Rush Limbaugh has finally met a Latino he can see eye-to-eye with.
The conservative pundit spoke with an Argentine-born caller named Pablo on his radio show Thursday, who lashed out at President Barack Obama, socialism and Latin America.
“Most Hispanics, like me and many friends that I have, we don’t want to make America the same crappy place we came from,” Pablo said, to Limbaugh’s delight. “Most of us are conservatives.”
It’s not clear from the comment whether “us” refers to Pablo’s friends or to Hispanics in general.
In fact, Latinos tend to vote more liberal than the general population. Some 45 percent of registered voters said the Democratic Party had more concern for Hispanics in a 2011 Pew Hispanic Center poll, compared to only 12 percent who said the Republican Party was more concerned. President Barack Obama carried 71 percent of the Latino vote last year, while Romney won only 27 percent.
Pablo described the “crappy place he came from” as a leftwing nightmare created by Juan Perón. “We lived our own version of socialism in our nation, and it didn’t work," Pablo said.
He said he feared the same would happen here in the United States, because of President Barack Obama.
It’s not clear how old Pablo is or when he emigrated from Argentina. Limbaugh didn’t ask.
Juan Perón, Argentina’s most influential leader, was a populist who held office from 1946 to 1955, when he was overthrown. He returned from exile in 1973, and was reelected, but then died in office the following year.
The military took over the country and installed a U.S.-backed, right-wing dictatorship from 1976 to 1983 that tortured its opponents and killed or disappeared some 30,000 people, according to human rights groups.
Pablo doesn’t mention the military dictatorship in the discussion with Limbaugh.
Limbaugh showed off his knowledge of the Hispanic community during the call, rattling off the names several Latin American countries to show that he knows geography.
“A mistake is being made in that all Spanish-speaking people are being lumped into Hispanics,” Limbaugh says, pointing out that Pablo is Argentine.
Pablo corrects him, saying that he is now American.
Limbaugh continues: “American. Others are Mexican, others are from Cuba, others from Hispañola, El Salvador. They’re all over the place, and they do have cultural differences. They’re not monolithic.”
Limbaugh says he’d like to see his new friend go into politics, but that he wouldn’t want Pablo to receive a “media anal exam.”
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