As GOP presidential candidates vie for support in Florida, immigration politics and the fight for the Latino vote have moved front-and-center, notes UMBC political science professor Thomas Schaller in Salon. He writes, “onstage at the University of North Florida, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich…went after each other with obvious, mutual disdain on immigration, the subject of the opening question and nearly the full first half-hour of the debate.”
Schaller suggests that the challenge for GOP candidates is to “appease xenophobes within their base during the primaries” without alienating the Latino voters they will need to remain competitive in swing states such as Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico — trying “to remain anti-immigration without sounding anti-immigrant.”
