I was actually VERY surprised to hear that Mitt Romney has put together an all Spanish ad. Now if you remember back in 2000 then Gov. of Texas George Bush made a major push to reach the hispanic community. He did his best to throw spanish into a good deal of his campaign stops and made no secret about what he was trying to do.

Since then the non-hispanic conservative side of the Republican party has made illegal immigration and making English the national language major issues. Ones that worked against many Republican candidates in the 2006 election. It was easy for analysts and party loyalists to write off 2006 as a referrendum on Iraq or just corruption. Most of the conservative media I consumed at that time though told a much different story.

Conservatives were disappointed in Bush’s lack of movement on banning gay marriage, trying to put non-conservatives on the Supreme Court, supporting the selling of American ports and other vital interests to foreign nations and of course the presidents very “liberal” amnesty stance on illegal immigration.

To hear Romney, who is already fighting off accusations that he is a “flip-flopper” and not a “true conservative”, making the same type of push a very interesting and in my opinion potentially dangerous move for his campaign. Republicans are going to walk a very thin tightrope in the coming years, trying to court hispanic voters while hanging onto their conservative and largely WASP base.

Should be interesting to see as Romney’s campaign grows where it takes the candidate.