GOP Univision Debate Preview
Originally scheduled for September but postponed indefinitely after John McCain was the only leading Republican candidate to agree to participate, tonight's GOP Univision debate, hosted by the University of Miami, airs live from 7-9 pm on Univision cable channels as well as at the Univision website.
The format is conventional in that Univision news anchors will moderate and ask candidates questions on a range of issues. But the questions will be asked in Spanish, then translated into English for the candidates. The candidates will respond in English but the television and web audience will hear the Spanish translation of the answers. Folks like me, who cannot understand Spanish, can use the closed captioning feature on their televisions to read the English. English speakers in the live audience can wear headsets if they need the English version.
The Democratic Univision debate attracted an audience of 2.2 million television viewers, a far higher percentage of the Spanish speaking audience than the percentage of English speakers who watch the "traditional" debates on other cable networks.
The political context for tonight's debate includes this week's Pew Hispanic Center poll that finds "there is now a 34-percentage-point gap in partisan affiliation among Latinos. In July 2006, the same gap measured just 21 percentage points," reverberations of the CNN/YouTube debate that began with Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney questioning each other's anti-immigrant credentials, the rise of Mike Huckabee (in part attributed to his ability to rise above the negative tone of his rivals), and the locale itself, a swing state with a Cuban population that has favored Republicans.
Details are below the fold . . .
: debate, debates, univision, republican presidential priamry, Florida, immigration, elections 2008
Back when Fred Thompson looked like a potential winner, it was
his commitment to this Univision debate that broke the logjam, eliciting commitments from frontrunners Giuliani and Romney that same day. Only Tom Tancredo has refused to participate. He is "boycotting" the debate because, in
his words, "Bilingualism is a great asset for any individual but it has perilous consequences for a nation," he said. "As such, a Spanish debate has no place in a presidential campaign."
The candidates who are attending are now arguably led by Mike Huckabee, the fifth potential "frontrunner" the GOP has seen since last spring. He has ridden a wave of free media based in part on his excellent debate performances. Just last week he was being praised by some for having the "compassionate conservative" courage to say in the CNN/YouTube debate, "In all due respect, we're a better country than to punish children for what their parents did,"when asked about his support for a merit scholarship program that included children of undocumented immigrants.
But with his rise in prominence has come increased heat on Huckabee. In response, he unveiled an immigration plan that places him among those who try to "out-Tancredo Tancredo." The plan gives undocumented immigrants 120 days to leave the country. The plan's primary author, Mark Krikorian, had this to say about immigration:
Jim is correct, of course, when he says that terrorists comprise only "a miniscule percentage" of immigrants, but the immigrant communities nonetheless serve as the sea, as Mao might have put it, within which the terrorists swim as fish.
Immigration is incompatible with modern society, including the economy, government spending, sovereignty, assimilation--and also security. Until we understand the underlying security problems created by immigration, the kinds of specific measures Jim and I agree on will always fall short of success.
Speculation that Huckabee will come under further attack tonight and at Wednesday's debate in Des Moines is based not just on immigration, but on questions about Huckabee's pressuring a parole board to release a rapist who later raped and killed, about his past calls for a quarantine of AIDS patients, and his seeming to claim that his political success is in part due to God's answering his supporters prayers.
Religion and prayer were the theme earlier this week as Romney tried to defuse questions about Mormonism. But this same week Romney was criticized for having to fire his lawn service that employed undocumented workers, and has continued to be portrayed as a flip-flopper, a "cashmere chameleon" in the words of Ruben Navarette.
But Romney has the support of Jeb Bush and his crowd, perhaps the best GOP support possible in Florida, and has a new ad running in Spanish. That support may exist only on paper, however.
Florida is Rudy country (at least to hear Rudy tell it repeatedly on MTP this morning and according to the St. Petersburg Times:
Romney has started advertising on Hispanic radio, but the poll shows him with only 6 percent support among Hispanic Republicans, compared to 70 percent for Giuliani and 12 percent for McCain.
"He's got sort of the Jeb Bush magic when it comes to the self-identified Hispanic Republicans," Conway, the Republican pollster, said of Giuliani, who is largely a South Florida candidate.
Rudy has been busy burnishing his tough guy image by "standing tall" against Castro, always popular in South Florida. As First Read reports, "Just two days before the Univision debate at the University of Miami, Giuliani spoke out today against recent police violence in Cuba, targeting the Roman Catholic Church and student activists there." The anti-Cuban trade policies that are so popular among the Cuban emigre community in Florida are not favored in the farm belt of Iowa, but Giuliani is not practically conceding the Iowa primary.
While it is tempting to focus on the immigration issue or to get deep in the weeds regarding Rudy's mistress's police protection records, Huckabee's parole recommendations or Romney's lawn service, we learned from the Democratic Univision debate that the moderators (for their viewers) are also interested in Iraq and the military, health care, jobs, and education.
Expect John McCain to have the most of substance to say on these issues. CNN's obsession with immigration, guns, and the Bible may be put to shame by the the Univision moderators and, hopefully, by McCain and other candidates.
