Will the GOP Nominate a Fake Cuban Exile for VP in 2012?

GOP should think again

Source: www.timesunion.com

By JONATHAN ALTER

Published 10:35 p.m., Sunday, December 4, 2011

With Newt Gingrich's surge, the Republican presidential race is more uncertain than ever. But the party's pick for vice president has for months seemed like a foregone conclusion.

Although he claims to have no interest in the job, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is still the most likely VP choice for any Republican nominee, especially Gingrich, who has mentioned Rubio specifically.

Rubio is young, bright, handsome and from a critical swing state that he carried in 2010 by nearly 20 points. Most important, he's Hispanic.

He doesn't have to help the GOP win Hispanics outright, just cut into the Democrats' huge advantage. The Obama campaign knows that if the President, who won 67 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2008, can be held below 60 percent this time, he's almost sure to lose.

But in truth, Rubio is not the ideal vice presidential candidate to solve Republicans' trouble with Hispanics. Cuban-Americans have a big voice in Florida politics, where they already vote Republican, but make up only 4 percent of Hispanics nationwide. Mexican-Americans make up 66 percent of Hispanics, and tapping their potential may determine the results in swing states like Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.

There's no evidence that a Cuban-American who opposes even the DREAM Act — which would create a path to citizenship for children of illegal immigrants who finish high school and join the military or attend college — will bring other Hispanics out to vote.

So Rubio sits atop the short list. This should have Republicans worried. He has been scuffed up in two flaps this year that highlight the complexities of being an ethnic minority in a party that's shooting itself in the foot with minorities.

First, The Washington Post reported in October that he "embellished" his background by falsely claiming throughout his political career that his parents fled Cuba after Fidel Castro's Communist takeover in 1959.

It doesn't help that the senator now seems to be at war with the most powerful force in Hispanic media — Univision, which has the largest Spanish-language audience in the country. In July, Univision aired a story about the drug arrest 24 years ago of Rubio's brother-in-law.

Rubio's staff told reporters that Univision had offered to kill the story in exchange for Rubio appearing on the network's Sunday show. Even if true, that hardly justified the next step. Rubio's surrogates demanded that Univision's president of news resign and that the Republican presidential candidates boycott the Jan. 29 Univision debate on the eve of the Florida primary.

None of this is likely to dissuade the eventual Republican nominee from picking Rubio if he thinks it will help him win the White House. But will it?

Jonathan Alter writes for Bloomberg News.