Does Barack Obama Have an Hispanic Problem?

Does Barack Obama have an Hispanic problem? Even as his re-election team ramps up efforts to pander heavily to this important new bloc of voters, criticism moves forth.

Leaders of a national Hispanic organization are criticizing President Barack Obama for skipping their annual conference for the third consecutive year after he promised as a candidate in 2008 that he would return as president.

Some members of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials also are questioning Obama’s commitment to immigration reform, noting that deportations have increased under his watch — even as the administration intensifies its outreach for Hispanic votes. NALEO, which includes more than 6,000 Latino leaders who represent major blocs of voters in key electoral states, opens its annual conference Thursday in San Antonio.

Team Obama was only too happy to boast that the President's recent visit to Puerto Rico was the first visit to the island by a sitting President in 50 years. Even the liberal press wrote the same opinion that most tuned into politics were saying among themselves - it was a visit for the re-election campaign effort, not a serious visit of a tuned-in President.

In his visit to Puerto Rico, President Obama failed to address the major problems facing the island. At bottom, it seemed to be much more of an early campaign stop than an honest effort to grapple with these problems.

While Puerto Ricans were excited by the first official visit by a sitting U.S. president in about 50 years, Obama's visit was cosmetic, not substantive.

He offered platitudes about striving local entrepreneurs and drew cheers by mentioning Puerto Rican national J.J. Barea, a player for the recently crowned NBA champion Dallas Mavericks. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens by birth but cannot vote for president, yet they serve in the military, so Obama predictably praised Puerto Ricans in the armed forces.

Team Obama is assuming that Hispanic voters will be the next blindly loyal supporters of the Democratic party, like black voters who vote 90% as a bloc of voters. No other segment of the population votes like that and it is very doubtful that Hispanics will, either. Hispanics are traditionally conservative and often support Republicans. With the Hispanic population growing faster than any other part of our population, as the recent census results show, both parties are courting them.

On immigration reform, Barack Obama wants to keep it a political issue rather than an American population/national security issue. He has not shown the backbone to deal honestly with the issue and now tries to push it off on the new Republican controlled House of Representatives. Never mind that during the George W. Bush administration, when he honestly tried to make immigration reforms, ideologues and prospective Presidential candidates like Barack Obama didn't bother to join in the efforts, only criticized them for political gain.

Pro-immigration groups are pushing the White House to further loosen enforcement of immigration rules for more than 300,000 illegal immigrants, but reelection-minded administration officials are instead trying to redirect the advocates’ energy and frustration towards the GOP-controlled House of Representatives.

On May 3, in a White House meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Congress, President Obama blamed Congress for the immigration-advocates’ frustrations. “The president was asked by the CHC members to consider a broad range of administrative options [but the president said] that the only way to fix what’s broken about our immigration system is through legislative action in Congress,” said a White House statement.

On Thursday April 28, Obama met with a group of Hispanic celebrities, and persuaded several to broadcast the same message. “We like to blame Obama for the inaction, but he can’t just disobey the law that’s written,” actress Eva Longoria told reporters as she left the White House.

Ah, yes. Democrats do so love to get the celebs parroting their talking points for them.

His re-election is not going to be quite such as cake walk as Obama thought is would be. It is already obvious that campaign events are all that these visits amount to and his pandering is in the open.