Ted Cruz emulates Karl Rove's math skills.
There's the math, and then there's Ted Cruz's own
pretend version of arithmetic:
Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas), the son of a Cuban immigrant, says it’s a myth that Hispanics insist on including amnesty (or something resembling it) in any bill. He told me last week that his own polls showed that 68 percent of Hispanics in Texas supported more border security; when they were asked if they supported a pathway to citizenship or work permits without citizenship, a plurality of 46 percent of Texas Hispanics supported the permit system and only 35 percent favored a pathway to citizenship. “It’s a fraud being perpetrated on Republicans — that citizenship is the linchpin of immigration reform,” he says. “In reality, it’s the linchpin of Democratic efforts to expand their voter base.”
Why won't Cruz release this magical polling? I'm sure every Republican xenophobe would be happy to trumpet its findings! Because if there's one thing Republicans love to do, it's cherry pick the data that best supports whatever crazy nonsense they believe at the time.
You know, unskewing.
But no, Cruz is keeping the details of his "polling" secret. Funny, dat.
You can find actual data here, and yes, it's what you would expect—Latinos want a path to citizenship. Nothing earth-shattering about those results, it's what we've seen in every single public poll of the issue since forever.
If you're a ideologue Republican trying to reconcile your future electoral chances with the nation's fast-changing demographics, inventing comforting poll numbers certainly beats what reality is telling you.
But as 2012 showed the unskewers, you can't always keep reality at bay.