Polls numbers like this have got to have GOP leaders shitting their pants right about now:

New poll numbers really seem to bear out the fears of some Republicans: The GOP’s quasi-opposition to Sotomayor seems to be hurting the party among Latinos in a big way.

The latest numbers from the nonpartisan Research 2000 for Daily Kos find that only eight percent of Latinos view the party favorably, while an astonishing 86 percent view it unfavorably.

That’s a real shift from what were already pretty bad numbers from before the Sotomayor nominatino, when 11% of Latinos viewed the GOP favorably, and 79% viewed it unfavorably.

One of the big stories today is that Republicans are realizing that there’s no political percentage in fighting the Sotomayor nomination. It’s striking that Latino opinion about the GOP is dropping so fast, even at a moment when GOP opposition to Sotomayor appears to be flagging, as opposed to intensifying.

This continuing drop among Latinos, coming at a time when many party strategists recognize the party’s desperate need to broaden its appeal, only reminds us that not only are there few apparent upsides in opposing Sotomayor, there are potentially serious costs, too.

This is obviously good news for xenophobic GOP anti-immigrant groups with executive directors who karate chop minorities and run around shouting the N-word.

Here’s Josh Marshall:

The only problem is that the modern Republican party’s panic switch, or at least one of them, is rancid jingoism and more or less open anti-Hispanic (though often specifically targeted at Mexicans) prejudice. Or, to put it more bluntly, as with African-Americans, it’s tough to be the party of the blacks and the racists at the same time. (Not that the Dems didn’t try it for a few decades in the middle of the 20th century — but it didn’t end up panning out.)

One might imagine an alternative universe in which gays were not only an increasingly open and powerful political constituency but also one that was growing rapidly in population terms. And you’d have Republicans wanting to cultivate support among this growing group but also episodically bashing them to consolidate support among base conservative voters.

In other words, it’s not a mistake or incompetence or any lack of planning that has Republicans in such a bad position with Hispanics, America’s fastest growing ethnic group. It’s just that people who are hostile to Hispanic immigration and just Hispanics in general are one of the GOP’s key constituencies. That puts some real obstacles in the way of becoming the party of Hispanics.