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.
[[ “In the long run”, said Milton Friedman, and as an economist, Jew, celebrity, and a Nobel prize winner, he’d know better than most, “we’re all dead.” ]]
It was NOT Friedman who said that.
I believe it was John Maynard Keynes, the leftist.
Regardless of the quote attribution, Pat Buchanan is right, once again. No joy in that.
As Buchanan notes, Texas will “tip left” in a generation, and then topple over. After that, it’s all over — the Republicans will never be able to win the presidency again.
There’s a “possible solution”, although many here would oppose it. That would be for the “red states”, RIGHT NOW, to change the way electors are assigned in presidential elections, to the “Nebraska/Maine” method.
NE and ME don’t assign electors on a “winner-take-all” system, but rather by each congressional district.
Consider a state like Pennsylvania, which is considered a “battleground” state but which hasn’t voted for the Republican presidential candidate since 1988. Under the current winner-take-all system, PA could be lost to the Republicans forever. But under a “congressional district” electoral vote system, PA would assign its electors roughly 50-50. In real-world terms, this would be a pickup of roughly 10 electoral votes in future elections for the GOP. 50% is better than nothin’....
And so it will go with a state like Texas. Again, under the current system, TX will “go blue” within a generation. If Texas were to change its electoral vote policy, we would lose -some- electoral votes TODAY, but would not be doomed to lose ALL of Texas’ votes in the future.
Just something to consider.
We can go the way we’re going, with results that are inevitable.
Or, we can literally “reconstruct the system” into a new framework that will give us more of a chance in the future.
I don’t expect that to happen.
But I can see what’s coming....
Again, Mr. Buchanan is dead right on this one.
Is that what you think you read?
and less welfare spending and a huge reduction in government bureaucracy
I think Milton Friedman was quoting John Maynard Keynes, who said it first.
“Rush said today the economy was growing at 9% in the great depression.. what is this?? “
HUh??
That is where the more jobs part, comes from.
We cannot keep control, unless jobs return.
Therefore, jobs are critical. Now.
The US has nukes, I guess those nukes are far more dangerous to America than Islamic radicals. Not that this has been shown in reality.
Reagan was not, but Buchanan’s own words tells you what he is. Maybe that is why he was in the white house only 2 years.
You’re just making stuff up. What happened to honesty and logic? You’ve turned all emo.
Probably true, and frankly, the GOP have no one but themselves to blame. By running away from conservatism, they’ve completely lost track of the narrative of America.
The economy is in the dump, unemployment is out of control, retirement accounts are decimated - seemingly no end in sight. People are terrified. Sadly, offering freedom, liberty and self-responsibility is a tough sell in that environment. A tipping-point number of Americans now want someone to take care of them, and Barrack Obama, the Dems and the much of the GOP are more than happy to oblige.
Conservatives are on their own. Arrange your asset-protection plan accordingly.
Hey EternalV who is your party putting up for pres this time around? Will he or she be in the debats?
here is a test...
how many times has Israel nuked us?
how many Islamic terror attacks have there been?
Latinos, African-Americans, immigrants and young people 18 to 25 pay no income taxes yet enjoy a panoply of government benefits.As long as the freebies keep coming in, they will keep voting the same parties who shall allow freebies to continue. What will happen one day when all freebies dry up ?
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.
I’m not interested in your foolishness.
There’s a “possible solution”, although many here would oppose it. That would be for the “red states”, RIGHT NOW, to change the way electors are assigned in presidential elections, to the “Nebraska/Maine” method.
NE and ME don’t assign electors on a “winner-take-all” system, but rather by each congressional district.
Obama sent a lot people here to Nebraska back in January & they are still here. I understand there are a lot of lawyers, but not sure what they are doing, besides the obvious; looking for a way to cheat.
Me.
I’m debating three times in the next couple of weeks.
If Romney moves the GOP right and back to fiscal conservatism, the GOP has a chance to stay. If Romney loses because GOP moderates refuse to fight for the nation or because the GOP stuck in a limp moderate, the GOP will die - and the Tea Party or similar, true conservative party, will rise.
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