Obama Plays La Raza Card In Key Appointment

Originally published on 01/11/2012 06:09 PM ET by Investors Business Daily, www.investors.com


Campaign 2012: By choosing to head his policy council with an open-borders advocate and former leader of the Hispanic activist group favoring amnesty, the president has signaled a divide-and-conquer re-election campaign .

In another move aimed at aiding his re-election, President Obama on Tuesday announced that Cecilia Munoz, a former senior vice president of the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), would replace Melody Barnes as head of his Domestic Policy Council.

Hispanics are a key part of the coalition Obama and a key part of his re-election strategy will no doubt be to portray Republicans and others who advocate border security and stronger immigration enforcement as racists. Munoz's appointment is a part of that strategy.

It's a strategy that includes suing states like Arizona over laws that in fact mirror federal law but which the feds refuse to enforce. Also part of the strategy is the Justice Department's targeting of Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio, accusing him of violating federal law and the Constitution in his department's handling of Hispanics.

Coming soon after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case of Arizona's immigration and border enforcement law, SB1070, it smacked of retaliation.

The NCLR, whose name translates as "the race," is a tax-exempt nonprofit that describes itself as "the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States." It most recently led in vocal opposition against Arizona SB 1070, a law attacked by Attorney General Eric Holder as a discriminatory incarnation of profiling that usurped federal authority over immigration policy.

When then-candidate Obama spoke to the NCLR national convention in 2008, he told the group what it wanted to hear — that Latino "communities are terrorized by ICE immigration raids." He also condemned those "communities taking immigration enforcement into their own hands," such as those that have passed state laws or local ordinances to check that those who are here are in fact here legally.

At this year's La Raza convention, Obama touted the federal Dream (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act, a thinly disguised amnesty program that is part of "comprehensive immigration reform" designed to pit those who have successfully eluded the border patrol on a path to citizenship.

Subscribe to the IBD Editorials Podcast Munoz has been serving since January 2009 as director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs at the time of that appointment. She was La Raza's vice president for research, advocacy and legislation.

Since her entering the Obama administration, according to the watchdog group Judicial Watch, federal funding for La Raza has increased dramatically. In fiscal 2008, NCLR received $2.8 million in federal grants, and in fiscal 2009 it got $4.1 million. In 2010, the total rocketed to more than $11 million.

In Orwellian fashion, defenders of La Raza deny it means "the race," saying a better translation would be "the people." Then why not use "la comunidad" or "gente" when speaking about the Latino people and community? Because La Raza wants to be called La Raza, and they know exactly what it means to them.

La Raza has ties it refuses to condemn with groups such as MECHa, which has spent the last three decades indoctrinating Latino students on American campuses, claiming that California, Arizona, Mexico, Texas and southern Colorado were stolen and should be returned to their rightful owners, the people of Mexico.

MECHa's slogan is derived from the rhetoric of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro: "Through the race, everything; outside the race, nothing."

The historic election of the first African-American president was hailed as the beginning of a post-racial era in America and American politics. Yet race and ethnicity were recently said by Attorney General Eric Holder to be the prime motive behind criticism of his and the president's actions and policies.

Unfortunately, race is shaping up as a key part of the president's re-election campaign.