Matthew Dowd, who was a senior strategist to George W. Bush in 2000 and his chief strategist in 2004, has said that if Republicans are to win national elections in the future, they must increase their share of the minority vote. And the Hispanic vote is the most fertile ground.

“Hispanics are more like European immigrants of the early 1900s or late 1800s,” Dowd said. “They are like the Irish: They start out Democratic, but as they become part of the economic mainstream, they become much more valuable to Republicans.” ~The Politico

That must be why there are so many Armenian-American Republicans running around.  Who can forget the great work done by Hnchaks for Bush in ’04?  That’s also why there are so many Irish-American Republican voters tipping Massachusetts, New York and Illinois into the GOP column on a regular basis.  Obviously, there are some Irish-Americans who have been or have become Republicans (Reagan was the most famous example), just as you had a large number of white ethnic voters who changed party affiliations in the ’80s or, in some cases, even earlier, but I am guessing that non-European immigrant groups tend to affiliate with the Republicans in relatively smaller numbers and these low levels of support for the GOP persist generation after generation.  It was probably culture war and national defense matters that brought a lot of these ethnic voters over to the GOP side, rather than the result of the gradual embourgeoisement of the immigrant groups.  That doesn’t absolutely rule out the possibility that the latter will bring in a few new supporters, but the overwhelming majority will always go to the Democrats, because they embody the political values and programs that the immigrant groups are more likely to embrace because of the political habits they have inherited and brought with them.  The GOP can wage demographic revolution against this country, but they should not mistake it for the route, whether in the short or long term, to their own future political dominance.