GOP Hypocritical to Court Latinos

* Yet another liberal takes the field to tell Republicans how they should comport themselves in Orange County (Fred Smoller, Orange County Voices, May 17). In his column, Smoller argues that the Republican Party should welcome illegal aliens, much as George W. Bush is doing in Texas, so as not to alienate Latino voters.

We’re being invaded by people who are bringing a different culture to these shores--and who not only are trying to supplant the culture they’ve found here but are trying to make the people here pay for the supplantation.

Spanish is starting to be seen by English speakers as the symbol of this supplantation and Latinization of the present culture, and although it is a beautiful language, it is being resented by more and more English speakers.

But let’s not dance around the Bush (George W., that is) on this matter.

What is really going on is that there are two broad views in this part of the country and in the political parties as to whether we should try to remain an essentially European society or become a Latin American one. That’s at the heart of all the little battles over English only, immigration and on and on.

One of the interesting things about the battles going on is that the rich elites in the GOP are now falling all over themselves to court Latino voters so that these elites can continue in office.

We’ve seen these rich elites jettison positions that they’ve held for years in order to save their bacon, proving, thereby, that these phonies don’t really have strong positions but only want to stay on the public dole.

H. MILLARD

Costa Mesa