Aim for a zolid red area above all.
Posted on 05/05/2010 7:18:19 AM PDT by Kaslin
With a record number of black candidates seeking Republican nominations in upcoming congressional races, the GOP may finally make progress in facing the most serious menace to its survival: the lack of support from any significant segment of the nonwhite population.
Not all of the 33 African-American contenders will win their primary contests, let alone the general election, but at least a half-dozen of them face promising prospects and could provide new energy for a party that desperately needs to shatter its lily-white image.
There are no Republicans among the present 41 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, or among the 24 members of the Hispanic Caucus -- an absence that reflects the party's woeful performance among minority voters in recent elections and may threaten its very existence.
Consider the historic campaign of 2008, when President Barack Obama bested John McCain by a solid margin of 7.2 percentage points. According to the authoritative exit polls, the vast majority of voters (74 percent) identified themselves as "white," and McCain won a landslide among this segment of the electorate, thrashing Obama by a resounding 12 points (55 percent to 43 percent). This was the same margin that George W. Bush commanded among white voters in his 2000 victory over Al Gore. In fact, because of the larger electorate, McCain's losing effort actually drew 9.5 million more votes overall than Bush's victorious campaign of eight years before.
Why, then, did Bush win the White House while McCain suffered humiliating defeat? The answer is that in eight years the nonwhite portion of electorate soared -- from 19 percent of voters to 26 percent of voters. Among these voters, Obama won by a 4-to-1 margin -- easily wiping out McCain's big advantage among white voters.
For two reasons, these numbers command close attention for anyone concerned about the Republican future.
First, there is no chance that white voters will ever again comprise 74 percent of the electorate. Most projections for 2012 suggest that self-identified whites will comprise 70 percent or, at most, 72 percent of those who cast presidential ballots.
Second, it would be hard for any Republican to improve significantly on McCain's hefty 12-point margin among whites, which means that without an improved showing among Hispanics, blacks and Asians, GOP contenders will lose every time.
The math here is brutal and eye-opening. If Obama in 2012 wins the same percentage of the combined black, Asian and Hispanic vote that he won in 2008 (82 percent), then in order to beat him the GOP candidate would need to win an unimaginable 65 percent of all white voters -- whose numbers include such stalwart Democratic constituencies as gays, atheists, Jews and union members.
The 65 percent threshold represents a far higher percentage than Ronald Reagan won in his landslide against Jimmy Carter in 1980, or even his history-making 49-state re-election-sweep against Walter Mondale in '84.
Since white voters won't comprise larger portions of the electorate in future races, and since no Republican could compile a big enough white majority to win the election on those voters alone, that leaves only one possible path for GOP victory: more competitive performance among Hispanic, African-American and Asian citizens.
Fortunately, recent history demonstrates that such competition is possible. In 2004, the exit polls showed that Bush earned 44 percent of both Latino and Asian voters, and 11 percent of the black vote. This represents a huge advantage over the sorry performance of McCain.
Running against Obama, no Republican could have won a big percentage of the African-American community, but if McCain had merely won the same percentage as Bush four years before, he would have drawn 1.2 million more black votes for the GOP ticket -- an obviously meaningful difference in any close election.
Winning an electoral majority doesn't require capturing, or even splitting, every ethnic group, but no candidate can prevail if he (or she) gets overwhelmed among all nonwhite voters. In this context, the GOP doesn't need to win with each of the 33 black Republicans in current congressional contests, or even with most of them.
But if any of them carry their districts in November, it will help change the GOP image as a whites-only political organization and rejuvenate the once-vibrant party of Lincoln and Reagan that is still struggling against marginalization and irrelevance.
Not the GOP, that is for sure
Agree, Mr. B. Problem is, we’re dealing with those for whom facts, reason, logic and the rule of law mean nothing. There is only one way this can end - aand that is, a bloody civil war.
My unflinching estimate is that we will all have to descend into our own ‘heart of darkness’ in order to survive and then defeat the monsters who oppose us. When you deal with monsters, you must for a time, become the monster yourself in order to defeat them. Those of us who survive will have to wrestle with our consciences afterward. We don’t have to like it. But it’s what we must do.
That’s the tragic and unalterable nature of our frail and fallible existence. We will have to live with what we must do in order to secure the blessings of liberty for the generations who follow us. Given the nature of those who oppose us, the price we will have to pay - physical AND spiritual - for the deeds we must do will be more than some can bear.
We must separate ourselves, probably along state lines, in order to avoid a bloody civil war.
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I agree. The hatred is too great, the divide too wide, there will be no meeting of the minds, it will only get worse. There is no way this country isn’t headed for some kid of war. It may not be in my lifetime, but it’s coming unless something gives. We are a nation divided and it’s getting worse each day.
Yours is about the most sensible post I have seen in this thread
Problem is, the divisions are along urban vs rural lines. Take a look at your region’s voter precinct maps showing election results: urban goes Democrat, rural goes Republican. For each state, it’s just a matter of which outnumbers the other. Divide across state lines and you’ll still have pockets of dissent.
Methinks that’s why we haven’t seen secession of late: the geographic political divisions are not a simple matter of north vs south.
Oh he’ll get some, but those will be from the ignorant morons
I foresee voluntary migrations.
Libs will not live in a state where
a) The sheeplibs don’t get handouts and must work or not eat.
b) The “ruling class” has no power to meddle in others’ affairs.
Correction. Suburban and rural goes Republican.
It’s even messier than you think.
prediction:
there NEVER will be any Republican members of the Congressional Black Caucus...but not because there won’t be any Black republicans.....
Which means to start the "conversion to liberty" the fist step is TURNING OFF the spigot. I'm focused on ending hand outs to well meaning groups in my county that provide section 8 housing, which is a horrible program that destroys communities. I'm convinced that if we make our welfare system cheap and unforgiving (lots of drug tests, visits, forms, etc.) that most of the people mooching off us will move back to Portland (where they all came from).
Which, in turn, will help us defeat the Dems who have a toehold.
Well said and to the point!
Just look at the red-blue USA county map, and think “Bosnia X ten.”
It would be beyond ugly.
Aim for a zolid red area above all.
That would be Oklahoma.
the Republican Party is only a collection IDEALS and open to all, NOT a group of competing minorities and Partisan factions held together by their inherent self loathing ignorance, laziness, greed and cowardice, nothing more. if at the end of the day, the majority of Republicans are white, well, so be it...
Really! What ideals do Huckabee and Ron Paul share? Pat Buchanan and George W. Bush? Arnold and Barry Goldwater?
The type of political party you describe only exists as either an unempowered minor third party here. (They can exist as something besides symbolic in parlimentary systems, but not in a winner take all system.)
In our system to have a chance at power implies a coalition. Reagan expressed ideals, but he also built coaltions: angry mid-western labor, Catholic anti-aboriton voters, evangelicals, Western defense oriented conservatives, etc.
Maybe we have some basic concepts that unite us, and we may be less fractured than the Donks, but we're still a serious party contending for power, which means most any IDEAL can, has and will be tossed on occassion.
For many years to join the Libertarian Party you had to sign an oath of some sort. Now THAT is a party of ideals. To be a Republican you need to ask for the R ballot at election time (in many states.)
I do think we'd agree that pandering to minorities violates both the idealistic version and the practical version of the GOP, so is pointless. But, many of our so called leaders continue to do so. (McCain, Bush, Rove .. these are not inconsequential individuals.) So the party has failed miserably to live up to the IDEAL I care about the most.
the party as i said is open to all so we get RINOS and whack jobs too. i just don't see us as the fractionated collection of competing groups that normally wouldn't spit on the other if they were on fire that the RATS are...
that and i don't see us as the inherently self loathing ignorant, lazy, greedy cowards they are either
That's right. I am so sick of race being a legitimate political issue suddenly. Race is the only issue that becomes a legitimate reason to for FOR someone, but not a legitimate reason to vote AGAINST someone.
Race race race race race. That's all I hear about now instead of policy.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
www.faulknerforcongress.com
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