The GOP's Problems Are Deeper Than Just Hispanics

Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post is sounding more and more like me when it comes to deriding the republican party for its circular firing squad mindset which continues to cause the GOP to pander to angry, aging white Christofacists and racist voters and, in the process, drive everyone else away.    One has to wonder how the so-called GOP establishment sees this as a way forward rather than a form of slow suicide.  What makes matters worse is that the GOP is not even trying to reach out to minorities in any meaningful way even compared to what was being done 10 to 15 years ago.  Here are highlights from Rubin's column:

In the debate on immigration reform, nearly all of the discussion concerning the GOP’s appeal to minorities has focused on Hispanics. This, in many ways, underestimates the problem in the post-Bush 43 Republican Party.

Consider that in 2004 President George W. Bush got almost 12 percent of the black vote. Not much, you say, but that’s a figure most Republicans aspiring to national office would be glad to have.

Moreover, the party’s share of the Asian vote has plummeted. In 1992, 55 percent of the Asian vote went for George H.W. Bush in 1992.  .  .  .  .  .  In 2008, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) got only 35 percent of the Asian vote, and in 2012 Mitt Romney got a measly 27 percent of Asians.

If the GOP could simply get back to Bush 43′s numbers among minority groups (not merely with Hispanics), its ability to win presidential elections would improve immensely.

Others see a more fundamental problem with the party’s message and tone since Bush left office. A savvy African American conservative contends that ”the hard right embraces blacks who espouse a fierce, go-it-alone economic libertarianism with a hard-edged social conservatism and a penchant for off-base comparisons between welfare and slavery and Democrats and plantations.” That is a dead-bang loser, he says: “There is literally no evidence that such a message resonates in the black community and it probably isn’t meant to. To the contrary, it is intended less to persuade blacks than to ratify the hard right’s notions that expressing such views is not racist.”

That is tough talk, but he is on to something. Former Republican congressman Allen West and E.W. Jackson, Virginia’s right-wing candidate for lieutenant governor, may thrill white radio talk show hosts and conservative media, but theirs is not a message that offers much to African Americans other than “I’m pro-life and can’t possibly be racist.” 


So let’s recap. The GOP stopped reaching out to minorities. It adopted a harsh tone, opposing immigration reform and threatening to round up anyone here illegally. And its extra-harsh rhetoric on the evils of government (rather than the reform of government) didn’t connect with minority voters, who saw no obvious appeal in a message that castigated all receivers of benefits as moochers.

This should surprise no one, but the bearers of the anti-immigration reform and anti-government (as opposed to pro-reform) message don’t seem to get it. Hopefully GOP primary voters do and will choose candidates wisely.

Obviously, the extremists at the Virginia GOP convention did NOT get the message when they nominated the most extreme statewide ticket in Virginia history.