It is (aaargh!) 11 years since Steve Sailer definitively demonstrated in GOP Future Depends on Winning Larger Share of the White Vote that because of their relative sizes tiny shifts in the white vote are hugely more important than big shifts in the Hispanic vote (if such an unlikely event were ever to happen). This is particularly true for Republicans, de facto the White American party.

Yet utter statistical nonsense continues to be broadcast by parties anxious to dissuade the GOP from anything but abject open-borderism as immigration policy. The latest specimen is Immigration a Tough Issue for Mitt Romney by Rebekah Metzler U.S. News & World Report January 5, 2012.

This asserts

…experts do point to one issue where a position Romney took in the GOP primary may hurt him in the general election, and that's immigration

and goes on

...why might this haunt Romney in the general election?

"A Republican probably can't win without about 40 percent, minimum, of the Hispanic and Latino vote," says Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics and a well-respected election prognosticator. Sabato adds that the 2008 GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, tallied only about 31 percent support from this voting bloc in his loss to Obama.

This is absurd on its face. According to the William C. Velasquez Institute

In 2008..Latinos…represented 7.43% of all votes cast in the United States…

Even if McCain had achieved GW Bush’s mythical 2004 44% share of the Hispanic vote, that would only mean a shift of 0.97% of the total votes cast.

What defeated McCain was his failure to get out the white vote, as VDARE.com has repeatedly pointed out.

The 2012 GOP nominee needs to realize that much of the Hispanic vote is irredeemably beyond reach, and to concentrate on his own people.

Going soft on immigration is precisely the wrong thing to do - as I noted in Best Candidate For Low GOP Turnout: Rick Perry. The issue means too much to too a large proportion of the potential GOP vote  

If the current squad of likely nominees needs to review anything, it is how much the Attack Iran plank is going to repel Ron Paul’s supporters.