A rose in Spanish Harlem

 

Republican Congresswoman Mayra Flores

Occasionally a politician emerges who is not a product of the Washington machine, Donald Trump being the prime example. But a modest record was set last week by a woman who looks the real deal, with the caveat that we all know how politicians love to fool us, exchanging optics for reality.

Mayra Flores is the first sitting Congresswoman (representing Texas' 34th District) to have been born in Mexico, which she was, to migrant farmworkers. Her family moved to the USA when she was six and she gained citizenship at 14. Her husband is an ICE border guard.

She brings two things to the job. Firstly, she is a refreshingly honest and authentic personality. Secondly, her victory reminds - or should remind - the GOP that time spent chasing the black vote is time wasted (it was for Trump in 2020), and it is the Hispanic bloc that could well decide any future Presidential Election.

Where blacks have more or less guaranteed their vote as a bloc to the Democrats, the Hispanic vote has always been very much up for grabs, and the salient point is that Hispanics are very much not in alignment with the ideology of America's ruling class.

In a shameless neo-Stalinist manner, the American establishment has attacked the nuclear family since the 1960s. Single parenthood has been encouraged and incentivised, there is no natural respect for the elders of the clan, and families are treated as though they are one of Mao Tse Tung's 'Four olds'.

This does not sit well with Hispanics. They are almost all Roman Catholics, with a strong family ethos, which very much includes the grandparents.

Next, the whole 'woke' agenda is not going to fly with Latinos. Attitudes towards homosexuality and transgenderism are not the same in Caracas and Guatemala City as they are in Manhattan, and Hispanic parents are going to be even less forgiving of the current regime of sexual and gender indoctrination than their white counterparts.

LatinX. About 5% of Latinos have even heard heard of this stupid, clunky phrase, and even fewer use it. It was produced by some pampered academic woman from the safety of her tenure, and you can forgive Hispanics for flipping the bird to gringos on this one.

Church. The church is another institution under fire from the liberal progressives, and again that is not going to please Hispanics. Multiculturalism means the different cultures get to practice their beliefs, and just because the government thinks it is well on the way to banning the church for white Christians, it will find Latinos a tougher prospect, more of a church militant.

One of Trump's problems was that he focused on Latinos as gang-bangers, MS-13 members, Fentanyl smugglers, gun runners and general nogoodniks. He forgot about the Hispanic work ethic, the centrality of family and church, the natural community spirit. If he runs again, he would do well to remember it next time, and play to them rather than waste his time trying to court a black vote which is not his to court. Hispanics will respond to a little conservatism.

And keep an eye on Mayra Flores, as she is a flower still blooming.