Whither the Whiter GOP?
In a day-after post-mortem, Richard Krauthammer, one of the leading lights of neoconservatism (tight money supply, red-meat social issues for the basest of the base, and an Uncle Sam that flexes his muscles overseas) wrote a post in the National Review that revealed a whistling-past-the-graveyard mindset. Krauthammer trumpeted that whites (meaning non-Latino Anglos) still make up a majority of the voting population in these here United States.
That might work - if the white vote were monolithic.
It's not.
For starters, take out small percentages for the 75 percent-plus LGBT bloc and Jewish voters who went Democratic pretty much down the ticket. As The New York Times pointed out, LGBT voters alone provided the crucial margin of victory in key battleground states. Despite attempts by the right to paint Barack Obama as anti-Israel, Jews also proved faithful to the party.
Add blocs of union voters and, increasingly, women; millennials, who despise the GOP's anti-gay drum-beating; and, of course, white liberals, and you're left with a very small slice of the white vote - specifically, the old, rural and religious fundamentalists.
The Latino Question
The Grand Old Party has never seemed less grand but so old.
The party's pundits and politicians are engaged in a very public bout of soul searching. Having lost black voters, Republicans are looking to the fastest-growing minority, Latinos. But here they are, still arguing about whether making any conciliatory gesture on immigration reform will help or hurt them.
One side argues that Latinos by nature are conservative on social and economic issues and would gravitate to the party if it would abandon an adamantly anti-immigration stance that began in California (which has since seen its Republican base decimated on a unprecedented scale, even in the Northeast) and has spread to the Southwest and South. Build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, they argue. If that doesn't work, build a bigger wall.
Leading these 21st-century No-Nothings are talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, who, ever since the election, have put down Latinos as "Santa Claus" voters who only want to suck at the governmental teat. More Latino voters will only give the Democratic Party more and more power and will eventually overwhelm GOP redoubts like Texas and Arizona, they say.
They point to once-reliable GOP states, such as Florida and New Mexico, that appear to have permanently gone over to the dark side.
Next: This Time, We Were a Central Issue
