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.
Then provide those words, because I’ve never seen them.
Provide a link to what you are accusing him of. Conservatives get called racist and all kinds of names all the time. It’s only right that you backup your accusation.
Start with post 47.
Especially for the long run. Most favored constituents depend on government directly or indirectly for their incomes. For the time being they own politics. And real, private sector (what’s left of it—excludes services dependent mostly on government-supported customers) conservatives won’t forget any time soon what’s happening to them and their loved ones.
Toward the other end of the default process, most favored constituents will lose all that they are now getting. Won’t be much money going into campaigns then.
Buchanan’s wrong, too, BTW—just wrong. ;-)
This is what William Buckley thought of Buchanan
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/b/buchanan-pat/buckley-1991.html
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/ben-shapiro/pat-buchanan-anti-semite/
If the GOP dies, it won’t be because of demographics. It will be because of selfish elitists and opportunists who hold the reins of power within the party and do their best to maintain control of the shrinking pie.
Conservative columnists in D.C. and New York are part of the elite crowd. Maintaining the status quo is how they guarantee their own livelihood. Look and see how many of them supported Romney and did their best to submarine his opponents. Some conservative radio talk show hosts fall in that group as well.
Either the whole bunch gets pushed aside, or a new conservative party is formed while the GOP fades away. The status quo for the Republican leadership is close to being status gone. They aren’t acting on behalf of conservatives or conservative ideals. They’re acting for their own interests and watching out for their buddies, and growing the federal machine the same as the Democrats.
Demographics is destiny. LA and much of Cali is already like Mexico. .as Presidente Calderon put it “where there are Mexicans, there is Mexico”
Demographics is destiny. LA and much of Cali is already like Mexico. .as Presidente Calderon put it “where there are Mexicans, there is Mexico”
You have to provide Buchanan’s real words, not what people said he said or what they think he said.
Seriously, liberals call conservatives these names all the time. Why are you doing the same?
They have to understand that like Greece, they could tip it over and lose it all if they don’t keep a free economy.
Also, liberals have a way of grossing people out and hurting them socially with their love of criminals and hatred of normal people, their love of perverts and hatred of children and families, and their racism. The longer they stay in power, the more chaos and mayhem will ensue.
They are the new Whigs.
The democrats are the communist party.
The republicans are the new democrat party.
Conservatives have been pushed aside and will need to regroup somewhere eventually. The GOP pushed them out at their own peril.
So be it.
Sad how many supposed conservatives are willing to vote for a proven liberal.
Voting for your ideological enemy is far beyond pragmatism.
It is hypocrisy.
It is saying one thing and doing another.
A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
Bush got more like 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004, and that is probably more of a stretch than Eisenhower’s high estimate of 47 percent of the black vote in 56.
I was posting about Hispanics becoming Protestants, that is a demographic wild card that no one discusses.
Bush won 56% of the Hispanic vote that was Protestant, and in 2008 McCain won 48% of the Protestant Hispanic vote.
I think President Reagan can be trusted on this one.
As he aged, Buckley wanted acceptance in liberal social circles and he was jealous of Pat Buchanan:
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.audio.opinion/2008-03/msg00036.html
There is a great discussion of the book here. Read all the comments, too:
Book Review: Suicide of a Superpower
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2800678/posts
I think Keynes said that.
Do you see a big move of Catholic Hispanics to protestant churches? I know a lot of protestant Hispanics, but haven’t noticed a trend going on. It does seem that Hispanics gravitate towards the more conservative protestant churches. The ones I know seem to be leaning Arminian, but that could be because there aren’t that many Lutherans around here.
Pew says that while they don’t make up 31% of the Hispanic population, they do make up about 31% of the Hispanic vote, it is a sliver of hope in the demographic future, but it won’t help much in states that have a weak Evangelical presence, like California.
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