Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly is riled up about comprehensive immigration reform, and she has hardly been hiding the reason why. Last month, Schlafly predicted that comprehensive reform would be “suicide for the Republican Party” because immigrants “come from a country” where they expect “a handout” from the government. Last week, she lamented that today’s immigrants are less patriotic than the “Irish, Italian, Jewish, etc.” immigrants of “earlier generations.” Then, she claimed that Mitt Romney lost the presidential election not because of eroding support for the GOP among people of color, but because “his drop-off from white voters was tremendous” – which is just blatantly false.
But in an interview this week with conservative radio program Focus Today, Schlafly just came right out and said it. Calling the GOP’s need to reach out to Latinos a “great myth,” Schlafly said that “the people the Republicans should reach out to are the white votes, the white voters who didn’t vote in the last election.” Schlafly accused the Republican “establishment” of nominating “a series of losers…who don’t connect with the grassroots.”
“The propagandists are leading us down the wrong path,” she said. “There’s not any evidence at all that these Hispanics coming in from Mexico will vote Republican.”
Although she doesn’t say it in so many words, Schlafly is basically repeating Pat Buchanan’s call for the GOP to revive the Southern Strategy, stirring up racial resentment among white voters against Latino immigrants in order to boost turnout.
