Unsurprisingly, California Republicans are pushing the GOP to attract Latino voters:
Former staffers for defeated California candidates Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina have an urgent message for fellow Republicans: Their political future depends on Latino voters, and the Obama administration may be providing an opening. [...]
The numbers of Latinos are ballooning in battleground states such as New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado and remaking the U.S. political map, political consultants say, arguing that the Hispanic vote also helped defeat Senate Republican candidates Sharron Angle in Nevada and Ken Buck in Colorado.
Now is probably a little too late for Republicans to court Latino voters, at least as far as the 2012 election cycle is concerned. Two years of intense anti-immigrant sentiment from GOP activists and politicians has all but soured Latinos on the prospect of supporting the Republican Party in a major election. Indeed, given the rabid xenophobia of Republican base voters, I would be surprised if the GOP could even maneuver itself into a position to appeal to Latino voters.
I will say that healthy party competition for Hispanic voters is good for Latinos as a cohesive national interest group. Not only does it make Latino-friendly legislation (like comprehensive immigration reform) more likely, but it will pull more Latinos into the political process, by way of interest and active recruiting.
That said, it's a little too soon to make any broad, long-term predictions about Latino voters; assuming a less anti-immigrant Republican Party, assimilation and diversification among Latinos will almost certainly produce a constituency for conservative politicians. On the other hand, if Republicans continue along their current path, they could find themselves isolated from the Latino vote in the same way that they're isolated from the African American vote, with disastrous consequences for their national viability.
