In the long run, is the GOP dead?

Since 1928, only Dwight Eisenhower and George W. Bush have won the presidency while capturing both houses of Congress for the GOP.

In his 49-state landslide, Richard Nixon failed to take either House. In his two landslides, Ronald Reagan won back only the Senate. Yet Mitt Romney is even money to pull off the hat trick.

With this hopeful prospect, why the near despair among so many Republicans about the long term?

In his New York Times report, “In California, GOP Fights Steep Decline,” Adam Nagourney delves into the reasons.

In the Golden Land, a state Nixon carried all five times he was on a national ticket and Reagan carried by landslides all four times he ran, the GOP does not hold a single statewide office. It gained not a single House seat in the 2010 landslide. Party registration has fallen to 30 percent of the California electorate and is steadily sinking.

Why? It is said that California Republicans are too out of touch, too socially conservative on issues like right-to-life and gay rights. “When you look at the population growth,” says GOP consultant Steve Schmidt, “the actual party is shrinking. It’s becoming more white. It’s becoming older.”

Race, age and ethnicity are at the heart of the problem. And they portend not only the party’s death in California, but perhaps its destiny in the rest of America.

Consider. Almost 90 percent of all Republican voters in presidential elections are white. Almost 90 percent are Christians. But whites fell to 74 percent of the electorate in 2008 and were only 64 percent of the population. Christians are down to 75 percent of the population from 85 in 1990. The falloff continues and is greatest among the young.

Consider ethnicity. Hispanics were 15 percent of the U.S. population in 2008 and 7.4 percent of the electorate. Both percentages will inexorably rise.

Yet in their best years, like 2004, Republicans lose the Hispanic vote 3-to-2. In bad years, like 2008, they lose it 2-to-1. Whites are already a minority in California, and Hispanics will eventually become the majority.

Asian-Americans voted 3-to-2 for Obama, black Americans 24-to-1. The Asian population in California and the nation is growing rapidly. The black population, 13 percent of the nation, is growing steadily.

Whites, already a minority in our two most populous states, will be less than half the U.S. population by 2041 and a minority in 10 states by 2020.

Of the seven mega-states, California, New York and Illinois appear lost to the GOP. Pennsylvania has not gone Republican since 1988. Ohio and Florida, both crucial, are now swing states. Whites have become a minority in Texas. When Texas goes, America goes.

The GOP must work harder to win Hispanic votes, we are told. But consider the home economics and self-interest of Hispanics.

Half of all U.S. wage-earners pay no income tax. Yet that half and their families receive free education K-12, Medicaid, rent supplements, food stamps, earned income tax credits, Pell grants, welfare payments, unemployment checks and other benefits.

Why should poor, working- and middle-class Hispanics, the vast majority, vote for a party that will reduce taxes they don’t pay, but cut the benefits they do receive?

The majority of Latinos, African-Americans, immigrants and young people 18 to 25 pay no income taxes yet enjoy a panoply of government benefits. Does not self-interest dictate a vote for the party that will let them keep what they have and perhaps give them more, rather than the party that will pare back what they now receive?

What are the historic blunders of the Grand Old Party that may yet appear on the autopsy report as probable causes of death?

First, the party, intimidated by name-calling, refused to stop a tidal wave of immigration that brought 40 million people here whose families depend heavily on government. We needed a time-out to assimilate them and see them move out of the tax-consuming sector of the nation.

Republicans acquiesced in the importation of a new electorate that may provide the decisive votes to send the party to the ash heap of history.

Second, Republicans, when enacting tax cuts, repeatedly dropped millions of taxpayers off the rolls, creating a huge class that contributes little to pay for the expanding cornucopia of benefits it receives.

Third, the social revolution of the 1960s captured the culture and converted much of the nation. According to a new Pew poll, the number of Americans who profess a belief in no religion at all has tripled since the 1990s and is now one in five of our countrymen.

If your racial and ethnic voter base is aging, shrinking and dying, your moral code is being rejected, and the tax-consuming class has been allowed to grow to equal or to dwarf the taxpaying class, the Grand Old Party has a problem. But then so, too, does the country.

The FR post you linked was discussions on whether Hitler really wanted to go to war. There were people actually making excuses for Hitler. It’s the same thing liberals do. Make excuses for for criminals, those who won’t work, ........ Hitler was pure evil. Period. Anyone who wants to make excuses for him is wasting their breath.

Here is part of an article where Buchanan is questioning the Holocaust, IN HIS OWN WORDS, questioning how bad the Holocaust was. He sounds like Ahmadinejada.

Patrick Buchanan, “Dividing Line,” New York Post, March 17, 1990

Is this collective perjury? No, something else. Since the war, 1,600 medical papers have been written on “The Psychological and Medical Effects of the Concentration Camps on Holocaust Survivors.”

This so-called “Holocaust Survivor Syndrome” involves “group fantasies of martyrdom and heroics.” Reportedly, half of the 20,000 survivor testimonies in Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem are considered “unreliable,” not to be used in trials.

Finally, the death engine. During the war, the underground government of the Warsaw Ghetto reported to London that the Jews of Treblinka were being electrocuted and steamed to death.

The Israeli court, however, concluded that the murder weapon for 850,000 was the diesel engine from a Soviet tank which drove its exhaust into the death chamber. All died in 20 minutes, Finkenstein swore in 1945.

The problem is: Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody. In 1988, 97 kids, trapped 400 feet underground in a Washington, DC tunnel while two locomotives spewed diesel exhaust into the car, emerged unharmed after 45 minutes.

Demjanjuk’s weapon of mass murder cannot kill. The Soviet I.D. cards are patent forgeries. Polish witnesses say “Ivan” was another man; Israeli eyewitnesses contradict their own sworn statements, contradict one another, and are contradicted in turn.

And John Demjanjuk, bewildered and innocent, advances toward execution.

God help us. We are the Salem judges of our own time.

So when will the GOP actually start protecting the interests of whites?

Presently they won’t even condemn racial preferences, let alone actually do something about them. They used to at least talk a good game. And this is despite the fact that racial preferences are unpopular, and have been decisively voted down even in blue states when actually put to the people for a vote. Perhaps no one exemplifies GOP cowardice on racial preferences more than George Allen of Virginia, but I won’t get into that now. The point is that the GOP has been absolutely worthless in opposing open, explicit discrimination against their voters.

And as bad as the GOP has been on affirmative action, they’ve been even worse on immigration; the primary instrument of their possible demographic destruction.

There are currently two threads alive generated by pieces written by Patrick J Buchanan. Visceral reactions to Buchanan are typically over-the-top. For the most part they represent a reflex to shoot the messenger. In one article Buchanan is telling us that our foreign entanglements are not working and are counterproductive. In the second article Buchanan is telling us that Republican politics are not working and demographics are about swamp us. He is right on both counts.

Anyone willing to don a green eye shade and look at America's balance sheet understands that we are out of money to maintain a global imperium. Posters who denigrate Buchanan and want to defend America against China must somehow deal with the anomaly that $.40 of every dollar we spend to defend ourselves from China is borrowed from China, or some other foreign power.

Anyone with access to an electoral college map can compare the color shadings since 1980 and only the purblind, but not even the colorblind, can deny that Republicans are losing geography as they lose demographics. The problem is not geographic it is demographic, economic, cultural, psychological and racial; the geographical shrinkage is but a symptom of a problem which is ineluctable.

Obama will lose this election in spite of the numbers on the ground because he has overreached but the Democrats will increasingly win national elections in coming cycles. Pat Buchanan is right and has been right for decades while his critics have been wrong.

Pat Buchanan has committed one unpardonable sin, he has offended political correctness. So long as he is in a posture in which he can be blackguarded as anti-Semitic, which on the right has become the equivalent of being opposed to shackling American foreign policy to Israel, he will be dismissed or worse. Buchanan is a paleoconservative and rejects the neoconservative notion that Americans must wage war as he no doubt believes we have been doing for a decade against the Muslim world on behalf of Israel.

This is a revolutionary thought, but Buchanan can be an anti-Semite and still be right about the wisdom of our foreign policy concerning Israel. He can be wrong about our foreign policy concerning Israel and be right in observing that making war in Afghanistan by blowing up buildings and then rebuilding buildings has very little to do with protecting America against 19 box cutter wielding Islamicists flying airplanes into American buildings. He can be wrong about everything else and still be right about our principal danger lying on the Mexican border. He can be wrong about many things and be right about the fundamental fact that we are out of money and will soon be out of options.

Ad hominem attacks are the weakest kind of rebuttal.

Buchanan has committed yet another unpardonable sin, he has defected from the Republican establishment. Are you old enough to remember his great convention speech? There is nothing in that speech about which The Tea Party would complain about today. It was utterly prophetic. It went unheeded and the fundamental problems which tint the colors of the electoral map have metastasized since. Many of the very people who denigrate Buchanan are the same elitists who have disenfranchised conservatives from the Republican Party. The Republican establishment could not tolerate Buchanan then and they cannot tolerate him now.

We conservatives would do well to identify our true enemies as well as our true problems and not indignantly spasm out in a reflex to shoot the messenger.

No, Bush did not win 44% of the Hispanic vote in 2004. That figure was based on a flawed exit poll, and has been debunked from both the left and the right. I know Dick Morris and others continue to cite this false figure, but it does us no good to believe something that almost certainly wasn’t true. Bush won at most 40% (maybe one or two points less) of the Hispanic vote. And while that is good for a Republican, it was still a huge, double-digit loss to a rather uninspiring opponent in John Kerry.

So the bottom line is that the most a shameless panderer like Bush could do was a roughly 20 point loss!

I’m not as familiar with the numbers on Hispanic Protestants, but I’ve read they do tend to be more Republican. But this isn’t much to hold out hope on. Mass immigration reinforces the things that make Hispanics vote Democratic in the first place. So as long as we have high levels of Hispanic immigration, it is just a pipe dream that the GOP will win over latinos.

If you don’t like Buchanan that’s fine, but try responding to the points he’s making here, especially as it relates to demographics.

Put aside all the stuff about Israel and Iran. How can any rational person, especially a conservative, believe that mass immigration from Latin America, Asia, and Africa will be anything except a demographic bonanza for the Democrats? These groups are voting exactly as a rational person would expect them to vote; for Democrats!

So just answer the question Buchanan poses; “Why should poor, working- and middle-class Hispanics, the vast majority, vote for a party that will reduce taxes they don’t pay, but cut the benefits they do receive?”

Buchanan is absolutely right about that, something Republicans should have realized all along.

And what about Texas? The Lone Star State is solidly Republican right now for one major reason...the GOP’s ability to routinely win 70+% of the white vote. Hispanics in Texas may be less Democratic than their counterparts in California, but they still vote solidly Democrat in virtually every important statewide race. I disagree with Buchanan’s analysis of Texas’ future somewhat because of the white vote. If the GOP can keep winning such a large majority of it, then they will avoid a California-like collapse into irrelevancy. But I can easily see demographics making Texas a battleground state, which would be disastrous enough for the GOP.

When the obituary of the GOP/conservative movement is written, and if it’s written honestly, the question won’t be why people like Buchanan were so mean and hostile (to borrow the Left’s framing and narrative of it) to immigrants, but rather why the GOP ever allowed decades of mass immigration that any rational person could see would definitely benefit the Democrats. The Stupid Party indeed.

How can any rational person, especially a conservative, believe that mass immigration from Latin America, Asia, and Africa will be anything except a demographic bonanza for the Democrats? These groups are voting exactly as a rational person would expect them to vote; for Democrats!

I disagree.

My great grandfather came to the USA from Germany in 1882 because he wanted opportunity.

He worked very hard and became a wealthy man.

I think most immigrants are the same no matter want color skin.

They want economic freedom and are not fond of a big greedy government dipping into their paycheck.

With the worst economy in 70 year? With the village idiot in the White House? A guy who after three and one half years in the White House and we still know less about that we do about Millard Filmore. (Thanks P.Boyles) And it is still 50/50 a hundred days out of the election? I see no way on God's green earth Romney can win. Better start stockpiling that arsenal, cause you are gonna need it.

Intrade has the communist at 57% to re-elect in November. Gallup has an exact tie between Romney on one side and Obama with his thugs on the other (registered voters). Rasmussen has (perhaps due to a daily fluctuation but still) a significant lead for Romney (likely voters). [No comment on my own results.] It all comes down to how corrupt the far left can make this election (I know, VERY!), and turnout among patriotic Americans. This is by far the most important election in history, and we need every registered conservative with a pulse to show up and vote if we are going to defeat SEIU and ACORN helping all the registered voters who are dead or fictional. Yes, there is grave danger, but I don't think it's time to give up and stockpile weapons. It's time to work hard on the election . . . and add to the ammunition we have already stockpiled.

Our war in Afghanistan is necessary to defend our national interests and it only cost $122 Billion in FY 2011 which was 3.4% of the federal budget.

You forgot the cost of the war in Iraq:

According to the Center for Defense Information, the estimated cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will reach $1.29 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2011.

(Estimated War-Related Costs, Iraq and Afghanistan - Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933935.)

You also forgot the cost of veterans benefits attributable to both wars.

You failed to deal with the problem that overall the federal budget spends $1.4 trillion which it does not have. So the problem is not eliminating $119 from the alleged cost of the war in Afghanistan but to eliminate $1.4 trillion overall.

We can afford our “empire” if we cut back on social programs and other domestic spending.

We cannot form a consensus in this country to extend the Bush tax cuts, do you really think you are going to cut Social Security and Medicare and not touch the defense budget? We have got to find $.40 of every dollar spent and the defense budget is logically and politically high on the list to be cut. Ronald Reagan himself were he did come back to the Oval Office in January 2013 could not do otherwise and expect to keep his hold on Congress or be reelected.

Our war in Afghanistan is necessary to defend our national interests

Please demonstrate how killing a few fanatical primitives in Afganistan keeps us safe from terror attacks in the Homeland. You might also explain how Irak has made us safer. The ghost of an Osama bin Laden rejoices every day that he sucked us into Iraq and Afghanistan and prays to his distorted notion of God that we continue to pour blood and treasure into the sands of those countries. The mullahs of Iran who have won the war in Iraq join him five times a day in those prayers.

You are assuming the issue in debate which is nearly as weak a debating tactic as the ad hominem, ( "You are obviously a liberal." ) So you have sadly indulged in both.

After taking the oath, which is constitutionally-required, I would issue a number of presidential findings, in order to establish clearly my understanding of the absolute obligations of that oath.

The first finding would be that the child in the womb is a person, from their creation, and therefore clearly protected by the explicit, imperative provisions of the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments.

The second would be that our open southern border represents a clear and present danger to the security of the United States.

Etc.

Then, I would instruct each and every individual officer under my authority to act accordingly. I would, of course, demand the immediate resignations of any and all officers in the executive branch who could not, or would not, do so.

My message to the Congress would be pretty simple. If you want me to begin to consider signing your bills, you had better make sure that those bills are, before anything else, constitutional.

Odds and ends:

We need a thorough review and strategic reset of all of our commitments around the world, including any and all existing treaty obligations.

We need a complete revamp of our tax system, post haste; moving quickly to a simple, fair, consumption-based system as opposed to the current stupid, counter-productive, liberty-robbing income-based one.

We need a complete revamp of our monetary policies. I have a team of people already in place who are digging deeply into what that revamp should look like.

There is a whole lot more, but that is all I have time to write up this morning over my coffee. I have a very busy day ahead.

But I would be happy to discuss these matters in more depth with you in the weeks and months ahead, either here, or in person. We meet via national conference line twice a week, like clockwork.

http://www.americaspartynews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=7216&posts=9&start=1

I don't disagree with his premise that borders not being protected is. and has been a problem. I just don't like the guy. Other people besides Buchanana recognized long ago that our country would have problems if we did not do something about the borders. Just because he could see what is happening does not make him someone to be admired or listened to. All conservatives I know agree that something should have been done a long time ago about immigration and the border, but even our so-called conservative leadership won't fight that battle.

I think whoever says Israel is more dangerous than Iran is blinded by hate like,

1. Jimmy Carter
2. Most of the UN
3. Islamic Terrorist
4. The entire city of Berkley 5. Ron Paul..................

Middle east terrorist have bombed more buses, restaurants, night clubs, hotels, border crossings...than I can remember. They hate the Jewish people and Christians. To make excuses for criminals, is what liberals do. Iran and other terrorist countries teach their children, train terrorist, and BELIEVE their god called them, even women and disabled children to kill. They believe we are the great satan and must be destroyed. This is written in the koran which is how old? What would Buchanan do if we were a small country, surrounded by their enemies and always under attack. Probably surrender. Making excuses for anyone who openly say they want to kill Christians and Jews and blaming a country who has been under attack since Ishmael and Isaac's time should not even be on this site. It belongs on liberal sites like DU or a Admandinejade/Farrakhan blog.

One last thought. What does Scripture say about Israel? If you don't believe in the inerrant word of God you can stop reading.

Genesis 12:2-3 says, ““I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all people on the earth will be blessed through you.”

The choice is to believe God's word, the koran or nothing. I chose God.

I think Bush’s figures of 35 percent for the 2000 race were probably close to the actual number. All other things being equal, statistically speaking, he probably got that, and maybe a little higher in 04. That said, the 44 percent doesn’t add up. We were getting scammed, and not just from the Bush camp. Bush may have held up his percentage of the Hispanic vote, but the extremes he went to to do that cost him dearly with the conservative base. That shows up even more with McCain. Pandering to illegals with amnesty and handouts, and supporting liberal immigration policies has damaged the Republican Party. That isn’t the way to get and keep conservative leaning Hispanics. You are absolutely right.

There are a lot of things that need to be done in regards to cleaning up our institutions and agencies, if the Republican Party hopes to remain viable. As for getting the Hispanic vote, we have a great opportunity right in front of us, while Obama and his communists attack the Catholic Church and other Christian institutions. All we have to do is offer our help and the respect for Christian values inherent in conservatism. It seems like the Republican establishment is so locked into amnesty they can’t realize an opportunity that is right in front of them.

This is the ghost of the future of America — just like the ghost of Christmas to come in “Scrooge.” It is what might be, necessarily what will be, as the ghost told Ebeneezer.

The forces that brought us to this point are already reversing. Since 2007, the number Hispanic households has not been increasing, according to research by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. This is part of the fallout from the Great Recession. What is happening is that the number of new Hispanic households form new immigrants has been equal to the number of Hispanic households that are returning back to Mexico and beyond.

The Joint Center’s study only went through 2010 — the trends could be even more stark in 2011 and 2012 given the weakening economy and the number of Hispanic households could decline.

The number of Hispanic voters is actually expected to decline this year from 2010 and 2008. You see the changing demographics in California, which has suffered the most from uncontrolled immigration. Southern California is becoming more Asian and slightly less Hispanic. In some smaller towns in northern California, whole Hispanic populations have left and gone away, to people’s shock.

Birth rates in Mexico and Latin America are falling and are expected to go below replacement level. Thus, the pressure to migrate to America will decline. Mexico’s economy is doing better; that’s why people are going home.

The GOP needs to make a firm commitment to end all illegal immigraiton and then rewrite immigration laws to once again favor Europe. This can be done gradually and piecemeal. Just as Teddy Kennedy got exemptions for Ireland, coalitions could work together to allow greater immigration from Britain, Germany, Poland, or wherever in Europe. God knows a lot of Greeks are going to clamoring to come here soon, along with Spaniards and Italians.

Immigration from Asia, Africa and Latin America should be sharply curtailed. All immigraiton from Muslim countries should be disbarred forever.

If these steps were taken and we had a vibrant economy, the slide in the share of Americans that are white would stop declining and stabilize. I think we need to do this to save America from its demise.

Call me a racist. I really don’t give a damn. We need to focus on immigrants who can bring something of value to our nation and who will be assimilated and be willing to become proud Americans. That means immigrants from Europe and Russia, pure and simple.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.