Romney and Gingrich seek to outdo each other in reaching out on key issue of immigration, writes LARA MARLOWE
NEWT GINGRICH had that ragged, morning-after-the-debate look. His face was sagging and splotchy when he arrived at the Doral Golf Resort and Spa, half an hour late, to address the Hispanic Leadership Network. He and Callista wore matching dark brown trouser suits. She stood beside him silently, not one platinum hair out of place, her impeccably manicured hands folded in front of her. The third Mrs Gingrich’s head pivoted like a doll’s, from the audience to her husband; a triple strand of Tiffany pearls hung round her neck and a diamond ring glittered when she raised her hands to applaud.
All week, Gingrich and Mitt Romney battled for the love of Florida’s Hispanics. Newt seemed to think the prize should be his. He cited three wonkish books he’d read on Hispanic issues, and his role in passing the Helms-Burton Act, which strengthened sanctions against the Castro regime.
Hispanics constitute 22.5 per cent of Florida’s population, and 12 per cent of Republicans in Florida. They’re a young, forward-looking population, but Gingrich’s speech was steeped in negativity and fear-mongering. He began by railing at Washington’s past neglect of Latin America.
A recent Pew Poll showed 91 per cent of Hispanics support the Dream Act, which would create a path to citizenship for young people who were brought to the US illegally as children.
President Obama reiterated his support for the Dream Act this week, but Gingrich and Romney can only bring themselves to approve a provision for immigrants who serve in the US military.
“It’s harder to convince Americans that the simple act of going to school merits such a reward,” Gingrich said of the proposal to regularise Hispanic college students.
“It’s harder to come here legally as a tourist than to sneak in illegally,” Gingrich lamented, proposing an overhaul of the US visa system. If elected, he promised, he would work “aggressively but non-militarily” to bring down the Castro and Chavez regimes.
He would foster “a Cuban spring” in 2013, in part by “flooding the island with cell phones so that every act of oppression gets posted”.
The friendship between the Venezuelan president and Iran’s Ahmadinejad was “the most dangerous alliance since Soviet efforts to penetrate Latin America”, Gingrich said.
Iran would perpetrate “a second holocaust” against Israel if it obtained nuclear weapons.
A failed state in Mexico “would be a threat to everyone in this hemisphere”.
Arriving at the conference early, Mitt Romney missed his rival by just a few minutes. "I thought it was a delightful debate; I loved it!" Romney exclaimed, flanked by his beaming wife and youngest son. Craig Romney had lived in Chile, and declared in Spanish that his father would be un presidente excellente. He held up Romney's young grandson Parker, who shouted Hola!to laughter and applause.
Ann Romney gave her stump speech about what a wonderful president Mitt would be, while he looked at her as adoringly as Callista stared at Newt.
Romney has had a hard time with immigration, the issue Hispanics feel most strongly about. Before the Iowa caucuses, he vowed to veto the Dream Act, and softened his position only after he was picketed by ‘Dream babies” with placards saying “Veto Romney; Not the Dream Act”.
But standing before hundreds of Hispanic Floridians yesterday , Romney described immigration as “an extraordinary source of vitality for our nation”. It was only “to protect legal immigration” that “we have to stop illegal immigration”.
The Republican party had to convince Americans that “we are not anti-immigrant. We are pro-immigration and pro-legality.” In the first 100 days of his presidency, Romney promised: “I’ll draw American and Latin American businesses together – not as a charitable endeavour, but as a source of mutual opportunity.”
He’d appoint a special envoy for freedom and democracy, because it burned him up to see Castro winning goodwill by sending Cuban doctors around Latin America while the US spent billions of dollars and reaped only resentment.
It was all a problem of marketing, Romney explained.
Newt Gingrich had been stroppy with a Puerto Rican woman who asked if he would support Puerto Rican statehood. “I’m looking forward to the people of Puerto Rico making their decision to become a state,” Romney said joyfully, as Puerto Ricans jumped up waving their flag.
He won more applause when he said it was “time for the US to take responsibility for the pain, suffering and torture going on in Latin America” because of US drug habits.
Anthony Hernandez (33) had travelled from Minnesota for the leadership conference. A Republican candidate for the US Senate, Hernandez joined the party for one reason only: his Irish-American mother, Margaret ‘Midge’ Boland, got pregnant by his Mexican-American father Timothy when she was 18.
“He was the only Mexican on the block,” Hernandez said. “They weren’t yet married and she was under pressure to have an abortion. She chose life, or I wouldn’t be here.” The Democrats didn’t have time for pro-lifers.
Joseph Sosa (39) is an accountant of Colombian origin and a Republican activist from the Miami suburb of Hialeah. He joined the party for a novel reason: “The first person I saw on a screen was Ronald Reagan,” Sosa said. “Until I had lots of operations, I was partially deaf. I became a Republican because Ronald Reagan was the first person I was able to understand.”
I met Orlando Betancourt, a Cuban immigrant, in a restaurant in Calle Ocho, the Cuban quarter, while the Republican debate blared away on television. “The Republicans never did anything for Cuba,” the 39-year-old nurse said. “It was Carter and Clinton who let the boat people in.” We were a 35-minute plane ride from Havana, “where nothing has changed in 53 years”, Betancourt said. Cuba had no oilfields, so the marines would never invade.
Despite his disdain for the Republican party, Betancourt shared their candidates’ death wish for Castro. “I’m a Catholic, but I have my champagne bottle ready. The moment he dies, I’ll celebrate.”