Juan Rodriguez, a Colombian immigrant and Republican businessman in Des Moines, is on a mission to persuade his employees, nearly all Hispanic Democrats, to elect a president from what they think of as the party of white guys.

This year, with three minorities among the top four GOP contenders, Rodriguez thought he had a shot. “You are against abortion, yes? Against same-sex marriage, yes?” he tells them. “Then you are a Republican!”

“No, no,” comes the response. The workers can’t get past what they hear from some Republican candidates about immigrants and immigration. They respond, in other words, with what many Republicans have long argued — that ethnic identity is not as important as what candidates stand for.

After years of deriding Democrats for dividing Americans into hyphenated subgroups, Republicans face a tantalizing and vexing prospect this year. With two sons of Cuban immigrants, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, joining a famed African American surgeon, Ben Carson, near the top of the polls, they have a unique opportunity to reach out to minorities as the party has long wanted to.

Some party officials say the Republicans’ more diverse field of candidates — especially in contrast to the Democrats’ all-white list — is evidence of conservatism’s broadening appeal. But others, loath to adopt the identity politics they associate with liberalism, maintain that the focus must stay on conservative ideas rather than the ethnicity of the people touting them.

Read the article “The GOP’s Identity-Politics Crisis: Holding Race-Card Aces but Loath to Play Them” on washingtonpost.com.