Over a month and a half after Meg Whitman went down in flames, losing to Jerry Brown by 13 points, recriminations are still flying among California Republicans about the embarrassing loss. George Skelton’s column today uses an interview with Rob Stutzman, a Senior Advisor to Meg Whitman and a former communications director for Arnold Schwarzenegger, to point out that a big factor in Whitman’s defeat was her alienation of the Latino vote:

But the veteran Republican strategist is blaming the mini-landslide size of Whitman’s loss on some ugly dust-ups over illegal immigration that alienated Latinos from the GOP….

“Republicans need to understand that they live in suburbs with second-generation Mexican American neighbors whose parents came here and worked in agriculture and the service industries and are very proud” of their families’ success, Stutzman says.

“They sit around at cocktail parties and they listen on talk shows and hear their parents referred to as ‘illegals.’ And we wonder why these people don’t want to register as Republicans.”

It’s good that Stutzman recognizes this reality. Of course, if you’ve been reading Calitics, you’d have known months ago that Whitman’s attack on immigrants renders her unelectable.

Stutzman lamented to Skelton the influence of “talk shows” – i.e. John and Ken – on Republicans. But Stutzman could and should go further. The problem, as we’ve explained several times here at Calitics, is that the California Republican base hates Latinos, does not accept the fact that there are almost as many Latinos as whites in California, and sees any effort to treat Latinos as fully equal and desirable members of our state’s society as being some kind of sellout.

Because of this hatred of Latinos, it’s now impossible for a Republican to win the party nomination (which requires appeasing that hatred) as well as the general election (which requires winning Latino votes). Republican statewide candidates are therefore stuck between pleasing their base or winning Latino votes. Either way, they lose.

So Stutzman is absolutely right to point out the dilemma and explain to Republicans that their candidates cannot win until the anti-Latino sentiment is abandoned. But that’s not likely to happen anytime soon; the base clings to its hatreds with a tight grip. And instead of reacting to what Stutzman said, the right-wing base prefers to shoot the messenger, if Debra Saunders’ response is any indication:

Let’s start with the biggest factor in Whitman’s Titanic disaster of a campaign — the overpaid political class coronated her because of her money, even though they had no reason to believe that she would be a good candidate or a great governor….

I talked to Stutzman who told me it would be a misreading of his conversation with Skelton to conclude that he was blaming Whitman’s loss on the GOP’s Latino vote deficit. Fair enough. And I agree that the party can do a better job shunning activists who speak as if all immigrants should be presumed illegal — which oddly was the Democratic argument during the Diaz controversy.

That said, let’s start with the mistake that spawned all other mistakes. The GOP’s permanent political class went for the money.

Saunders isn’t being serious here. Whitman had everything she needed to be a formidable candidate. Democrats and progressives spent most of 2010 scared to death that she would roll right over Jerry Brown. But she didn’t. And her need to appease her anti-Latino base played a big role in it.

Saunders also deliberately understates the problem. It isn’t a matter of “shunning activists” – it’s a matter of the California Republican base as a whole sharing these anti-Latino beliefs. If that base were shunned, if the activists were shunned, then they’d just go to another Republican candidate who would satisfy their desire to hate on Latinos. It’s exactly the move Steve Poizner attempted this spring in the primary, which forced Whitman to play up her own anti-Latino sentiments.

So the problem is dire, and it’s one major reason why the California Republican Party is a dying political party, destined to be marginalized as California politics is being realigned as a battle between progressives and corporate elitists.

But Democrats should not yet assume the Latino vote is theirs. As with any voting bloc, Latinos expect to hold positions of power, expect their needs to be addressed, and expect that politicians they support will deliver on their promises. California Democrats in Congress backed the DREAM Act, and it was Senate Democrats from other states who sabotaged its passage. Still, it’s a reminder that California Democrats don’t have a lock on the Latino vote, and need to work hard to ensure that Latinos are empowered and enriched, as they deserve to be as full members of California society.