Evangelical Firebrand Knocks Romney on Immigration

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has made illegal immigration an issue in the GOP presidential race.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mittromney/6223490120/sizes/z/in/photostream/">Mitt Romney</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


You probably heard about Mitt Romney’s on-stage condemnation of an anti-Muslim* speaker at the Values Voter Summit this weekend in Washington, DC. But there was another, less-noticed truth-to-power moment at the conference: Liberty University law school dean Matt Staver calling out his fellow conservatives for policies and language that alienate Latinos.

“Personally I am very concerned about who occupies that White House, but I’m also very concerned about the future of the Latino population,” Staver said in his Friday afternoon address. “And I’m concerned that we will push them…into a liberal, political, leftist machine that is contrary to their values but also is seemingly open to them I am concerned about the rhetoric conservatives use with regard to the Latino community. They are not our enemies; they are our friends, they are our allies, and we need to engage them.”

And then he played the trump card: 

“They also have a significant link, maybe you might not know, to Israel,” Staver said. “Latinos that have the last name Perez, anything ‘z,’ have a significant historical connection with Israel itself. There is a synergy between the Latino community between Israel and between the United States and between our founding core values that we cherish so much.” (Perez can be either a purely Spanish name, i.e. son of Pedro, or a Hebrew name.)

I caught up with Staver after his speech, and after a few words of praise for Rick Perry, he lit into Romney, who has recently attacked the Texas governor’s somewhat moderate stance on immigration. “I think it’s wrong,” Staver said. “I think that what Mitt Romney is doing is pushing the Latino community away, that otherwise would be people who would be supportive of our core values. Because what they hear is anger and hate. You can’t lump every Latino into the same nook.”

There’s a faith element to Staver’s wish for more outreach to immigrant communities. But it’s also a matter of survival. Social conservatives are staring at a serious demographic shift, and unless their demographics shift with it, six decades of growth for institutions like Liberty University could well come to an end. Staver is no moderate—the main thrust of his speech was that “the future of Western Civilization” is at stake in the 2012 election, and unless we act now it could collapse entirely, and we’ll be awash in an ooze of Shariah law and gay rights. The horror! But he’s realistic enough to recognize the trend lines.

The on-stage airing of the conservative base’s divisions on Mormonism grabbed most of the headlines over the weekend (guilty). But in the long term, the issue that will define the GOP’s future will be the one outlined by Staver and left untouched by just about everyone else. Tellingly, of the 58 speakers over the weekend, only one—Texas Senate candidate Ted Cruz—was a Latino activist or politician.

*And anti-Mormon, anti-gay, anti-Native American, etc. etc. etc.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate