MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript

Interview

MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript

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Joining us now is Representative Loretta Sanchez, Democrat of California.

Congresswoman Sanchez, thank you so much for coming on the show.

REP. LORETTA SANCHEZ (D), CALIFORNIA: It‘s a pleasure to be here.

Thank you for inviting me.

MADDOW: The RNC is blaming the Republicans‘ La Raza snub on a scheduling conflict. Their summer meeting does start this week in California. But conservatives like Tom Tancredo and Newt Gingrich have been publicly attacking La Raza specifically over the summer in the context of Judge Sotomayor‘s nomination.

Do you think this was an important snub this week?

SANCHEZ: Well, I believe that it‘s important because the Hispanic vote is not in one party or another. It really is up for grabs in any election.

And so, I think that it would be good strategy for the Republicans to actually send somebody. It‘s amazing to me that they didn‘t have their chairman or any of their top governors able to attend. I would suggest to them if they were asking me that they should have sent somebody to address that audience.

MADDOW: Do you think that the treatment of Judge Sotomayor during the confirmation process either by Republicans in the hearing room or by the conservative commentariat in general, do you think it has been designed to stir up racial resentment?

SANCHEZ: Well, I would hope not. As an American, I hope not. Remember that Hispanics also—we‘re of all races. I mean, there are white Hispanics, there are black Hispanics, there are Asian Hispanics.

So, I mean, this is not about race for us. Hispanics is about a culture. It‘s about an identity that we bring. It‘s based in the language. But we transcend all of the races.

So, I would hope that, in particular, Republicans would understand that we‘re really not about that. What we wanted to see was a qualified—

I‘m happy that she‘s a woman, by the way, because I think we need more women on the Supreme Court. But what we wanted to see was a qualified Latina or Latino on there, and I believe we‘re getting that with this nominee.

MADDOW: Jeb Bush, the former president‘s brother, recently did sort of a—a bit of a soul bearing interview with Tucker Carlson, of all people, in "Esquire" magazine. And he essentially said that the Republican Party couldn‘t have an electoral future without coming up with a way to win back Hispanic voters.

How important do you think the treatment of Judge Sotomayor and the way that her nomination has been handled—how important is that for that task for Republicans?

SANCHEZ: Well, I know that some Republicans have discounted it and said that they really don‘t need the Hispanic vote. For example, you were mentioning Pat Buchanan‘s earlier op-ed.

What he doesn‘t understand or what he didn‘t state in there is something very obvious, and that is the states that make the difference, because of the electoral process, the college that we have, means that certain states really put you over, and that would be California. That would be New Mexico. That would be places like Florida. And these are places where the Hispanic vote would become even more pronounced in the near future.

So, any party who wants to have a president has to really pay attention to the Latino vote. And as I said, Latinos don‘t—are tied necessarily to one party or the other. But there are some things that push us into the arms of the other party, and things of that sort would be—for example, in California, where we saw Proposition 187, the desire so many years ago by the Republicans to take away public education from Hispanic—from immigrant kids in California.

MADDOW: In terms of the Republicans‘ hopes for turning this around, the reason that we‘re doing this is the story so high in the show today is because I, like you, was very surprised that the Republican Party didn‘t want to send somebody to the National Council of La Raza conference.

Just given the politics here, given what‘s happened with the Judge Sotomayor nomination, it seems like—it seems like a political move that‘s counterintuitive. If we assume that it was just a mistake and that they really do—the Republican Party really does want to go for Hispanic and Latino voters, what would you expect to see from them in coming months in order to start trying to win back those folks?

SANCHEZ: Well, first of all, you know, if we make a gathering, if we throw a party, our culture is about—we‘d like you to come. If we invite you to come, we‘d like you to show up. We want you to see that you don‘t mind being with us or that you like being with us actually. That‘s the first thing. So, just showing up is a big improvement.

Certainly, I told you before that we‘re based not in a race but in a language—a language that‘s a very beautiful language. It doesn‘t mean we don‘t know English. It doesn‘t mean we don‘t want to learn English in this—and obviously, the United States, where jobs and everything else depend on how well and how articulate you are in English. But, you know, we also want to keep our language, our Spanish influence alive. And so, though, I have seen so many people, colleagues in Washington, of both parties, going and learning Spanish in the mornings, because they‘ve realize that this is important.

So, I think show up, care about our issues. By the way, the Hispanic agenda is a great agenda for America because it really is about education. It is about good jobs and about good benefits—everything that every American family wants and every immigrant population has wanted when they‘ve come to the United States.

MADDOW: Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, Democrat of California—thanks so much for taking the time to join us tonight. I really appreciate it.

SANCHEZ: Thank you, Rachel.

MADDOW: Coming up: CNN‘s Lou Dobbs calls me names—names that I sort of don‘t really understand.

Senator James Inhofe opens up a whole new window on C Street and the Family that we didn‘t know about before.

And Michael Phelps actually lost a race at the World Swimming Championships today. Is it a super high-tech merman swimsuit that‘s to blame?

Stay with us.

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