Right-Wingers Lie on SB 1070, Claim (Falsely) That Majority of Hispanics Support It

By Stephen Lemons Sat., May 8 2010 at 11:12 AM

Categories: Feathered Bastard, Immigration

Sultans of falsehoods: Man, is Bill O'Reilly looking old these days, or what?

The lefty Think Progress Web site has addressed an absurd, nativist shibboleth that I've heard kicking around the conservanut echo chamber lately: The lie that SB 1070, Arizona's new "papers please" legislation, is actually supported by a majority of Hispanics.

Where did the wingnut drones from Fox's Bill O'Reilly to fathead J.D. Hayworth to KTAR's Bruce St. James get this bit of bigoted claptrap? Apparently, they pulled it out of their flabby, white backsides.

The reality is 70 percent of Latino voters in Arizona "strongly oppose" SB 1070, according to a survey commissioned by the National Council of La Raza.

(BTW, nativists, spare me the racist conspiracy theories on NCLR's name. "La Raza" in common parlance is used to mean "the people" or the "Hispanic people," not "race" in the traditional sense.)

A recent Rocky Mountain Poll found 52 percent of all Arizonans back SB 1070, with 39 percent against it. The same poll found that Caucasians support the law by 65 percent, while Hispanics oppose it by a whopping 69 percent.

Actually, not one of the polls out there -- not even the way right-wing Rasmussen Reports -- claims that Latinos back SB 1070.

Rasmussen did put out a poll stating that 70 percent of likely voters in Arizona favored the law, but Scott Rasmussen later admitted to me that 81 percent of the 500 respondents to the poll were white.

Indeed, Rasmussen never claimed that a majority of Latinos supported the law. But conservanudniks have little allegiance to the truth when it doesn't serve their purposes, so they just make stuff up to suit their arguments.

In a subsequent survey, Rasmussen asserted that 60 percent of all likely voters across America support the Arizona law, though New York Times/CBS News found total national support for SB 1070 to be much lower, around 51 percent.

While there are other right-wing prevarications concerning SB 1070 to be addressed, we should at least put to rest the colossal Dr. Goebbels-like deception that the majority of Latinos support SB 1070. It is simply not true.