Commentary: GOP Right to Tap Rubio for Response to Obama

Yahoo News asked readers to react to Sen. Marco Rubio's Republican response on Tuesday night. Here's one perspective.

COMMENTARY | After the election, pundits argued if the GOP is to thrive, it must evolve with the demographics of America.

The Republicans made a multicultural move by honoring a first-generation Cuban-American to respond to President Obama's address.

It is hopeful that the GOP selected a Catholic, first-generation Latino, with a vowel at the end of his surname (like Obama), not only because of the change in America, but also because of the transformation in the city in which I live: Ann Arbor, Mich.

In Ann Arbor, for instance, the United States Census stated that the populations of Asians and Hispanics each grew more than 20 percent in Ann Arbor. In the U.S. as a whole in 2011, people of color were about 36 percent of the population (16.7 Hispanic/Latino, 13.1 percent black, 5 percent Asian.)

Consequently, I found excerpts of Rubio's speech potentially appealing to Ann Arborites and many Americans generally.

He said: "...I still live in the same working class neighborhood I grew up in. My neighbors aren't millionaires. They're retirees who depend on Social Security and Medicare. They're workers who have to get up early tomorrow morning and go to work to pay the bills. They're immigrants, who came here because they were stuck in poverty in countries where the government dominated the economy."

While not all poor immigrants come from countries where "the government dominated the economy," perhaps we will begin to see more people like Rubio and his neighbors represented in positions of power across America, and in Ann Arbor.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/commentary-gop-tap-rubio-response-obama-043100178.html

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