The GOP: A Latino ‘Spanking’ – Bush’s party lost favor among Hispanics in 2006. Now the new Republican chief has to woo them back.

“Until recently, Jane Barbosa was as reliable a Republican as they come. A Mexican native who arrived in the United States at the age of 2, Barbosa, 60, first got involved in politics as a teenager, attending neighborhood coffee klatches in Elgin, Ill. In the decades since becoming a citizen, she has almost always voted for GOP candidates, and even worked as a precinct committeewoman for the party. “I always felt that the Republican Party stood for what Latino values are,” she says. “Belief in God, belief in family, a good work ethic.” But this year, Barbosa was appalled by what she considered shrill anti-immigrant rhetoric used by some GOP hard-liners. “I couldn’t just sit there and let it go by,” she says. So for the first time in recent memory, she voted Democratic.”

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