It’s really quite simple. If the Republicans want to win a presidential election, they have to win the support of the only constituency that is large enough to make a significant difference and is actually expanding.
The black population is not growing and, even declining, in percentage terms, and white upper-middle class families have so few children that they are hardly replacing their numbers, let alone increasing them.
Jews still support Democrats to the rate of 70% and more are increasingly detached from Israel and cannot escape their liberal guilt spasms. The gay vote is tiny, and will only vote Republican if the party abandons its moral values, and organized labor is what it is. Which leaves Latinos, Hispanics, Spanish-speakers.
This is the future of American politics. An enormous and growing population that still boasts a high birth rate is increasing through legal and illegal immigration, is upwardly mobile, and becoming extremely politically active. At least three major states are now decided by Latino voters, all of them capable of being Republican as well as Democrat.
Nor are Hispanic Americans particularly liberal in their views or socialistic in their aspirations. They tend to still be Roman Catholic, are generally opposed to same-sex marriage and abortion, believe in family rather than state and are suspicious of left-of-centre policies. But they do, naturally, fear parties and governments that flirt with deportation and denial of citizenship.
The genius of conservatism has been its ability to adapt to changing demographics, and few conservative parties have demonstrated this more effectively and efficiently than Canada’s Conservatives and Minister Jason Kenney. The Liberals smugly sat back in their clumsy complacency and assumed that immigrants would always vote for them. How wrong they were, and it’s unlikely they will be able to reverse the trend.
The Republicans have to do the same, and develop a relationship with tens of millions of voters by communicating in their language, literally as well as figuratively.
The battles of the past are long gone, and appealing to fringe players in border states will not win an electoral college. Until and unless this reality is grasped, the White House will belong to Democrats.
There is no need to change views about moral and family issues, and the people who genuinely obsess about being gay or aborting babies are not the right but the left; don’t be convinced by Hollywood and big media that ordinary people want nothing more than their gay friends to be allowed to play at being husband and husband or wife and wife.
Nor is it about the economy stupid, but about the vote stupid.
Obama’s health care program was similar to Romney’s in Massachusetts; Obama’s bailouts, in spite of what was said, were close to what Romney would have done; the foreign policy of both men differ in degree and not fundamentals.
But in terms of appeal, one party remained rooted in anachronism and the other, the Democrats, understood how America looked and how America voted.
Los tiempos estan cambiando.
Yes, the times really are changing, and while the Republicans should never forget the Alamo, nor should they forget that in the final analysis, it’s votes and winning that matter.
