Harsh GOP Rhetoric Sends Hispanics to Obama

The GOP candidates—Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich in particular—have spent a lot of time and money trying to court Florida's Hispanic voters with ads and appearances, boasting of their own connections to the Latino community and slamming their opponents' views on immigration. This strategy seems to have paid off for someone: President Obama. A pollster with Obama for America reports that the president's support among Hispanic voters is going strong, even attracting independents who've been turned off by the Republicans' immigration talk. "Their extreme rhetoric on immigration during the televised debates has rejected our history as a nation of immigrants and alienated millions of Hispanic voters nationally," the group's Hispanic pollsters said in a memo Monday. A Univision/Latino Decisions poll found that 70 percent of Hispanics would vote for Obama if he were matched up with Gingrich, and 67 percent would vote for the president over Romney.