SAN JOSE, Calif. _ Woolen sweaters, pearls and Brooks Brothers suits. That means the Republicans are in town again, but with a different message this time. They have come to court Latinos, not to deport them. Amen to that.

The Republican National Committee unveiled a new national poll of Latinos at its winter meeting in San Jose. Its chairman proclaimed that Latinos are “more independent and conservative than anybody thought. And they’re up for grabs.” Then they showed reporters a new, bilingual TV commercial featuring a Mexican-American family in Texas celebrating the Fourth of July, freedom, opportunity and responsibility.

All of which is true of Latinos and not really new. They could have been talking about my dad. Only he was a socially conservative and politically liberal Democrat who never voted Republican in his life.

If I were a member of the RNC looking for Latino hearts, I’d stop reading my own surveys. I’d get out of the swanky Fairmont Hotel, cross the street to Casa Castillo Restaurant, and introduce myself to owner Marcelino Castillo.

He’s a true-blue, registered Republican _ conservative on law and order, pro-business, anti-welfare state, big on individual responsibility. Raised in the San Jose barrio, sal si puedes (get out if you can), Castillo’s living proof that even the poorest, most isolated, Democrat-dominated barrios can produce Republicans.

“But it won’t be easy,” Castillo told me.

What would it take? I asked.

“Stop scapegoating Mexicans,” he said, referring to Proposition 187, the 1994 abomination that would have punished illegal immigrants and their children for the high-crime of working grunt jobs Americans won’t take.

“And they should have left bilingual education alone,” Castillo said. “They didn’t have to abolish it altogether, just make it work the way it should.”

The Republicans’ real problem in California is that the state’s Latinos overwhelmingly associate Republicans with the nasty, anti-immigrant, anti-Spanish politics of former Gov. Pete Wilson and the GOP right-wingers who still dominate the state party. The well is poisoned, and everybody knows who did it.

Liberal that I am, I actually want more Latinos to join the Republican Party if it fits them ideologically. Somebody’s got to humanize the GOP, and a good injection of working-class, bilingual, Latino sensibilities like Marcelino Castillo’s might do the trick.

So, here’s what national Republican leaders ought to do:

First, get the California state GOP to back off on the racial, wedge politics it’s practiced with glee since 1994. Even after getting their butts kicked and tossed out of the statehouse in the last gubernatorial election, they were still trying to save Proposition 187.

Somehow, the national Republican leadership must show Latinos that it has rescued the California party from sun-crazed GOP right-wingers.

Second, the Republicans must stop glorifying the legacy of Ronald Reagan. Sure, lots of California Mexican-Americans voted for Reagan for governor and later for president. But that was then; this is now.

California today has tens of thousands of Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, Chileans, Salvadorans and other Latinos who came here to escape the right-wing dictators Reagan supported with guns and cash. That’s the Reagan-Republican legacy many of them will remember when they vote in the next general election and every one after.

What Republican leaders need to learn before leaving San Jose is a simple lesson: California isn’t Texas.

A Republican TV ad featuring Tejanos at a Fourth of July picnic won’t make California Mexican-Americans forget Pete Wilson’s inflammatory, “They keep coming!” ad about illegal immigrants. It won’t make new citizens from Central and South America forget the Reagan-era death squads back home.

The national Republican leadership is trying to put the past behind them without apologizing. Politicos never like to acknowledge their mistakes for fear it might be used against them later. I understand that, but it won’t win many Latino hearts or votes in California.

(Joe Rodriguez is a columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. You may reach him at 750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95190, or e-mail to JRodriguez(at)sjmercury.com.)



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