Hispanic backlash on display at GOP debate

Republican presidential candidates who disagreed in recent months over the definition of “torture” got a sense this week of how it feels.

Seven of the eight GOP candidates stood before a Spanish-language television audience and tried to avoid being interrogated over the whip-cracking immigration policies that have caused Latino voters to run away from the Republican Party.

That most of the candidates even showed up at the debate in Miami, hosted by the Spanish-language television station Univision, was a major concession to political reality: Hispanic voters are expected to make up 10 percent of the electorate in 2008, and they could determine the outcomes in key states that voted for President Bush: Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado. “*

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