Posted on 05/02/2008 11:04:35 AM PDT by The_Republican
Discussions of the current political situation and comparisons between the 2008 election and earlier contests frequently overlook a crucial fact. As a result of changes in American society, today's electorate is very different from the electorate of twenty, thirty, or forty years ago. Three long-term trends have been especially significant in this regard: increasing racial diversity, declining rates of marriage, and changes in religious beliefs. As a result of these trends, today's voters are less likely to be white, less likely to be married, and less likely to consider themselves Christians than voters of just a few decades ago.
The combined impact of these trends on the composition of the electorate has been dramatic. Married white Christians now make up less than half of all voters in the United States and less than one fifth of voters under the age of 30. The declining proportion of married white Christians in the electorate has important political implications because in recent years married white Christians have been among the most loyal supporters of the Republican Party. In American politics today, whether you are a married white Christian is a much stronger predictor of your political preferences than your gender or your class -- the two demographic characteristics that dominate much of the debate on contemporary American politics.
Figure 1 displays the trends in the proportions of whites, married persons, and Christian identifiers in the U.S. electorate over the past half century according to data from the American National Election Studies.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Long live the American Conservative Party.
Agree.
It would help if we didn’t have a RINO running on our ticket. Having said that, look on the bright side, if Mr. RINO gets elected, we won’t owe him anything.
Mr. RINO seems to be very content that he will represent the minority party. He is doing nothing to increase GOP gains the house and senate, and seems to be using the party as a means to an end.
What I think this analysis ignores is that the Republican National Organization has been losing its core constituents due its failure to adhere to the core values of the past. The current incumbent in the White House, with a few exceptions, does not represent the views of conservative Americans - the core base of Republican voters.
More long term Republicans like this writer - who are basically conservative, traditional Americans no longer feel the Repubulican National Leadership values their votes or their views. We feel that, instead, it is targeting its messages towards the constituency best represented in the past by the Democrats - the socialists and globalists.
The Republican Party desserves to die a quick death. I havew done my part by consigning letters seeking contributions to the circular file. The McCain nomination is its swan song. Even if McCain manages to beat Hillary or Obama, I believe more conservative, traditional Americans will be looking for another political party to represent them in future elections.
I’m not sure the data this organization has compiled accurately reflects the conclusions they are drawing.
Four years ago the net was full of articles showing how demographic trends would ensure GOP predominance for decades. Now suddenly the base is shrinking.
I'm pretty good at confusing myself, and not being able to articulate my thoughts, but ...
It seems to me that I am more an idealist John Adams (without the education) than I am a member of a party or definition, other than American or Patriot.
If I was one of those NH farmers that heard the Regulars were on their way to disarm MY village/town (as they just had with Adams' agreement/assistance), I know I'd be moved to put down my hoe and march on to Lexington Green with my neighbors.
I'm not sure the colonists (English subjects, at the time) were looking to start a revolution, rather .. just protect their own property.
I think they all expected to be home for supper and maybe those damned Boston politicians and lawyers would just leave us the hell alone.
But the greatest fears of the framers have materielized ... the over taxation and enslavement of a people just wanting to live free.
And it's worse now (Winston Churchill?), because every Middlesex, village and town has imbedded Federalists that pose a significant threat to personal freedom loving people.
God Bless John Wayne and Ronald Reagan.
They’re dead and I’m not feeling so good myself. :o)
“It would help if we didn’t have a RINO running on our ticket.”
I doubt that McCrazy is even a RINO — he more resembles a closet Democrat.
Is it wrong for this 28-year-old single white Catholic gun-toting college-educated male to want to vote for Hillary to just accelerate the flush down the toilet that we're spiraling into anyway?
That's not to say the GOP couldn't fade away, just as the Dems came very, very close to utterly fracturing about four years ago---but it's highly unlikely. What I see in the posts above are whines and complaints that the GOP hasn't been conservative enough (true), but which don't address the MAIN point of the analysis, which is that those who tended to be conservative were married, older, and above all, religious. Now, I don't care if it's the "Conservative Party" or the Save the Whales Party, if you don't reverse that trend of married/religious people, you will simply get more liberals. And that's a fact.
Rather than invoking some nonsensical model of pre-Constitutional times (which is historically inaccurate), it would do all conservatives a better service to ask, "What can be done about reversing those two trendlines of religion and marriage?"
bookmark
So from what this analysis is saying is that marriage and Christianity are in decline, but mainly around the borders of people with values. Republicans are staying married, and keeping Christian values/religion, while the rest of the country is in major decline thanks to the media, judicial system, and public education system.
The periphery of married Christians without much core values (as evidenced by their voting Democrat), are abandoning Christianity and marriage altogether.
I didn’t realize that as non-Christian in a mixed-raced marriage I couldn’t be a republican. Good thing this article set me straight. I’ll go change my registration this afternoon.
A technological society inherently produces surplus wealth and free time for its citizens. With the range of choices/situations and dynamic social mobility implicit within that realm, one will tend to adopt a world view/interpretive framework that reflects movement, free association, risk taking, exploration, upgrade and version 2.0. Conservatism will necessarily have a hard time in that milieu.
What surprises me is that conservatism has done precious little to understand the effect of technology upon society other than in terms of industrial processes and profit and loss. With technology driven free time and free cognition, the citizen is able to model ideal personal, and, by extension, societal futures as never before in human history. Planning for a new home, new car, new whatever, is second nature to Americans. The ability to model ideal futures combined with instant global high resolution (compared to the telegraph or drum) communication, modifies our concept of the universal good in real ways, ways that make us see mass suffering as needless, given our ability to produce food, clothing, shelter and surplus wealth. This creates dissatisfaction with the status quo which appears to be doing nothing to alleviate percieved suffering in all corners of the world.
Conservatives had better learn to understand that status quo is not acceptable when there is suffering. If your neighbor suffers, see to his aid or gird for battle. Status quo axiomatically does not work with suffering, it only works with pleasure. Pretty basic stuff. This is a Christian message.
If it's 1950s levels of whiteness, marriage, and Christianity that produce conservative victories, why did those demographics elect FDR four times between 1932 and 1944? Why did those demos then produce a half-century Democratic majority in Congress?
Conversely, why did the Democratic candidates of 2006 have to pretend to be conservative in order to get a Congressional majority back? Why did "Burkha" Pelosi's attempts to impose border amnesty and withdraw from Iraq not even make it to the House floor?
The point is, demographics are one straw in the wind, but apparently, they don't express everything going on in voters' heads. For example, I'd guess that these days, there are a lot of people who aren't married, yet who believe in "married" values, both foreign and domestic. First of all, there are adults who are unmarried because they haven't found a spouse who is conservative enough.
Secondly, with our courts promoting involuntary, no-fault divorce, many people wind up divorced who have not converted to the "lifestyle" of divorce—which has in the past been associated with moral liberalism and political Leftism. For many divorced folks (including a few friends of ours), the experience radicalizes them against the culture of divorce, not against the institution of marriage. You'd have to pry their Limbaugh Letter subscriptions from their cold, dead fingers.
The "Married" category is just one of those mentioned where a complicated reality lies underneath. Now or in the future, being non-Christian or non-white may no longer be as strongly associated with voting Democrat. I'll bet you a Bobby Jindal button on that.
Just like Schwarzennegar...
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