GOP Inclusiveness

In the late 1990s and early 2000's the conventional political wisdom was that the GOP had to start to embrace Latino voters and black voters in order to be successful at the polls. I always thought that a bad idea, because the GOP had to continue to be the GOP, a party of conservatism. the problem with the GOP is that they took the conventional wisdom's advice and look what it has gotten them, minority status and the growth of a wing of the party that embraced "compassionate conservativism" which should really be read as big government Republicanism.

So when Jonah Goldberg talks about Marco Rubio, the GOP candidate for Florida's Senate seat, you would think that the GOP is again listening to the conventional wisdom about Latinos. But as Goldberg points out, Rubio is not a conventional, at least as the more recent GOP model is concerned, Republican candidate. That is because Rubio calls it like he sees it and is conservative (not Republican) in his approach.

So here is a Latino (Cuban-American) who is running strong and likely to win in Florida, and the conventional wisdom is that Rubio is not the right kind of Latino, i.e. liberal.