The GOP Road to Extinction

GOP circular firing squad

The Republican Party seems hell bent to continue to travel down the road to extinction based on its decision to continue to pander to the bigots and racists in the GOP base who only want white conservative Christians to be allowed into the party - or given the full rights of citizenship for that matter.  The rest of us, especially racial minorities and Hispanics in particular, simply are not "real Americans" and are not welcome.  Projected demographic changes over the coming years mean that more states will shift to swing state status as the Hispanic and non-white population swells and the bitter, angry aging whites die off.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the data and the suicidal implications for the GOP.  Here are excerpts:

Over the weekend, as the Conservative Political Action Conference wound down, Michele Bachmann was greeted with a roar of approval when she said this:

“The last thing conservatives should do is help the president pass his number-one goal, and that’s amnesty.”

CPAC showcased that deep divisions remain among Republicans over whether to pursue immigration reform. The conservative interpretation of the GOP dilemma appears to be that passing reform is a no-no because it would be a gift to the hated Obama (whom you can’t trust in any case). Never mind whether it’s the right thing to do politically for Republicans, not to mention the right thing to do on policy.

And so reform may have to wait until Obama leaves office. Which would mean Republicans will head into the 2016 election without having repaired their Latino problem.
A new analysis performed at my request by political scientist Michael McDonald, who heads the United States Elections Project and studies voting patterns, underscores once again the perils this holds for the GOP.

The analysis finds that the share of the eligible voting population that is Latino will rise by two percentage points from 2012-2016 in three critical presidential swing states: Florida, Colorado, and Nevada. It will rise by two percentage points in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. And it will rise by one percentage point in Virginia, Georgia, and North Carolina. While that last finding may seem negligible, it is a sign demographics in those three states — one purple swing state that’s key in presidential elections; the others long reliably red — are trending in a favorable direction for Dems.

GOP pollster Whit Ayres, who favors reform, tells me Republicans should take the two point rise in critical swing states very seriously.  “It’s significant,” Ayres says. “Some aspects of the future are difficult to see clearly. The increasing proportion of Hispanics in the electorates in key swing states is not one of them.”

“Swing states are by their very definition closely contested,” Ayres continues. “Many of them have been won in close races by only a percentage point or two. Changing the demographics of the state by two percentage points puts a finger on the scale in each of the swing states for the party that’s doing well among Hispanics.
Ayres adds that the one-point rises also matter. “It is a sign of things to come,” he said. “States that have been comfortably red, like Georgia and North Carolina, are changing, and will become swing states unless Republicans figure out how to win significant support in the Hispanic community.”

“These are significant changes,” McDonald says. “This is the canary in the coal mind. The trend is there. We know it’s going to happen. There’s no reason to assume these trends won’t persist. The future is now.”