In head-to-head matchups with the top three GOP presidential candidates, Obama holds substantial leads that exceed a two-to-one margin in every case. Latino voters prefer Obama 67 percent to 24 percent over Mitt Romney, 65 percent to 22 percent over Herman Cain, and 68 percent to 21 percent over Rick Perry.

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Increasingly, no party or candidate with an eye toward Washington can afford not to appeal to this fastest-growing voter bloc in the country. Hispanics supported Obama by a two-to-one margin in the 2008 election over Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), then set a record for midterm voter turnout in 2010 when 6.6 million Hispanics showed up to the polls, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Obama remains much more popular with Hispanics than he does with the overall population. A poll released Nov. 8 by Univision/Latino Decisions showed 48 percent of Americans overall approved of his job performance; among Hispanics, it’s 66 percent.

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In the last three decades, I’ve heard politicos, academics, activists and others boast that a swelling population would eventually bring the Latino community power and respect.

They include President Barack Obama, who just last month told a group of Latino online journalists gathered at the White House that he was confident that he’d see a competitive Hispanic candidate running for president during his lifetime.

“Just look at the demographics,” Obama said. “With numbers comes political power.”

Not necessarily, Mr. President.

The assumption has been that, at some point, the Latino population would become so large and its influence on everything from business to sports to food to pop culture would be so profound that it would be impossible to ignore.

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Johnson has dubbed his idea the "RLJ Rule." It calls on Fortune 1000 companies to voluntarily consider a more diverse pool of qualified candidates when filling senior level job openings and hiring contractors. Johnson has described it as the business version of the National Football League's Rooney Rule, a 2003 mandate that required teams to consider diverse candidate pools when filling senior positions.

Johnson, the United States' first black billionaire, has been critical of the way that the Obama administration and Congress have tried to address the nation's stubborn unemployment problem. He believes businesses can create solutions to social problems.

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Obama’s overall approval rating in the poll stands at 48%. But the divide exists here, too: Only about a third (38%) of whites approve of the president’s job, versus two-thirds (68%) of Hispanics who do. Similarly, only about a third (34%) of whites have a favorable view of the Democratic Party, versus more than half (54%) of Hispanics who do.

But the one thing all seem to agree on is their disapproval of President Obama’s handling of immigration reform — just 32% of the public approves of his job on this issue.

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They started during the Presidential campaign, with attempts to create racial animosity from African American Reverend Jeremiah Wright, to questioning whether Obama was a Muslim, to doubting whether he is a legitimate U.S. citizen. The “birther” movement continues in spite of clear evidence that Obama is a U.S. citizen and that it is a hoax.

The attempt to reform the healthcare system is the latest example of taking perhaps the most important issue of our time, and reducing it to a fight along racial lines encouraged by enough mainstream Republicans to keep the insanity movement going.

To believe in this movement, you would have to believe that Obama: a) is a socialist, communist, and Nazi, b) is a racist and hates white people, and c) wants the government to make all of your medical decisions for you

You would also have to believe that the health insurance companies always put your best interests first, leave medical decisions to you and your doctor, and aren’t interested in making a profit.

If these are your true beliefs, you need to a psychiatric evaluation, assuming your insurance company doesn’t reject the claim.

So what makes otherwise rationally thinking adults break up town hall meetings by spewing this nonsense?

According to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, there are significant disparities in healthcare coverage by race: 14.9 of whites are uninsured, versus 19.7 of African Americans, 16.8% of Asian Americans, and 32.7% of Hispanic Americans. In listening to some of the specific concerns the protesters have raised, the common thread appears to be that those who are insured don’t want to pay for those who aren’t, even when it is estimated that we can cover everyone from waste, fraud, and abuse savings from the current system.

It is indeed curious why some Americans would rather see rising costs and excessive profits go to the insurance companies instead of their fellow Americans who are disproportionately people of color.

No other American President has faced so many direct personal, utterly baseless attacks on his character than Barack Obama. What is the root of this? It is hard to imagine that race does not play a role in this. It is hard to see this happening to George W. Bush, or even Bill Clinton.

But that is not the most disappointing part of the story. There is a small faction of the population that is racist, and thankfully it has been getting smaller and smaller over the years. What is disappointing is the active role some prominent Republicans are playing in giving the birther/deather/socialist/Nazi movements life even though they know they are born more out of racist attitudes than facts.

When given the opportunity to vote on specific legislation that would require them to take an on the record stand on Obama’s citzenship or government-run healthcare (Medicare), they prove that they don’t believe in these extremist movements. So it appears that the cornerstone of the Republican strategy for the mid-term elections and probably the next Presidential election is to foment racist extremism for political gain.

With the Republicans, all politics does appear to be racial.

Ethnicmajority Politics page.

According to a New York Times public opinion poll, two thirds of the public feel that race relations are generally good, up 25% since last July. The percentage of African Americans answering affirmatively doubled during the same time period.

Obama’s election has accomplished what no affirmative action program ever could – convincing the public that diversity might actually be a good thing. Whereas much of the public views affirmative action a modern version of forced integration, Obama was the public’s choice.

Just as the Cosby show in the 80′s portrayed African Americans in counter-stereotypical way, Obama’s performance in the world’s toughest job and the class of the Obama family on display for all the world to see has definitely opened a lot of eyes. And a lot of minds.

Ethnicmajority politics page.