Question: "Seriously though, let's assume the Democrats win the 2008 presidential election. It is quite obvious they will do little to seal the border. How will your party handle the growing Hispanic population that votes overwhelmingly Democrat?" -- gayunemployedmexican

Answer: Hispanics don't vote in a monolithic block and culturally, they tend to have more in common with the GOP. My expectation is that as Hispanics as a group become wealthier, they'll start to gravitate towards the GOP and Republican candidates will pick up larger and larger shares of their votes.

That's the future, but at the moment, the GOP is getting about 30% of the Hispanic vote. In 20 or 30 years, I don't see any reason why that couldn't be 50% or 60%.

What the GOP has to do in the interim is make sure that they don't get demographically flooded by poor, ignorant illegals who are going to probably vote Democratic 80/20 and will take a very long time to assimilate to accumulate wealth.

PS: I know that everyone seems to think that immigration is the key to the Hispanic vote, but I don't think that's the case any more than Israel is the key to the Jewish vote. People think that being pro-Israel will influence Jews, but the reality is that the GOP is much more pro-Israel than the Dems, yet Jews vote Democratic 2-1.

With Hispanics, they're not going to vote against the GOP in significant numbers because we're against amnesty or for the Democrats because they support it. What Republicans have to be careful of is that we don't let Democrats give Hispanic Americans the false impression that the GOP is anti-Hispanic, instead of anti-amnesty.