Republicans didn't fare well in a recent Fox News poll and Ann Coulter says it's immigrants' fault.
In an appearance on the "The O'Reilly Factor" Friday, Coulter said Democrats have used immigrants to boost their performance in elections and that Republicans should stop "sucking up" to Hispanics because they will never vote conservative anyway.
Coulter's comments came in reaction to a Fox News poll that found only 36 percent of registered voters had a favorable view of the Republican Party, while 54 percent viewed the party unfavorably. The figures for Democrats were slightly higher, at 43 percent favorable and 50 percent unfavorable.
"We keep thinking this is the same country that it used to be," Coulter said. "Democrats have been bringing in ringers since the 1965 immigration act. You think it's the same people voting -- it isn't. The Democrats get basically every immigrant group to bloc-vote for the Democrats."
The legislation Coulter referred to reformed the previous system of national origin quotas, which changed the demographics of the United States by removing restrictions on immigration from Asia and Africa. In the years following the legislation, the U.S. experienced a modest increase in the size of its foreign-born population, which jumped from 5.4 percent of the total population in 1960 to 6.2 percent in 1980.
She attributed Republicans' poor performance in the poll to a soft line on immigration and an eagerness to use the issue to cultivate Latino votes, despite the fact that the party has shifted to the right on immigration in recent months.
"If the Republican Party is going to win, they're going to have to be the populist party and bring up issues like immigration, which they won't touch," Coulter said.
"Instead of constantly sucking up to a group of people who will never vote for you," Coulter continued, presumably referring to Hispanics, "how about appealing to the other voters who are just going to stay home and say 'screw you.'"
While the GOP has invested in field operations to increase contact with Hispanic voters in several states following Republican candidate Mitt Romney's poor performance among Latinos in the 2012 presidential election, the Republican Party has largely taken an increasingly hard line on immigration since the child migrant crisis this summer.
Efforts at comprehensive immigration reform over the past two years have failed because of strong opposition from House Republicans. This year, House Republicans led a symbolic vote to overturn President Barack Obama's 2012 policy of deferring deportation for children brought here illegally as children. Even former supporters of reform, such as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), backed the measure, which had no chance of passing the Senate.
H/T Mediaite
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