Latinos flipped the vote in four battleground states and gave Barack Obama free passage to the White House. But did Obama earn the Hispanic vote, or did he win it by default?

More importantly, will President-elect Obama repay his debt to Latinos, or will he continue to take their support for granted and go on ignoring them?

During his race against Sen. John McCain, Obama paid little attention to some key Hispanic issues, especially those concerning immigration and Latin America. And yet he won 67 percent of the Hispanic vote nationally and an even greater percentage of it in several key states.

Why? Not because Latinos like to be ignored! Not because they adore Obama so soon after having favored Sen. Hillary Clinton! And certainly not because they dislike a pro-immigrant and pro-Latin America politician such as McCain!

Latinos went out to vote in record numbers because they are sick and tired of being the punching bag of the Republican Party. Just as McCain couldn't overcome his ties to President Bush, he couldn't overcome the GOP's negative image in the Hispanic community.

McCain simply couldn't convince Latino voters that on the issue of immigration he would be different from Bush, who had good intentions but was tied down by the anti-immigrant base of his own party.

While President Bush got 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004, McCain got only 31 percent in 2008, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. The Hispanic vote for Obama in 2008 was 9 points higher than it was for Sen. John Kerry, who won 58 percent of the Latino vote in 2004.

Latinos flipped the swing states of Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Florida for Obama, and the president-elect also received great Latino support in other important states he won.

According to a Pew Hispanic Center analysis of election results, Obama won 57 percent of the Latino vote in Florida, a complete reversal from 2004, when 56 percent of Latinos voted for Bush. He became the first Democratic candidate to win the Hispanic vote in Florida.

Obama also won 78 percent of the Hispanic vote in Nevada; 61 percent in Colorado; 69 percent in New Mexico; 72 percent in Illinois; 74 percent in California; and 78 percent in New Jersey — to name a few.

Let's face it; Obama was smart. He saw that Republican hostilities were driving Latinos to the Democratic Party, and he didn't really have to do anything to earn the Hispanic vote. The Republicans gave it to him on a silver platter.

All the Democrats had to do was ask Latinos whether they would want to vote for those who would take away their right to speak Spanish, those who would deport their friends and relatives, and those who would deprive illegal immigrant students of college educations.

But the question remains: Because Obama got away with promising very little to Latinos, can they expect him to deliver anything?

In fact, there are many questions: How many Latinos will he have in his Cabinet? How about his inner circle of White House advisers? We know Latinos were practically invisible in his campaign inner circle. Will that trend continue? Will he visit some Latin American countries? Will he make alliances with our strong friends or our leftist enemies?

And what about immigration reform? During his campaign, Obama said that in his first year in the Oval Office, he would introduce more or less the same immigration reform legislation that has been rejected twice by Congress. Can he persuade Congress to legalize 12 million undocumented immigrants? Can he convince them that such an amnesty program would not encourage more illegal immigration? Doesn't he have to do what McCain suggested, which is to secure the borders first? Is this a realistic plan or one that the Democrats are using as a facade to pretend that they are trying to solve the problem and keep Latinos on a string?

Perhaps now that the Democrats will have a much greater majority in both the House and the Senate there will be no excuse for failing to fix our broken immigration system. And what about the Democratic lawmakers who are opposed to a legalization plan? Can Obama and the Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill rein in their own party's dissidents on this issue? And if they don't pass an immigration reform package, can they count on the Hispanic vote two and four years from now?

On the radio and on television, conservative pundits already are acknowledging that if Republicans are going to make a comeback in future national elections, they need to regain the ground they have lost in the Hispanic community. Yet you still don't hear them conceding that the first thing GOP leaders need to do is tone down their anti-immigrant and English-only rhetoric.

Because Obama's Latino support is not built on solid ground, Republicans probably could still recover the Hispanic voters they lost in this election and even win over some others. But they would have to become much more tolerant and inclusive. They would have to accept this country's precious diversity, and they would have to persuade the xenophobic GOP extremists to stop bullying immigrants and throwing punches at Latinos.

In other words, they would have to embrace their Hispanic punching bag, just as the bag is learning how to fight back.

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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