Are Hispanics Natural Conservatives?

Hispanic Actress Raquel Welch

I'll cut to the chase and answer the question up front: No. Hispanics are not natural conservatives.

Charles Murray culls these facts from the General Social Survey and the Current Population Survey:

Latinos aren’t married more than everyone else

Latinos aren’t more religious than everyone else

Latinos aren’t more opposed to gay marriage than everyone else

Latinos are a little more opposed to abortion than everyone else, but not by a landslide

Latinos aren’t more conservative than everyone else

Latino men are only fractionally more likely to be in the labor force than everyone else, and those with jobs work slightly fewer hours

Latino women are substantially less likely to be in the labor force than everyone else

Source: AEI - Charles Murray

This doesn’t make them bad people. It makes them mainstream Americans, and the GOP needs to adopt a coherent philosophy that appeals to all Americans, including Latinos.

Hispanics come from places where there are no safety nets, but perversely, those same governments can have a profound effect on people’s lives, often in a negative way. Latin American politicians are solicitous of retail constituent needs. I personally know a legislator from a Central American country whose first act upon getting elected was paving the dirt road in front of his mother’s house. It didn’t anger people; it gained him more votes in his next election because he was seen as a good and loving son.

So Hispanics can be very family oriented, banding together to protect and help one another, and they can be very entrepreneurial, owning their own businesses at a higher rate than Anglos, but they can also see a place for a benevolent government to help people get ahead and to keep people from falling through society’s cracks. And while they may be personally conservative in many ways, they believe in keeping personal business personal.

This is too subtle for politicians to grasp, so brace yourself for four more years of pandering and demonization in which millions will be handed a no-questions-asked citizenship.when all they really wanted was a multiple entry-exit visa that allows them to work here.