Listen up, tea party wing of the Republican Party.

One of your own is making sense on ways your party can reach out more effectively to a growing minority of voters in the United States.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/rand-paul-gop-must-get-beyond-deportation-105241.html

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a possible candidate for president in 2016, says the GOP must get “beyond deportation” if it hopes to attract Latino voters.

Think about that. So many leading Republicans were saying during the 2012 presidential campaign that deportation — or “self-deportation,” as Mitt Romney called it — was one way to rid the country of illegal immigrants.

“The bottom line is, the Hispanic community, the Latino community is not going to hear us until we get beyond that issue,” Paul said this week.

Who wants to wager whether the Republican Party is going to heed this sound advice? I’m not yet willing to believe the tea party wing of the GOP — the minority within the party with the loudest voice — is going to take the bait.

I do admire Paul, though, for telling the harsh truth to his GOP tea party brethren. Indeed, another key member of that wing of the party — Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas — is an immigrant himself. The Texas Cruz Missile, though, keeps talking tough on immigration, brushing off efforts to reform the system in a comprehensive, constructive way.

Keep driving home the message, Sen. Paul. Maybe one day they’ll get it. Then again, maybe they won’t.