Obama super PAC memo: GOP permanently damaged with Hispanics, seniors
http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/01/obama-super-pac-memo-gop-damaged-with-hispanics-seniors-109459.html
By ALEXANDER BURNS | 1/3/12 3:13 PM EST
President Barack Obama's Republican challengers have done themselves "permanent damage" among Hispanics and older voters as a result of the Iowa caucus campaign, the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action contends in a memo shared with POLITICO.
The memo, authored by former White House spokesman Bill Burton, argues that the GOP field's close embrace of the Paul Ryan budget and Mitt Romney's rhetoric on immigration issues will damage the party in the general election.
"New Republican litmus tests on the plan to dismantle Medicare and on a divisive and unworkable immigration policy raise concerns from senior and Hispanic voters who have rightly rejected both proposals," Burton writes. "In his effort to dispatch Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, Mitt Romney has underscored this problem. On Medicare, he harshly criticized Gingrich for opposing the House Republican plan that would essentially end Medicare. And on immigration, he savaged Gingrich and Perry for advocating anything less than a draconian, systematic deportation of all undocumented immigrants."