The Coming GOP Crisis: The Party's Voters are White, Aging and Dying Off'

Even if the GOP manages to seize victory in November, as a CNN report notes, the Party's long term prospects are increasingly bleak as nearly all efforts are focused on pandering to a demographic that is literally dying off.  Worse yet, the pandering to this shrinking demographic is alienating and driving away the demographic segments of the population that are growing.  The chart above shows Hispanic voting characteristics versus their self-identified ideology.  It ought to be a simple calculation to realize that the current mode of operation is long term suicide.  But no one in the GOP - or at least no one with guts enough to speak out - seems to be figuring out the party's long term trajectory.  I for one hope the party refuses to wake up and that the Christofascist/Tea Party base takes the GOP right over the proverbial waterfall.  Here are highlights from CNN's analysis:

When presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney appears before Latino small-business owners in Washington on Wednesday, he'll address a group whose explosive birth rates foreshadow a seismic political shift in GOP strongholds in the Deep South and Southwest.

"The Republicans' problem is their voters are white, aging and dying off," said David Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, who studies minority political engagement.  "There will come a time when they suffer catastrophic losses with the realization of the population changes."

Over the next several generations, the wave of minority voters -- who, according to U.S. Census figures released this week, now represent more than half of the nation's population born in the past year -- will become more of a power base in places like Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. That hold will extend across the Southwest all the way to California, experts say.

The coming political revolution could result in a massive changing of the guard on nearly every level of government, potential cultural clashes, and the type of political alliances that are now considered rare.

So far, Republican efforts to offer Latinos a place at the table have fallen short.  The nation's Hispanics tend to vote Democratic, and overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama and Joe Biden in 2008.

Romney in particular has stumbled with this critical voting bloc, after his comments suggesting that making the economic landscape tough for illegal immigrants will force them to "self deport."

If Republicans continue to struggle to appeal to Latino voters, Spanish-language ads may not stave off a change that experts like Bositis see coming in the not too distant future, when states such as Georgia go purple and eventually blue.

"There'll be a tipping point where you've got the Republicans in charge, but you'll get to the point when the population becomes minority," Bositis said. "When that happens the statewide offices will fall. Republican governors will fall. Things will change."

This announcement on birth rates "should be a wake-up call to everyone running for political office from this day forward," said Lionel Sosa, a veteran Latino GOP strategist who has helped advise candidates since 1980.  .   .   .  "Token efforts, such as tamale parties, will no longer work. Winning will require more than outreach. It will require inclusion," Sosa said. "Latinos, African-Americans and people of other races must be represented in the important decision-making strategies of any given campaign, whether it be for a Democrat or Republican."

As I've noted before, unlike the white Christianists who seemingly cannot see the shared humanity of others who look different from themselves, I'm not frightened by the change in demographics.   In fact, I welcome the changes in some ways.  Especially if it means a future end to the failed policies of the GOP and its Christianist masters. 

There's one additional irony:  it appears that I may have dual citizenship via my late mother.  That's right. I may well also be a citizen of Honduras because I am the child of a native born Honduran.  That would make me doubly "other" to the typical member of the GOP base: gay AND Central American.