Bush’s identity politics lite

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Pundits call George W.’s commercials featuring his nephew, George Prescott Bush, a brilliant way to make nice with Latino voters. But some of George P.’s old Rice University classmates are less impressed. “I am a young Latino in the US and very proud of my bloodline,” he tells the camera, according to the LA WEEKLY. But, “He [George P.] was never at any of our events, nor did he hang out with any of us much,” said one member of Rice’s Latino group.

The group’s former president, Mike Gomez, has few flattering words for the young Bush: “There was such a dearth of committed people that anyone you could find who cared mattered a great deal. If George P. had been active in any form, we would have welcomed it, encouraged it even. But he wasn’t.” Ouch!

Still, who’s against the Republicans’ becoming a kinder, gentler party in wooing Latinos? And in politics, which George P. calls a “noble profession,” like anywhere else, sometimes it’s the thought that counts.

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