Some in G.O.P. Fear That Their Hard-Liners Will Alienate Latino Voters

By JACKIE CALMES

All but drowned out by Republicans’ clamorous opposition to President Obama’s executive action on immigration are some leaders who worry that their party could alienate the fastest-growing group of voters, for 2016 and beyond, if its hottest heads become its face.

They cite the Republican Party’s official analysis of what went wrong in 2012, the presidential-election year in which nominee Mitt Romney urged Latinos here illegally to “self-deport.”

“If Hispanics think that we do not want them here,” the report said, “they will close their ears to our policies.”

“Both the president and the Republican Party confront risks here,” said Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster. While the danger for Mr. Obama is “being perceived as overstepping his boundaries,” Mr. McInturff said, “the Republicans’ risk is opposing his action without an appropriate tenor, and thereby alienating the Latino community.”

But some Republicans say their party has the greater challenge — as the White House is betting — in framing their opposition in a way that does not antagonize Latinos and other minority groups like Asian-Americans, much as Republicans lost African-Americans’ support in the civil-rights era.

Most emboldened by Republican victories in this month’s midterm elections were its hard-line conservatives, who say the results vindicated their defiant actions, including last year’s government shutdown. Their numbers in Congress will grow in January with newly elected conservatives, significantly increasing the ranks of House Republicans who have publicly said they would consider impeaching Mr. Obama.

As for immigration, many candidates took stands against “amnesty” for those here illegally with little fear of political penalty because few close contests were in places with significant Latino populations.
Consequently, the party could hardly be further from the positions on immigration that former President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain sought in the past, and that Speaker John Boehner unsuccessfully pressed on House Republicans at the start of this year.

“Clearly with Republicans not having gotten to a consensus in terms of immigration, it makes it a lot more difficult to talk about immigration as a unified voice,” said David Winston, a Republican pollster who advises House leaders. “There are some people — because there’s not a consensus — that somehow end up having a little bit louder voice than perhaps they would normally have.”

Among them is Representative Steve King of Iowa, once a fringe figure against immigration and now a voice of rising prominence, to many leaders’ chagrin. Congressional leaders were privately relieved that many Republicans had left Washington for the Thanksgiving holiday before Mr. Obama announced plans for his address, reducing the availability of anti-immigration conservatives for cable-television bookers seeking reactions.

A King ally, Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, on Wednesday told The Washington Post that the president, by his action, was trying to increase the number of “illiterate” Democratic voters. Mrs. Bachmann, a 2012 presidential candidate, is leaving Congress, but she has indicated that she intends to remain active in politics.

And Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, outlined for reporters an escalating series of court and legislative actions that Republicans could take, including impeachment. Mr. Brooks has been outspoken against immigration legislation, including a House Republican’s failed proposal to extend citizenship to so-called Dreamers — Latinos brought into the United States illegally as children — if they joined the military.

“I don’t want American citizens having to compete with illegal immigrants for jobs in our military,” he said, adding, “These individuals have to be absolutely 100 percent loyal and trustworthy.”

A few Republicans went public with their concerns that party colleagues would go too far.

“If you overreact, it becomes about us, not President Obama,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who was a sponsor of the bipartisan immigration bill that was passed in the Senate in 2013 but died in the House.

Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a House Republican leader, noted that Republicans had held behind-the-scenes discussions to temper reactions, and conceded, “I think our leadership and our members are really trying to find, O.K., well, what is the appropriate response?”

The former Republican Party chairman Michael Steele, appearing on MSNBC on Wednesday, admonished House Republicans to “get a grip,” adding, “You have the solution already in front of you — the Senate in a bipartisan effort passed an immigration bill.”

House Republican leaders have refused to consider that Senate bill, and the only immigration legislation they allowed to pass, sponsored by Mr. King, called for deporting Latino “Dreamers” who were temporarily spared the threat of deportation by Mr. Obama’s more limited executive order in 2012.
That bill died in the Democratic-controlled Senate, but with Republicans taking charge of both chambers in January, party leaders could find it harder to contain such legislation.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Wednesday found that a plurality of Americans, 48 percent, disapproved of Mr. Obama’s decision to act unilaterally; 38 percent approved. But 57 percent supported a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and support jumped to 74 percent for a path that required would-be citizens to pay fines and any back taxes and pass background checks — just as the Senate-passed bill would mandate.

Exit polls this month also found that 57 percent of all voters supported a statutory path to citizenship, a position supported by 74 percent of Latino voters. In the midterm elections, 62 percent of Latinos voted for Democrats.

While most television networks declined to cover the president’s remarks live, both Spanish-language networks — Telemundo and Univision — quickly agreed to do so.

Matt A. Barreto, a founder of Latino Decisions, a public opinion research firm that focuses on Latinos, said the risk for Republicans was real.

“Their own 2012 post-mortem report highlights that they cannot espouse anti-immigrant rhetoric and win the Latino vote, and they are absolutely right,” he said, citing his firm’s election-eve poll that found nearly two-thirds of Latino voters thought that the Republican Party either did not care about them or was openly hostile to them.

“The issue here is that the president is promoting a policy that tries to keep children and parents together, and stop the detention and deportation of parents who have U.S. citizen children,” Mr. Barreto said. “Can the Republicans honestly face Latino voters and say, ‘We want the federal government to continue deporting parents who have young children?’ That is about the least family-values message I can think of and a sure way to write off the Latino vote in 2016 and beyond.”