Romney Writes Off Latinos, Young Voters As Government Moochers

The Republican party has four years to do some thinking, mainly about how you can be elected president, as Obama was last week, without a majority of white voters.

The big story there is Latinos, and how they rocked the booths for Obama, with 70 percent or so going for the incumbent, according to exit polls. Republicans of the not-so-distant past -- George W. Bush, John McCain -- have seen better days with Latinos, mainly through immigration-reform olive branches. But if loser Mitt Romney's remarks this week are any sign, the GOP is off to a bad start toward 2016:

Yes, the Republican party is already scrambling to find its own Obama, its Next Big Latino Hope: Jeb Bush (whose children, the infamous "little brown ones," are half-Mexican)? Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas? Florida's Marco Rubio?

Amid all this, the guy the GOP entrusted to take the mantle from the president, Romney, seems to be making the party's job at making amends with brownfolk (his stance on immigration was that undocumented workers should "self-deport") all the more difficult.

Romney told a group of top donors Wednesday that Obama won because he was "very generous" to his base -- African Americans, Latinos, college kids. (Via the Los Angeles Times).

The loser equated universal healthcare, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (what Romney called "amnesty" for illegals), and partial forgiveness for college loan interest to gifts.

Romney was roundly criticized during the campaign after he was captured on video saying nearly half the nation (the so-called 47 percent) don't pay taxes and would vote for Obama because they represented a welfare class of people.

Yesterday he said:

The president's campaign focused on giving targeted groups a big gift -- so he made a big effort on small things. Those small things, by the way, add up to trillions of dollars.

Of course, this harks back to the days of Ronald Reagan and his demonizing of the black "welfare queen." And, interestingly, some have said Romney ran a campaign that would have done just fine ... in 1980.

And you wondered who the real Romney was -- the Massachusetts moderate who pioneered Obamacare and whose father was born in Mexico or the corporate raider who told Detroit to go bankrupt?

In any case, to write off minorities and the young as a massive class of takers is to write off any chances the Republican party has of retaking the White House.

We hope GOP leaders are preparing to distance themselves from this guy. He should not even have 10-foot-poll marks on him starting today.

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]