January 26, 2012 06:57 PM UTC

Who Offends Hispanics Less: Romney or Gingrich?

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• by: Colorado Pols

That’s one piece of the Florida GOP primary puzzle, as the Washington Post reports today:

The Republican presidential race turned into a pitched battle for Hispanic voters on Wednesday, with Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney hurling insults over immigration policy as each looked for ways to court a critical constituency…

Gingrich lobbed the first attack on Wednesday, poking fun at Romney during an appearance on Miami-based Univision, the country’s biggest Spanish-language network. Gingrich peppered his remarks with halting Spanish as he accused Romney of living in a “fantasy land” for suggesting in a debate that the country’s 11 million illegal immigrants should “self deport.”

Romney also stepped up his attacks on Gingrich, releasing a Spanish-language ad noting that the former House speaker once called Spanish the “language of the ghetto.”

…Gingrich, for his part, has said he used inartful language in the 2007 speech in which he referred to Spanish as the language of “living in a ghetto.”

So, uh, no, neither of these gentlemen have done much to ingratiate themselves with the fastest-growing bloc of voters in the United States–kind of the opposite. Florida will be the first Republican presidential primary this year in a state with a large Hispanic population. But the broader (spelled general election) importance of this community isn’t going to be seen in a Republican primary, of course. And even though polls don’t show particular enthusiasm for Democrats among all Hispanic voters, faceplants from either of these GOP candidates over the years on immigration should be enough to, as Darth Vader eloquently put it, “motivate them.”

And remember, folks, they have to sell themselves to the same Republicans who voted Tom Tancredo for governor of Colorado in 2010 as soon as they’re done in Florida! We get the feeling that may not go well either, and also hurt most well after these primaries are over.