Jeb is a disaster waiting to happen, but demographic changes are a reality. Republicans had everything going for them on the national level, and still lost. The only explanation that makes sense is that “issues” are secondary to group identities. And it’s really been that way throughout most of American history. Unless Republicans figure out a way to attract blacks, Asians, and Latinos, we’re going to have a very hard time winning.
“Jeb is a disaster waiting to happen, but demographic changes are a reality. Republicans had everything going for them on the national level, and still lost. The only explanation that makes sense is that “issues” are secondary to group identities. And it’s really been that way throughout most of American history. Unless Republicans figure out a way to attract blacks, Asians, and Latinos, we’re going to have a very hard time winning.”
You are dreaming (as do many here) of a magic bullet that isn’t going to happen.
Conservatism is a set of core beliefs and values that seem to emanate from a single ethnic/racial group: the Euros. It is what it is. They don’t call it the self-reliant “Scots-Irish” independent spirit for nothin’.
Having written that, most Asians and Latinos see little that interests or appeals to them in traditional Euro conservatism. Except for a tiny minority, blacks see virtually nothing.
Let’s run some numbers from Tuesday:
Obama got 93% of the black vote.
He got 71% of the Hispanic vote
He got 73% of the Asian vote (MORE than the Hispanics!)
If you try to bend, twist and contort “Euro-conservatism” into something palatable to the non-Euros, it won’t appeal to the Euros anymore. And it WON’T be “conservatism” anymore, either.
The last sentence you wrote above is absolutely true - no argument with that at all.
But another truth, as hard and bitter as it may be to swallow, is that conservatism as a philosophy appeals to a specific cohort of the American population — and that cohort is destined to shrink in the years to come.
We might have prevented this some 50 years ago, but we let ourselves be rolled by Ted Kennedy and others who supported immigration reform with the meme that everyone is the same, and that anyone who came to America would enthusiastically want to become “just like the rest of us”. It sounded so great, so “egalitarian”. But it was little more than fantasy then, and it remains fantasy to keep believing that we could change those truths today.
It’s not the fault of the non-Euros. They are going to be who and what they are. That’s natural and normal. What goes against the grain is the notion that we believed we were going to change human nature.
A line from an old play:
“The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves...”