WASHINGTON — After Mitt Romney managed to get only 27 percent of the Latino vote Tuesday, House speaker John Boehner yesterday said his party would work with President Obama on immigration reform.
“This issue has been around far too long,” Boehner told ABC News. “A comprehensive approach is long overdue, and I’m confident that the president, myself, others can find a common ground to take care of this issue once and for all.”
Election Day polls revealed that 71 percent of Hispanic voters opted for Obama, a campaign success that many observers believe helped give the president his slim margin of victory.
Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas blasted party bigs for harming their Election Day chances with repeated gaffes.
“We had Republican candidates who got very high profile and said some very stupid things; I think that really tainted the party,” Hutchison, who is retiring this year, said yesterday on CNN.
She pointed to remarks by Missouri Rep. Todd Akin that women have a biological mechanism to prevent pregnancy from “legitimate rape,” and by Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock that pregnancies from rape are “something that God intended to happen.”
The comments likely cost both their Senate bids but also hurt GOP candidates across the country, including Mitt Romney, Hutchinson said.
Akin’s and Mourdock’s bizarre views about rape helped to fueled the Democratic message that Republicans were waging a “war on women.”