For years it's been obvious that long-term demographics predict the demise of the Republican Party as currently constituted. The question has been when that would kick in. Now we have the answer: 2012.
President Obama won reelection largely on the strength of support from women, minority and younger voters. Those voters turned out for him in droves in 2008, and the question was whether that could be sustained.
Many commentators talk about how Obama "lost" the white vote, implying that there was some kind of racial bias of whites against the president. I'm not so sure. The president won in "white" states like Minnesota and Wisconsin (Paul Ryan didn't even pull in his own state). Yes, some whites who voted for the president in 2008 didn't vote for him this time around. That would have happened to any president faced with an obstinate Congress and the lackluster recovery, regardless of race.
But racial (and sexual) politics does have a lot to do with why Romney, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock lost. The Republican Party banked on conservative religious folks to win the election for them. But the social tide is turning: gay marriage was approved in three states, and Minnesota voted down a constitutional amendment to ban it.
In Minnesota Republicans controlling both houses of the legislature did an end-around the governor to put an anti-gay marriage amendment on the ballot, hoping that it would fire up turnout among Catholics and religious conservatives. That tactic backfired. Instead, young people came out in droves to vote against it and a voter suppression bill that would have disenfranchised both younger and elderly voters. And at the same time they elected significant Democratic majorities in both houses.
Now, I'll be the first to say that this demographic shift does not mean the Democratic Party has a permanent lock on the electorate. The Republican Party can stage a comeback if they drop racially motivated policies on immigration, stop opposing gay marriage and military service, and stop incessantly attacking the reproductive rights of women.
It's doubtful they'll do all these at once. Because they're so dependent on the the religious right for turnout they'll most likely stop opposing immigration reform first, hoping that they'll be able to peel off conservative Hispanic Catholics. This will alienate many of the racially motivated Southern whites, but since they have nowhere else to go it's a safe bet. Immigration reform will also please business-oriented Republicans who've been clamoring for more cheap foreign labor to help bust the unions.
It's hard to see how the Republicans can back down on abortion and gay marriage at this point; they've been dependent on conservative Catholics for the last several elections. But since Catholics generally are more sympathetic to Democratic policies of justice and social welfare, any Republican retreat on those issues will cede the field completely.
But continued opposition to gay rights will inevitably cost them the support of libertarians and younger generations. For that reason, Republicans will ultimately have to drop opposition to gay marriage and military service.
In the end the money men like Mitt Romney, Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers will decide the direction the Republican Party will take. Romney has shown he will take any position on social issues he needs to win. Adelson and the Kochs want results, and if that means jettisoning the conservative social agenda they'll do it.
Cynicism aside, I would love for the Republican Party to make these changes. I used to be a Republican myself. I want to again be able to vote for candidates based on their individual qualifications, rather than voting against them because of their lockstep devotion to their party's narrow self-serving agenda.
1 comment:
I would say you touched on something here that most are ignoring in the media and that is this election was not about the economy or foreign policy, it was won on social issues. And in most cases, the slide in Republican support is based on abortion, gay marriage, and entitlements which is a huge undercurrent with what you see from comments on facebook and elsewhere. The really sad part is the social issues are really poor choices to base a country's future on when the economy (law and regulation) and place in the world (foreign policy) are its primary purpose for existing, not social engineering. The debt trajectory is now exponential which cannot be curbed by any taxation plan. Debt servicing and entitlements exceed the annual revenue so we borrow over a trillion a year to fund the actual government and defense. That is not good leadership no matter which side you are on.
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