On Sunday, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus warned GOP Presidential candidates to “proceed with caution” and avoid a tone that could alienate Latino and immigrant voters.
Ya think it might be a little late for that, Reince?
“The way you communicate and tone is very important, and sometimes it’s not what you say, but how you say it. I think all of our moms have told us that,” he in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” “All of these candidates are going to have to account for their own words.”
But, Reince appears to be all bark and no bite when it comes to laying down the ground rules.
Remember back three months ago to when Donald Trump — the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination for President — used his campaign launch to accuse Mexican immigrants of being criminals and “rapists.”
Media outlets reported that a worried Priebus was all set to give Trump a strict talking-to about his tone, but that call instead turned into a “congratulatory” backrub about his skyrocketing poll numbers, Trump later boasted to CNN:
“He did say, ‘you know, you could keep it down a little bit, but you can’t change your personality and I understand that.’ It was really a nice call, a congratulatory call,” Trump told CNN.
Trump said Priebus congratulated him on his surge in the polls, telling Trump that he’s “literally not seen anything like this.”
Flash forward a few more weeks, and Trump then followed-up his “rapist” claim by ignoring Reince’s lukewarm plea for civility and introducing the derogatory “anchor baby” slur to the 2016 Presidential race (which then inspired Jeb Bush to do the same).
And all this was before Reince claimed that Trump’s candidacy was a “net positive” for the Republican Party, too. And then just this past weekend, “Priebus downplayed concerns that the eventual Republican nominee will be hampered by other GOP contenders’ comments from primary season,” according to CNN.
Sadly for Reince, Latino voters — a booming demographic Republicans desperately need to the tune of at least 47% in order to recapture the White House in 2016 — disagree and see the GOP and Trump as one and the same:
[The] Latino-related takeaways from the MSNBC/Telemundo/Marist Poll makes it clear that Donald Trump’s outsized role in the GOP race and outspoken nativism is tarnishing the entire GOP brand.
As a write-up of the polling on MSNBC.com notes, “Almost two-thirds of Latinos surveyed – 65% – say Trump is hurting the image of the Republican Party, while just 13% say he is helping the party.
And 70% of Latinos say they see Trump as insulting and offensive, compared to 26% who say he tells it like it is.”
Reince, co-author of the party’s notable 2012 “autopsy report,” should of all people know that Etch-A-Sketching didn’t work last time, and it sure as hell won’t work again with Latino voters in 2016.
