Pat Buchanan poses an either/or question.
From these Census figures, white folks are losing interest in politics and voting. Yet, whites still constitute three-fourths of the electorate and nine in 10 Republican votes.
Query: Is the way to increase the enthusiasm and turnout among this three-fourths of the electorate for the GOP to embrace amnesty and a path to citizenship for 12 million illegal foreign aliens?
Or is it to demand the sealing of America’s borders against any and all intruders?
Just asking.
Here’s the problem. The answer is neither. It doesn’t matter what they do; they’re screwed either way.
Because we have winner-take-all elections, we can really only sustain two parties over any length of time. It’s possible for one party to be essentially replaced by another, but it’s basically a binary system. The Republican Party can survive just fine, but conservatives cannot. They are either going to drive the GOP into oblivion, in which case some other party will replace them that can actually win elections, or they are going to be purged themselves.
There’s a third possibility, but it isn’t very attractive. The third possibility is that the Republicans will endure a very long period of sustained losing as they did in congressional elections for roughly sixty years between 1933 and 1994.
I don’t think that is imminent, however. What is already here is an Electoral College map that is pretty near impossible for the Republicans. And it is going to get worse every four years for as far as the eye can see.
I don’t blame conservatives for having principles. But the GOP cannot win with those principles on the national level. Insofar as the principles are malleable, the party can adjust and run on issues that have broader appeal. But they will find, increasingly, that it’s the conservative principles that have to be jettisoned, or at least shrouded, if they are going to prevail.
They ask the question: “How can we win without changing?”
The answer is that you can’t.
You can restrict access to the ballot but that just resulted in record black turnout. You can bash Latinos, but that could mobilize a sleeping giant that has a lot of uncast votes lying around. You can gerrymander districts, but that won’t win you the presidency. You can destroy campaign finance laws and try to have corporations buy elections, but Obama just crushed that effort.
It’s conservatism that is in its last throes. Whether the GOP will die with them is a separate issue.
So, support immigration reform or oppose it. It really doesn’t matter.
I still don’t get Uncle Pat’s shrieking anyway. White voter participation rates hit a high water mark in 1964, and then again in 1992. What’s this nonsense that whites just aren’t voting anymore. Sounds to me uncle pat and his white supremacist friends are finally coming to terms with the inevitable and are making one, final rallying cry for their movement.
You really should try to understand Pat’s shriekings.
They pretty much explain everything you are witnessing.
The conservatives are trying to figure out how they can win without changing, and pretty much every thing the GOP is doing is an attempt in that effort.
They’re doomed. A quick perusal of the comments section following Buchanan’s article revealed a link to this website. The GOP is catching plenty of flack from the right.
http://www.resonoelusono.com/Infamy.htm
I’ve long thought the ultimate gasp of desperation will come when they nominate Ted Cruz or someone very much like him. They will get hoisted in their own petard of racism when they presume his Hispanic ethnicity will allow them to carry the Latino vote.
But then the GOP is so out of touch. Here’s another comment that followed the article:
“it is only when the productive and responsible capitalists have created so much prosperity that the resentful parasites have the luxury to resent the capitalists who provide them their lifestyle.”
Good luck with that message, GOP.
I understand them in that sense. It’s just that it isn’t true. Voter participation was highest in 1964, which means so was white voter participation. 1992 was the other high point, with 2004 the next closest. Either way, it is not some declining trend.
it’s a mistake to think conservatives are principled.
they never care about their precious deficit when a republican is in office.
they’re for military intervention when a republican is in office, then they scream america isn’t the world’s policeman when a dem is office. look at Libya, they were screaming for intervention, until obama actually did it, then they automatically oppose it.
Bush was the president who signed the lightbulb law. the minute Obama became president, they freaked out calling infringement of liberty.
I was around when Reagan signed amnesty. the average conservative didn’t care.
for years Bill O’reilly mocked gay marriage as creeping bestiality. Now his pay masters tell him to we can’t win that way, and he flips flops on a dime and starts mocking opponents as “bible thumpers”.
the only principle they have is to opposes anything a Dem is for and follow the path mapped out by their propaganda sheep herders.
that’s their main problem. their propaganda ministers make so much money peddling hate and paranoia, that they have no incentive in leading the sheeple away from politically losing positions.
And you didn’t even mention their fraudulence re: Mark Sanford. Really family man he is.
exactly
family values is the most important issue in the world, the foundation of our society, until their senator gets caught wearing a diaper, engaging scatological sex with a dominatrix, then it’s a personal matter that we should forgive.
we have to get tough on drugs! lock ’em up and throw the key away! until their fat windbag gets caught with 30,000 tablets of hydrocodone, Lorcet and OxyContin pills. Then it’s not even trafficking. We have to find forgiveness cuz Jesus would be against the drug laws or something.
people have to pull them up by their bootstraps and take responsibility for their actions! until it’s walls street, then we have to shovel trillions in welfare to Park Avenue.
just thought about it the best example of their phony principles maybe birtherism.
they simultaneous say obama can’t serve as president because he wasn’t born here, but Ted Cruz can be president even though he wasn’t born here.
now that’s principle!
Yes, it’s a pretty flexible movement, except on the sacred subject of taxes. I don’t think this Southern Strategy coalition can survive the immigration issue, though. In the 80s, when the Country Club was clearly in charge, it was different. Now the working class monster they created is turning on them.
It’s not a “working class” monster. It’s a white “monster”. And it’s a disproportionately southern white monster. White working class voters in the rest of the country vote for Democrats in equal or larger numbers than they vote for Republicans.
Thank you. This really can’t be pointed out too often. We don’t have a “white working class” problem, we have a white SOUTHERN problem.
If it were only that simple. Unfortunately, it is also deeply rooted in the Midwestern and upper Midwestern white population as well. If there wasn’t also this sizeable swath of whites in the middle part of the country, then we could just ignore the southern states, as they would simply be irrelevant. But as long as large parts of fly-over country are supportive of the ignorance and wingnuttery in the GOP base, then this will continue to be a hard fought battle for the foreseeable future.
It’s somewhat of a problem there but not to nearly the same extent. Democrats actually get plenty of white working-class votes in those states, far more then they do below the M-D line (or in Appalachia). The South really is a special case.
Thanks for the response, but I think Steve LaBonne has it right. There’s a sizable faction of whites in the midwest, in the east and in the west for whom race is a key factor in how they vote. Regardless, Democrats regularly get 40-55% of the white vote in most states in those regions in presidential elections.
What I meant to say, though: It really is monstrous when working class voters vote against their interests out of racist spite–that’s what the Southern strategy was and that’s what’s the matter with Kansas–but it is now going to destroy the Republican party because it’s made it unable to function.
Point taken and appreciated.
Eh? What about those EC schemes. Isn’t that being pushed forward in PA despite some GOP opposition?
Answer: MOAR LYING.
Hey, they tried with Romney, but clearly he wasn’t a TRUE conservative, and let the truth slip out to “the 47%” a bit too much.
In 2016 they gotta work on that completely air-tight bubble: no truth gets in, no truth gets out.
Actually, it pretty obvious how the GOP is going to change the Electoral College map. They came close to doing it in 2012, but had a failure of nerve.
You just change the rules in your gerrymandered state, to allocate your electoral votes by congressional district. Just like Maine and Nebraska already do. The GOP would be almost assured of the White House every election if they pulled that off.
Two things concern me: