Disenfranchising minority voters is a standard page in the Republican playbook. For example, Republicans conspired to keep African Americans from voting in Florida in 2000 by having their names removed from voter rolls, because their names were similar to those of people with convictions. Thousands were deprived of their right to vote. Republican poll watchers are trained to intimidate minority voters. This year, Republicans know they cannot win a significant portion of the Latino vote, because of their racist approach to immigration reform. So a front group has been running ads telling Latino voters to stay home to punish Democrats for failing to pass comprehensive immigration reform. That attempt seems to have backfired.

Those ads by a right-wing front group called "Latinos for Reform" — urging Latinos not to vote for Democrats in the coming election because they haven’t delivered on comprehensive immigration reform — may not be turning out to be such a hot idea:

But the fever-pitch backlash to this advertisement suggests the message could bring about just the opposite effect, by energizing a Hispanic voting bloc that may have been lethargic with a new and compelling reason to get out and vote — by and large, for Democrats.

From the 2004 to 2008 elections, Hispanics grew in force from 8 percent of the electorate to 12 to 15 percent, depending on the exit poll — roughly equal to President Barack Obama’s margin of victory. Obama carried 76 percent of the Nevada Hispanic vote in 2008.

Electorate growth rates among Hispanics have slowed since. But what hasn’t is their overwhelming enthusiasm for Democrats.

“Hispanics are much more likely to view congressional Democrats favorably than other groups,” said John Tuman, chairman of UNLV’s political science department who also teaches in the Latin American studies department. According to a recent study by UNLV and the Brookings Mountain West think tank, “it’s only among Hispanics in any Mountain West state that you see Democrats having an overall net favorability ranking,” Tuman said.

Yeah, campaigns that smack of overt minority voter-suppression efforts — particularly since the self-serving hypocrisy of these ads ("Punish Democrats because they haven’t been effective in overcoming our longstanding efforts to kill immigration reform") is so transparent — tend not to go over so well with minority voters… [emphasis added]