RSR notes with interest this item from Politico yesterday. Jason Cabel Roe, Peter Roskam’s former, campaign manager, has launched a new consulting firm, Revolvis Consulting. The firm “will focus on strategies to bring Latino voters into the Republican fold”. Revolvis’ initial focus is on a number of races in California.
Jason Roe’s bio on the Revolvis web site indicates that he was Chief of Staff for Republican Congressman Tom Feeney of Florida from 2003 to 2007. It fails to mention that Roe left Feeney in 2007 to work for Mitt Romney’s Presidential campaign, then abruptly resigned in April 2007, citing family obligations, after the FBI started questioning Feeney regarding his ties to lobbyist and felon Jack Abramoff. Feeney had accompanied Abramoff on that famous golf outing to Scotland. Roe memorably defended Feeney in an email message stating “Any assertion that this office knew Abramoff paid for the Scotland trip is a g–d—– lie.”
Roe previously founded Federal Strategy Group, a Washington lobbying firm that advertised its access to to politicians like Roskam.
Roe managed Peter Roskam’s famously dirty Congressional campaign against Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth 2006. That campaign attacked Duckworth as wanting to give “handouts to illegal aliens”:
You may recall that Jason Roe & Peter Roskam made Keith Olberman’s “Worst Person in the World” list for Roskam’s infamous remark that Duckworth wanted to “cut and run” from Iraq (Duckworth, of course, lost both of her legs while serving In Iraq) and Roe’s subsequent distortion of what was actually said.
So anyway, now Roe wants to help bring Latino’s into the fold. The Revolvis web site actualy has a “Latino Services” page. That’s impressive. The Latino Services page states that “an effective Latino program is a vital component to any public policy and/or candidate campaign”. (Isn’t that warm and fuzzy – a “Latino program”). But Roe is right, the current Republican “Latino program” – smearing the first Latina Supreme Court nominee as a racist and calling the National Council of La Raza a Latino “KKK” – is not proving to be working, if you believe the polls. (We wonder though whether this handiwork from the Revolvis portfolio will be typical of a Revolvis “latino program”.)
How does Revolvis plan to sway Latino voters, then? Wedge issues!:
Latinos, like other voters groups are not single issue voters. While immigration is an important issue, Latinos have consistently ranked national security, the environment, education, healthcare, and the economy as issues of greater importance to them. The Democrats do not hold sway over the Latino community on all of these issues. In California, we saw Latinos overwhelmingly supporting both Obama and the gay marriage initiative (Proposition 8). Avenues exist for Republicans to make inroads into these communities.
California’s Proposition 8 (Gay Marriage Ban), and additional survey data, illustrates that Republicans don’t have to change their principles, we just need to communicate with all voters, year-round.
Charming. Roe plans to win over Latinos by demonizing gay people.
These pricks, Roskam and Roe, and Limbaugh and all their kind , they just don’t get it. Until they do, the Republican Party will sink further and further into oblivion. Their program of lying to middle class people about caring for their needs while demonizing outsiders and sowing fear is bankrupt. It won’t work anymore.
Latinos aren’t stupid. If Republicans truly want to win Latino voters, and midldle class working people in general, then they need to start viewing them as people and not just votes - they have to learn to start doing the right thing by ordinary people and not just for big business and the very wealthy:
- Ensuring that workers are paid just wages, have safe working conditions, and their right to organize is protected
- Ensuring that everyone has access to affordable quality health care
- Ceasing to demonize immigrant workers and gay people
- Supporting policies that give consumers a fair shake against giant corporations
- Providing services for our returning servicemen who are strugling with health problems and unemployment
Until Republicans catch on, the party is going to continue to dwindle into a southern regional coalition of religious extremists and hate groups.
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