanish-language Republican Presidential Candidate Forum to be held on December 9. This means the entire top tier of the Republican candidates will be in attendance.

Former Governor Mitt Romney has agreed to participate in Univision’s Spanish-language Republican Presidential Candidate Forum to be held on December 9th in Miami, Florida.

In his letter of acceptance, addressed to Univision Vice-President & Co-Director of News Division Sylvia Rosabal, Romney wrote:

“Thank you for inviting me to take part in Univision’s Republican Presidential Forum scheduled for December 9 in Miami. I very much appreciate the invitation and look forward to participating in this historic event.

“Members of the Hispanic community have made many truly significant contributions to our nation through their patriotism, hard work, entrepreneurship, faith in God, love of family and respect for human life. Their talents and ambition have helped make the United States a great nation.

“I look forward to addressing Univision’s audience and discussing my ideas to strengthen America through stronger families, a stronger economy and a stronger military. These are the values that have attracted millions of Hispanics to the Republican Party, and I believe they will continue to do so in the future.”

Senator John McCain and former Senator Fred Thompson have already confirmed their participation in the event to be held at the University of Miami.

Univision held a similar forum for Democratic candidates earlier this year on September 9th.

As an editor, you often leave good material on the cutting room floor. And the following few paragraphs were originally written for an article (“For Dios, But For Which Candidate“) about Latino Evangelicals that appeared in our first issue. They provide a personal snapshot of a dilemma faced by many Hispanic Protestants who are devout:

Juana Pedroza doesn’t pay much mind to politics. She cleans offices at night and houses on the side during the day, takes care of her two kids – and on Sundays, attends the Iglesia de Dios Hispana, which makes its home above a muebleria in downtown Los Angeles.

She doesn’t know who she’ll vote for in next year’s presidential election, but she doesn’t like gay marriage or legalized abortion. What irks her above all else, however: tougher immigration laws.

“We work hard to be in this country,” said the native Salvadoran who came to Los Angeles 24 years ago and legalized her status through an amnesty program. “We appreciate all this country has to offer, more I think than the people born here.”

When Election Day rolls around, Pedroza has faith that her church will lead her to the right choice. “The pastor will guide us,” she says.

- Christina Hoag

The GOP takes Hillary Clinton to task on the driver’s license issue in the following video:

President Bush’s Cuba policy speech today at the State Department was heavy on symbolism and light on new policy initiatives. Present on the same stage as Bush were the family members of several Cuban dissidents. The President promised to maintain the trade embargo, extended access to Cuba to foreign aid programs he knows Fidel Castro will reject and sketched the outlines of an “international multi-billion dollar Freedom Fund for Cuba” without specifying how much his Administration would chip in. As the President acknowledged, “Few issues have challenged [the State Department] — and our nation — longer than the situation in Cuba.”

The lukewarm speech contrasted with the advance billing provided in the lede of a New York Times article posted yesterday:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 — President Bush is planning to issue a stern warning Wednesday that the United States will not accept a political transition in Cuba in which power changes from one Castro brother to another, rather than to the Cuban people.

As described by an official in a background briefing to reporters on Tuesday evening, Mr. Bush’s remarks will amount to the most detailed response — mainly an unbending one — to the political changes that began in Cuba more than a year ago, when Fidel Castro fell ill and handed power to his brother Raúl.

Raúl Castro was not mentioned by name in today’s speech. And I don’t think the Castro brothers will view it a “stern warning”. Seems more destined, as the NYT article mentions, for an audience of South Florida Republican primary voters.

The President called on other nations to take largely symbolic measures:

They can open up their embassies in Havana to pro-democracy leaders and invite them to different events. They can use their lobbies of the embassies to give Cubans access to the Internet and to books and to magazines. They can encourage their country’s non-governmental organizations to reach out directly to Cuba’s independent civil society.

As for the U.S. government:

To further that effort, the United States is prepared to take new measures right now to help the Cuban people directly — but only if the Cuban regime, the ruling class, gets out of the way.

For example — here’s an interesting idea to help the Cuban people– the United States government is prepared to license non-governmental organizations and faith-based groups to provide computers and Internet access to Cuban people — if Cuba’s rulers will end their restrictions on Internet access for all the people.

Or the United States is prepared to invite Cuban young people whose families suffer oppression into the Partnership for Latin American Youth scholarship programs, to help them have equal access to greater educational opportunities — if the Cuban rulers will allow them to freely participate.

Except it turns out, the offers are not so new after all. And like previous offers this will be rejected.

You know, we’ve made similar offers before — but they’ve been rejected out of hand by the regime.

The only new offer is:

In that spirit, today I also am announcing a new initiative to develop an international multi-billion dollar Freedom Fund for Cuba. This fund would help the Cuban people rebuild their economy and make the transition to democracy. I have asked two members of my Cabinet to lead the effort — Secretary Rice and Secretary Gutierrez. They will enlist foreign governments and international organizations to contribute to this initiative.

And here’s how the fund will work: The Cuban government must demonstrate that it has adopted, in word and deed, fundamental freedoms. These include the freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of press, freedom to form political parties, and the freedom to change the government through periodic, multi-party elections. And once these freedoms are in place, the fund will be able to give Cubans — especially Cuban entrepreneurs — access to grants, and loans and debt relief to help rebuild their country.

Yet, there was no mention of specific financial contributions that the Bush Administration might request of Congress or seek from allies. Or, for that matter, any mention of which other governments might contribute. I don´t foresee any nation other than the Czech Republic or possibly El Salvador committing any funds. There are certainly wealthy individuals and some foundations which might be willing to contribute funds but on the whole it seems like a project that is destined to gather dust on someone´s shelf.

It is hard to see what the appeal to Cuba´s communist rulers of hypothetical assistance based on kicking themselves out of power might be particularly in contrast to the no-strings attached petro-fuelled aid from Venezuela.

The only truly new element introduced today was one of political theater. Namely, Bush´s use of the Spanish-language phrase “ya viene llegando” (“our day is coming”) to describe the immanence of change in Cuba. The phrase was popularized by Cuban American singer Willy Chirino in a song “Nuestro día (ya viene llegando)” that is enormously popular with the Cuban exile community.

The song was recorded in 1992.

The above YouTube clip is apparently of Chirino performing the song at a Panamanian camp for balseros.

Compared to the last Republican debate, there was relatively little discussion of immigration. Congressman Tom Tancredo limited himself to mentioning illegal immigrants in only one of his answers. Ditto with Rudy Giuliani. And I think that was it.

Given the timing and the importance of Cuban American voters in the Florida Republican primary, I thought it odd that none of the candidates found a way to mention the Cuban ´election´ being held the same day as the debate. (Although Romney did send out a press release on this topic beforehand.)

Overall, as reported earlier, there was little mention of Hispanics during the GOP gathering and the debate proved to be no different.

This is not to say that health care, social security and national security are not of importance and interest to Latinos. (And on some social issues such as single-sex marriages, Latinos tend to be very conservative.) Rather, there are topics of unique interest to Hispanics and Orlando would have been a good venue to mention them.

Mike Huckabee who in the last debate compared illegal immigrants to pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers had this interesting exchange with Chris Wallace:

WALLACE: Governor Huckabee, I’m sorry to say we didn’t call the horse race between you and Senator Clinton, but you say that she will win next November if the Republican Party doesn’t do a better job of reaching out to minorities.

(APPLAUSE)

Was it a mistake for some of your colleagues on this stage to skip those minority-sponsored debates?

HUCKABEE: I think it was a mistake. We need to be making sure that the Republican Party is the most inclusive party for the simple reason that our message touches more Americans and helps more people from the bottom get to the next rung on the ladder than anybody.