GOP Fumbles Marketing Paul Ryan Opportunity to Hispanic Media

This column originally appeared at Texas GOP Vote:

By Artemio Muniz

Paul Ryan’s rise to the national mainstream has given the GOP a great chance to market its approach to the nation’s problems. Unfortunately in the last days, Republicans have dropped the ball when it comes to controlling the narrative put forward by Univision, the Spanish media giant. The current accusation by the Spanish media against Romney is that he has doubled down on his lack of concern for the Latino vote by choosing an extreme right winger like Paul Ryan. One consultant claims that Paul Ryan’s selection is a “hasta la vista, baby” to Hispanic voters. These accusations are defined as “Hispanic media attacks” by some conservative bloggers.

It’s not the “Hispanic media” stupid, it is conservatives not showing up to battle for the hearts and minds of viewers. It’s infuriating to watch golden opportunities like these slip by, where our lack of serious presence leads to having other forces define us. We should always be on offense, fighting for every single vote.

The truth is Paul Ryan is a problem solver, and his immigration solution would be more in line with our Texas solution on immigration from our Texas Republican platform. Paul Ryan supports a guest worker program. This is huge. Who shows more concern for Hispanics? Paul Ryan who supports keeping hard workers here with a temporary guest program or a two faced Obama who divides families and deports in record numbers?

The answer is easy to the Hispanic community. The fact that he promised immigration reform but deported in record numbers makes for a nuclear talking point that would crush or seriously hinder any get out the vote efforts of the Democrats. Throw in Fast and Furious and the deal is done. If Republicans at the national level could only modernize, or acquire the talent needed to express these talking points we would own the narrative in Spanish and all Hispanic media. In Houston, our Federation of Hispanic Republicans have been able to dismantle the Democrats on immigration in the media .

They no longer bring it up.

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