Republicans are often criticized for their lack of popularity among minority populations but the GOP has embarked on practices to increase their profile specifically among Latino voters in the next two weeks.

Republican leadership has urged the Party to reach out to these communities with more powerful tactics as the nation moves toward an election year in 2010. House Republicans will be more pro-active in making the priorities of this population part of their agenda. Recently, Rep. Mike Pence had op/eds translated and published in Spanish language newspapers. This kind of effort will ramp up in days to come.

Some Republicans, like Rep. Aaron Schock (IL), are already on message. Schock managed to beat a four term Democrat incumbent in a district that is 24% African-American. He attributes his succes, in part, to a major, concerted effort to minority communities.

"Time and time again I visited black churches .  .  . and time and time again I heard, 'We've never had a Republican candidate even come here and show us the respect of asking for our vote,' " Schock said, according to the Weekly Standard. "No party can be a ruling majority if they arbitrarily rule out certain demographics of our population."

The GOP has high hopes for 2010 and gaining a higher minority vote will be key in fulfilling those.