The AP story starts out with a dire warning for Mitt Romney:

“Mitt Romney ‘is done,’ said DeeDee Blase, [Email her]founder of Somos Republicans in Arizona. ‘He'll be lucky to get 8 percent of the Hispanic vote’ after saying he would veto legislation that would create a path to citizenship for some illegal immigrants and accepting the endorsement of anti-immigration activist Kris Kobach, architect of two of the strongest immigration crackdown laws in the country.” [Anti-immigration tone alienating Hispanics, By Jeri Clausing, Associated Press – 5 hours ago ]

Well, maybe he is “done”(with Hispanics), but who cares? What the press doesn’t realize, and what these so-called “Hispanic Republicans” don’t realize is that this election is not about them.

Even if every single Hispanic voter in America votes Democratic, it wouldn’t make as much difference as a small shift in the white vote. Hispanics are a small minority, and they already vote strongly Democratic.  About 60-65 percent of Hispanics will vote Democratic no matter how hard the GOP nominee panders.

The article also quotes the “Bush got 44 percent of the Hispanic vote” canard, which is (a) not true, (b) if it were true, would have  achieved by Bush promising a massive amnesty, and (c) represents a landslide in the wrong direction.

If Romney loses the support of some Hispanics, by his promise to act like a patriot in refusing to sign the Dream Act, he will gain a lot more votes from regular Americans who don’t want amnesty. Steve Sailer put some numbers on this in 2002:

But many pundits seem to forget that 10% of the Hispanics's 10% share of the California electorate is a grand total of – one per cent (1%). That's a ridiculously small increment to worry about.

The reason Perry won big in Texas and Simon lost in California was not their relative Hispanic appeal. It's the fact that Perry won 70% of the white vote, vs. 46% for Simon. If Simon had won 70% of the 74% of the California electorate that was white, he wouldn't have needed a single minority vote to be elected governor.

The same applies at the national level. Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 because he only got 54% of the white vote, vs. 59% for his father in 1988. But in 2002, the final Gallup Poll showed the House Republicans carrying the white vote 58%-38%. Combined with strong white turnout, this far more than offset the GOP's performance among minorities—which actually worsened despite all the Bush-Rove pandering.

File this under "Hispanic Hype", which we've been hearing about for years, and which we'll establish as blog category and expect to publish more on as the election grows closer.