Dennis RomeroHe who gets the Latino vote could take the whole chimichanga, beans and rice included, during this year's presidential election.
The fight took to Twitter his week and Republicans and Democrats battled over … the word Chimichanga. L.A. cartoonist and satirist Lalo Alcaraz has been all over it, and some have taken to calling it #chimichangagate.
Really. It started like this:
In a column titled “Does the GOP care about Latino voters?” Washington Post political columnist Dana Milbank wrote:
The chimichanga? It may be the only thing Republicans have left to offer Latinos.
His point: While the GOP covets thy brown voters, its nomination process has pushed its candidates so far to the right that they're having a hard time not being seen as anti-immigrant and thus anti-Latino.
Fair enough.
So then Obama For America campaign manager Jim Messina had the nerve to tweet:
Our Twitter friends the RNC Latinos responded:
Then Beth Reinhard of the conservative National Journal tweeted:
The Republicans have a point, however: You can't fit all Latinos onto one combination plate. Some of us are educated and speak English just a little. Ironically, the GOP's main Latino outreach campaign has been in … Spanish.
(One would think they might realize Republicans have a way better chance with American-born, English-speaking Latinos. Oh well.)
Messina alleges that …
So what does a true, tortilla-eating, mustache-having, tattoo-of-the-Virgin-de-Guadalupe-on-his-forearm-sporting American Latino think of all this? (Actually, that doesn't really describe us at all, but for argument's sake:)
We're eating up all the attention like a schoolgirl watching boys fight over her. If only it was like this every year.
[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]
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