In an election year, there are more contradictions than grapes in God’s vineyard. Now it seems Mitt Romney wants the Latino vote.

Who knows if it was a consequence of the primary results in Iowa and New Hamsphire, and the fact that the primary dates are coming up in Florida and other states where there are Latinos, but suddenly Romney has decided that he wants our vote – the Latino vote.

Romney knows that it is not easy, after having played the anti-immigration card in the Northeast in order to criticize Senator McCain. But politics is dirty by nature and the elections are not like the Olympic Games. Here, the goal is not to compete but to win.

On the road to Nevada and Florida (primary elections on January 19 and 29) and “Tsunami Tuesday” on February 5, with primaries in 22 states, Romney recruited a Cuban to help him campaign in Spanish. He is Al Cárdenas, a Cuban American who, for lack of anything better to do, was also the head of the Republican Party in Florida.

According to Cárdenas, Romney is ready to attract the Latino vote, “although some sectors believe that his positions on immigration will cause problems in that mission.” As the gringos would say, that is an understatement. But Cárdenas says he is ready, with a “national Hispanic committee” made up of “200 Latino leaders, from more than 25 states,” to capture the Latino vote.

Cárdenas will base his campaign, he says, on Romney’s position of “supporting legal immigration and stopping undocumented immigration,” and “opposing legalization plans that allow undocumented immigrants already living in the country to obtain special treatment, while millions of people wait legally in their countries of origin.” That is, according to Cárdenas, what is “reasonable,” and says he “is sure that many Hispanics share” his position.

The Florida solution

In my opinion, Romney and Cárdenas have more than one problem. Romney already tried using scare tactics in New Hampshire and it did not work. McCain won with his proposal favoring some type of regularization.

Romney proposes: “Secure the border” immediately; establish a “practical system of labor verification; and provide an ID card to all non-U.S. citizens,” (which would surely be unconstitutional); “reject amnesty or any form of legalization for illegal immigrants;” “punish sanctuary cities” or those that “refuse to comply with federal laws;” and finally, “to favor legal immigration,” but only for highly qualified workers.

After that, the Latino who votes for Romney would not only have to be a staunch Republican, but they would have to be clearly anti-Latino, because we all know that being anti-immigrant is basically being anti-Latino, not “anti-illegal immigrant,” as some would like to portray it.

Finally, Romney will have to overcome the general position of the Spanish-speaking Latinos (because Cárdenas’ campaign is in Spanish) against the Republican Party. The reader should remember that George Bush managed to lower Latino support for the Republicans from its original 44 percent to only 28 percent in 2006.

And speaking of Florida, Romney will have as his internal enemy, Senator Mike Fasano (R-FL), who wants to turn the state into another Arizona. Fasano is proposing a law to “punish the farmers and government contractors who hire illegal immigrants,” with fines of $25,000 for each “illegal.”

The proposal is as absurd as all the others, so much so that even the Orlando Sentinel published an editorial against it, saying that what we need is a national solution, not a “Florida solution.” The newspaper says, “all the same, migrant workers move from state to state, so if the law is different in Georgia than in Florida, it doesn’t make sense.”

Someone else opposed Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson, in fact a Republican, who points out that “oranges and tangerines don’t appear magically in the supermarket. Florida needs a work force to do the work, and there are not enough national workers to do it.”

But do not get too excited. Although he is against what he calls “immigration hysteria,” Bronson proposes a guest worker program as a solution. He is a Republican, when all is said and done.

Cárdenas admits that “there have been instances in which Republican individuals have spoken in an unfortunate way about our community. I believe that we have the ability to change the impression that has been created, and it is our objective to do it,” he adds.

And that is the worst enemy: the Republicans and their own discourse. If they could not convince White people in Iowa and New Hampshire to be anti-immigrant, how do they hope to convince Latinos in Florida and Nevada?