One of my hobbies is studying human belief. People, singularly and in groups, especially groups, will come to believe something to be true, no matter the facts. Their belief reaches a point where all dis-confirmation triggers a redoubling of their dedication to the cause. So much so it begins to look like madness.

So it is with the people running the Republican Party and their belief in winning the Hispanic vote. The math has been worked out for a long time now, but they persist in the belief that the party of gringos will be the party of the mestizos. It’s not just the party leaders, many of the rank and file buy it too. It’s what’s driving the Marco Rubio campaign.

Anyway, here’s a good example of it from Fox News Latino!

Congressman Mike Coffman has been studying Spanish for less than two years, but he launches into it with the seeming comfort and ability of a veteran speaker.

The Colorado Republican, who won re-election in 2014 in what was considered the most competitive House race in the country, drew some skepticism when he began taking Spanish and going to Latino neighborhoods and adopting a more moderate view of issues such as comprehensive immigration reform.

You see? He followed the Jeb Bush model and turned himself into El Jefe!

His district’s boundaries were redrawn in 2011, after the Census came out a year earlier, and suddenly the predominantly white, Republican area was ethnically diverse – including 20 percent Latino – and was winnable by a Democrat.

That made last year’s mid-term election, as Politico put it, “a proxy war for the national Democratic and Republican parties” in the battle for the growing Latino electorate.

Coffman, 60, does not deny that the need to reach out to Latinos, a community he concedes that he knew very little about, was non-negotiable if he was to remain in Congress.

But what began as a survival tactic, Coffman said, developed into a genuine interest and respect for Latinos and the Spanish language.

Just like Jeb Bush! What a coincidence!

I wrote about this last year. The facts tell a vastly different story. Sure, learning Spanish and soliciting votes from Latinos helped. The fact is he won because his opponent turned out to be a nut, the Latino and black votes were much lower than in previous elections and he did better amongst white voters. The telling fact is no one ever mentions his share of the Latino vote. The reason is he did no better than Republicans ever do with Hispanics.

To quote myself, the RINO fantasy is a world where pasty-faced blancos rule over a land of socially conservative brown people who enjoy authoritarian rule. The fact that California turned into la dictadura perfecta, to borrow Mario Vargas Llosa‘ description of the Mexican ruling party, never comes up. Maybe in addition to learning Spanish, the Jeb Bush GOP has some other transformation in mind.