It is unclear how white working-class Catholic “ethnics” (a largely imaginary group to begin with) carry a lesson for the various mulatto and mestizo breeds who get lumped into the “Hispanic” column. Contrary to what you suggest, very few of these non-Hispanic “Hispanics” are Catholic, although some will indeed use Catholic religious articles for pagan and sacrilegious purposes. They are much more likely to be either Bible-thumping evangelical Protestants in “Iglesia de Dios” storefront churches, or else pagans, Buddhists, nonbelievers, or whatever else happens to be popular this week. In many cases (Mexicans notably) the people come from a society with an historical antipathy to the Church, which was identified with the hated white Europeans. The religious and cultural gulf between nonwhite “Hispanics” and Americans is at least as great as the racial and linguistic differences.

First, the Know Nothing Party split over the issue of slavery and it’s members became both Democrats and Republicans. To say that the Republican Party has it’s roots in the Know Nothing movement is nonsense. It is true that Democrats would call Republicans Know Nothings, in order to secure the Catholic vote, much like they scream “racist” today in order to secure the black vote. It’s also true that the Democrats were the party of the KKK, and as a result a very large part of the Democrat party was anti-Catholic.

This strategy has been used by the Democrat party for generations. “Progressive” Democrats, like Wilson and FDR, openly and willingly embraced racist southern Democrats whose political message (populism) was similar to their own. Democrats only found southerners offensive when the coalition between northern leftists and southern populists/racists broke up over northern Democrats newly found concern for black civil rights.

The Republican Party, by contrast, overwhelmingly supported the civil rights movement. Eisenhower sent the 82nd Airborne into Little Rock Arkansas to enforce black civil rights. And Republicans, unlike the Democrats, voted in large majorities for civil rights legislation. Alienated sothern Democrats did not become Republicans, they split off into the “Blue Dogs” and Dixiecrat Party. This confusion presented an opportunity for Republicans who secured the support of many southern whites without appeal to racism. In fact, any southern Republican voicing racist rhetoric has been quickly and publically condemned by the Republican Party. The same has not been true of the Democrats who still openly appeal to racist sentiment.