Posted on 07/27/2012 6:41:57 PM PDT by NoLibZone
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.
Say goodbye to the Golden Land.
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.
Consider now the Electoral College picture.
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.
This year could be the last hurrah.
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.
Name one thing Buchanan has been wrong on.
In the long run, everything is dead.
Argumentum ad hominem is a fallacy. What are the errors?
And I’ve been saying this since 1994, before I was even 18 and I am not Pat Buchanan.
Plus Hispanics may become more Protestant, which could move them to the GOP.
George W. got 56% of their vote in 2004 and Obama only got 52% of their vote in 2008.
Moot point. This isn’t about foreign policy.
You mean, ignorant young minorities who have no idea how America became great? :)
It’s pretty clear that he said nothing shocking:
“During the Cold War, with due respect, the Soviet Union had thousands of weapons that could have destroyed us in an afternoon,” he cautioned. “And we could have done the same thing.”
“I was around during the Cuban missile crisis. I was genuinely terrified. But Iran doesn’t frighten me and I don’t think it should frighten the American people. They don’t have a bomb. They haven’t made a decision to build one. They didn’t have the means to deliver one, and the Israelis have 300 atomic bombs. I mean, who presents the existential threat to whom?”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/22/buchanan-who-is-a-bigger-threat-iran-or-israel/#ixzz21sbw0I6v
Now it sucks the life's blood out of 53%!
That ought to tell anyone that it's a failed federal government program that should be abolished right along with Department of Education, National Endowment for the Arts and the Labor Department.
I’m not really concerned about his feelings on Israel and Iran. The simple fact is that the GOP is in real danger and we’re busy inviting democrats to come feed on the corpse.
When democrats are in power they do everything possible to pave the way for a larger democrat base year after year. They are just about monolithic in the pursuit of their agenda. You never hear talk of democrats “reaching across the aisle” to help republicans pass something unless it benefits democrats.
When republicans are in power they rarely do anything to protect and grow the republican base.
In fact - they always lose ground by turning on their own base and frequently “reaching across the aisle” to work with democrats on programs and policies that help democrats pander to their own base.
Republicans never seem to learn that they cannot out-pander democrats.
George Bush went against his own base to help Ted Kennedy pass the enormously expensive Medicare Prescription Plan and got no credit at all from the left for doing so. In fact - they turned on him and ridiculed him the minute he signed it into law.
So the democrats always manage to fortify and add to their base no matter who is in power and the republicans watch their base shrink, year after year.
With the massive legal immigration from Africa and the Mideast, and the outright lawbreaking Obama is doing to add illegals to the population, it is only a matter of time before the Black, Muslim and Hispanic vote grows enough to give democrats an unbeatable majority.
Yeah, Brian Cox, on WONDERS OF THE UNIVERSE, did a cheery segment on its future history, " ... the era of stars is over, yet the universe has expended only one trillionth of its total lifetime ... "
The GOPE is dead as far as the future is concerned.
The TEA party will over time reinvigorate the new GOP.
However every generation is followed by another.
And another. And another. And another.
We need to take care of our kids also.
And their kids. And theirs...
Yes, the obvious solution to the issues in the article is convert the Republican Party into two smaller parties - that will show them Dems!
Happily, that's not true of us all.
You’re spot on. Pat is right. There just isn’t much to conserve, is there? All those minorities will never opt for personal responsibility. And that’s what the GOP is all about. We’ve bred a horde of dependent slugs. They can only breathe with the help of the Democrats. We’re cooked. This nation has changed in a very fundamental way, and we’re not going back. From here on out, its downhill and nothing but mediocrity. Obama is symptomatic of that change, a man of the times for the times; a total fraud. All style (and very little of that), no substance. He’s nothing but a mouther of the most banal cliches. If such a nonentity as he can be elected president in the first place, we’re doomed. Get over it.
There is a fundamental difference between the Soviet Union and Iran.
The Soviet build a very large nuclear arsenal, but their leadership understood that using it was suicide and would result in total annihilation.
Iran’s leadership comprises a group of extreme fanatical Muslims who believe that their messianic times have arrived.
Iran has made preparations for the coming of the Mahdi, the 12th Imam of Shi’ite lore, which has emphasized martyrdom since the 7th century.
It’s entirely possible that the Iranian leadership might decide that it is preferable to die as martyrs than share the world with the Great Satan, the United States.
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.