Texas is Turning Blue - GOP Panic to Follow

Demographic changes are overtaking America just as surely as climate changes is overtaking the Earth.  Yet in both cases, today's Republican Party denies the reality of both.   As a former Republican I remain dumb founded that the GOP has no long term plan for dealing with the changing demographic reality.  They simply cannot disenfranchise enough people to stop the coming tide of voters who are not angry whites clinging to fond memories of Jim Crow and unquestioned white privilege.  Yet, as the current crop of would be GOP presidential nominees reveals, the  GOP still thinks it can run campaigns aimed solely at the shrinking angry vote voter pool. Even states like Texas (where GOP batshitery is currently off the charts)  will eventually tip away from the GOP as noted in a piece in addictingfo.org.   Here are highlights:

Texas is, indisputably, the corner stone of Republican presidential ambitions. Should Texas, with its 38 electoral votes, go blue, the chances of a Republican ever setting up shop in the Oval Office again are bleak.

If Texas had voted blue in 2012, Mitt Romney could have won the entire West Coast including California and still lost.

THAT’S how important Texas is to Republicans. There is almost no path to victory without it. If Texas had voted blue in 2000 or 2004, George W. Bush would have lost. This is a weakness unique to Republicans. For instance, if California with its 55 electoral votes (by far the largest chunk of the electorate) had voted red in 2008 or 2012, Obama still would have won.

The bottom line is that if Texas turns blue, or even purple, Republicans are completely and utterly screwed. But that’s exactly what is happening:

Houston is not merely more Hispanic; the fastest-growing ethnic group is Asian. The kimchi taco is a hit. Some 90 languages are spoken. The city government will soon publish information in six languages. And 98 percent of the population growth in the first 10 years of this century has been nonwhite.

This diversity is rippling out to the far suburbs, counties that have long been white and Republican — and vital for winning statewide office. The most diverse part of the Houston region is now Missouri City, which straddles Brazoria County and Fort Bend County on the city’s southwestern edge and is filling with Hispanics, Asians and African-Americans seeking bigger homes and better schools.

The same trends are found in the Texas Triangle, an increasingly dense region bounded by Houston, San Antonio and Dallas-Fort Worth. It includes less than 20 percent of the state’s land but all its biggest cities. Conservative politicians do poorly in these settings.

The only way Republicans can respond to this is with increasingly more extreme voter suppression laws but even that won’t work for very long. It also risks a massive backlash by liberal and independent voters.

The other problem for Republicans is that, as the minority residents start spreading out into the suburbs, the not-at-all-racist white conservative residents are going to flee. White Flight will decimate traditional Republican strongholds, further weakening the GOP’s grip on Texas.

It might not happen this year, or even in the next ten, but the writing is on the wall: A Republican Party that keeps only pandering to the whitest and most racist of Texans will lose the entire state and any chance of putting another Bush in the White House.

The same demographic changes are happening in Virginia and just as in Texas, the Virginia GOP's only response is to double down on racism and religious extremism and the Republican brand more toxic in the eyes of the increasingly diverse population.  I do not understand the shortsightedness. 

Today's GOP: Not Just Anti-Hispanic

Racism is one of the pillars of today's Republican Party.  Other pillars include religious extremism that tends toward a Christian Dominionist agenda.  Another is greed and selfishness that argues for throwing the poor and less fortunate in the gutter.  Donald Trump is pandering to all of these ugly undercurrents, but his embrace of racism is what seems to be holding at the top of GOP polls.  In doing so, however, he may be reinforcing the Republican Party's transition to a wholly white party (give or take a few Uncle Tom's like Clarence Thomas).  A piece in Slate looks at this trend that over the long term may be the death of the GOP.  Here are excerpts:

Most of the time, when we talk about immigration, we’re talking about Latin America. Donald Trump isn’t threatening to round up Irish immigrants in Boston who entered the country illegally or to build a wall between us and Canada; he’s threatening Latinos and tapping into an ugly strain of racist nativism. It’s why “anchor baby”—slang for the American-born children of unauthorized immigrants—is such a charged term. To many, it’s racial code for often brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking children.

[R]hetoric aside, America’s immigrant community goes beyond Latino and Hispanic Americans. It includes Africans, Europeans, and Asians, one of the fastest growing groups in the country. Not all Asians are tied to the immigrant experience—more than a quarter are native-born, with long and durable ties to the United States. But the large majority are foreign-born, with roots in a variety of different countries, from China and Japan to Korea, Vietnam, India, and Bangladesh. Moreover, they’re a rising share of the electorate—in 1996, just 1.6 percent of voters were Asian. In 2012, it was 3.4 percent. As second- and third-generation Asian Americans take the stage in national life, that voting block will increase.

When Republicans attack immigration—and increasingly, immigrants—we know it alienates Hispanic and Latino voters. Indeed, between Trump and his chorus of imitators, the party has all but abandoned its outreach to that community. But in this analysis, we shouldn’t ignore Asian Americans. This rhetoric matters to them too, and if Republicans aren’t careful, they’re set to lose two groups and likely seal their fate for next November.

Obama scored an enormous win among Asians. His 73 percent share of the Asian vote was a significant increase from the previous election and a bright spot in his overall performance. It would have been one thing if, like blacks, Asians were Democratic stalwarts. But they weren’t.

In 2012, Asians were primed to follow the national trend and vote a little more Republican. But they didn’t. Just 26 percent voted for Mitt Romney, the lowest GOP total in 20 years. What happened? What turned a small Democratic edge into an outright advantage?

Again, the answer is immigration, and specifically, the sense of exclusion that came from the GOP. In the 2012 primary, like this one, Republicans were torn over immigration policy, with candidates having a strong incentive to oppose comprehensive reform. Throughout the primary process, candidates fought to surpass one another with draconian solutions for dealing with unauthorized immigrants . .

The simple intervention of making an Asian subject feel excluded with respect to ‘Americanness’ and being suspected of not being a U.S. citizen increased negative dispositions towards the Republican Party and increased positive views of the Democratic Party . . . Asian voters tied the Republican Party to racial discrimination.

Indeed, in its recent probe of party affiliation, Pew found an almost 3-to-1 divide among Asians: 65 percent identified with the Democratic Party, 23 percent with the GOP.

Trump isn’t just popular; he’s shaping Republican policy, and several candidates have even turned against birthright citizenship—a historic achievement of the once–party of Lincoln.

Democrats are watching the Republican primary. They are recording and polling and testing. Come next year, they will blanket immigrant communities with the greatest hits of Republican rhetoric, and over the course of the campaign, countless people—teachers, factory workers, small business people, and others—will remember the comments about “illegals” and “anchor babies.” And they’ll act accordingly.

On Friday, a writer for the Federalist—a conservative website—asked if the GOP was the “party of freedom” or the “party of white identity.” If the party keeps moving on its present path, there will be no answer but the latter.

The Asian Vote - Another Lost Battlefield for the GOP?

Something has happened which should have been easily predicted: by embracing the far Christian Right - which basically hates everyone who isn't an American born white, far right Christian - and most recently the white supremacist crowd, the Republican Party has driven away other demographic groups who either are (i) non-white, (ii) non-Christian, or (iii) who don't want the likes of Tony Perkins setting policy positions.  And it's not just the Pacific rim Asians who have been alienated.  South Asians - as many of Indian descent describe themselves - also find the hate and religious extremism of the GOP base abhorrent.  Stated another way, my many Hindu clients have easily figured out that the GOP base hates them just as much as they hate gays, notwithstanding Bobby Jindal's willingness to prostitute himself to Christofascists.  A piece in Politico looks at this other demographic that the GOP has lost.  Here are excerpts:

Even in a national election shadowed by geopolitical instability and a heated debate over immigration, it’s a rare campaign that has voters hearing about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and maritime disputes between Japan and the Republic of Korea.

But in these suburbs a few miles from the nation’s capital, these are only a few of the unconventional issues rearing up in the battle for control of Congress. Candidates up and down the ballot have hurled themselves into winning over the area’s swiftly growing Asian-American population, striving to sell themselves as champions of small business and public education, and as masters of even the narrowest ethnic preoccupations.

Fairfax is only one of a lengthening list of urban and suburban battlegrounds – from northern New Jersey to the greater Atlanta area, to the streets of Minneapolis and Las Vegas and up and down the West Coast – where the two national parties have focused with new intensity this year on wooing this expansive and diverse immigrant population.

Spurred by President Barack Obama’s landslide victory among Asian-American voters in 2012 and new government data showing Asians outstripping Latinos as the fastest-growing immigrant population, prominent elected officials on both sides of the aisle have called for a stepped-up focus on Americans of Asian descent.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn . . . . called it essential that the GOP start “showing up” before these communities’ distrust of Republicans gets cemented in place.  “That is a trajectory for permanent minority status and we have to do something about it,” said Cornyn, the number-two Republican in the Senate. “I’m astonished to hear what our opponents tell people about Republicans, to some groups, when we’re not there.”

California Rep. Judy Chu, the Democrat who leads the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said both parties increasingly see Asian Americans as a “margin of victory” population in some especially challenging races. 

Pollsters warn that it’s difficult to generalize about Asian-American voters, mainly because it’s a vastly diverse population. Indian Americans, Thai immigrants and voters of Korean descent may share an ancestral continent, but it’s hard to say they represent a cohesive electoral bloc.

Yet partisan strategists and Asian-American activists say that even across culturally disparate immigrant groups, there are common preoccupations – an intense focus on education, for instance, and concern about the economic environment for small, family-owned businesses.

Increasingly, there is also a broad affinity for the Democratic Party – seen overwhelmingly as the party that stands for racial and ethnic diversity, and a more inclusive federal immigration policy.

In 2012, Asian Americans voted for the president by a larger margin – 47 points – even than Latinos. In swing-state Virginia, where Asian Americans made up 3 percent of the electorate, they supported Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine by 32 points.

Here in Fairfax, local leaders call Northern Virginia a snapshot of the whole country’s political and demographic future, with both elected officials and ethnic community leaders a few big steps ahead of other swing-state colleagues when it comes to political engagement and community outreach.

Even here, however, the change has come swiftly enough to transform the politics of the region in less than one political generation. Beyer, who will easily capture a safe Democratic House seat next week, recalled his early campaigns for public office: “My first race was 25 years ago and I don’t even remember [Asian American outreach] being in my list of 24 campaign priorities.”

“Now, increasingly, the Asian American vote, along with the Latino vote and the Muslim vote – which of course is kind of pan-Asian – they’re very important,” said Beyer, who emphasized just how heterogeneous the ethnic groups of his future district are. “The Chinese are different from the Filipinos, who are different from the Japanese. I don’t find any one theme works – except for economic opportunity and inclusion.”

The GOP can talk all it wants about economic opportunity, but as long as it remains the party of exclusion, white supremacy, and hatred towards non-Christians, the Asians I know are not going to fall for the disingenuous out reach.  The saying goes that you are known by the company you keep, and the GOP keeps some pretty ugly and racist company.  Here in Virginia, the Republican Party is owned by the white supremacist religious extremists at The Family Foundation.  That's not how one wins the Asian vote - or Hispanics or progressives either. 

The GOP’s Demographic Time-Bomb

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Some would depict Nate Silver as a geeky nerd, but on the 2012presidential  election, his analysis proved to be dead on.  Now, Silver has been using his analytical skills and data to explore what the future may hold for the Republican Party if it doesn't change more than its "messaging" as demographic change continues across the country and the number of angry, typically elderly, conservative/religious extremist whites declines as a percentage of the overall population.  If Silver's analysis is correct, the GOP ought to be scared as Hell that it will be a permanent minority party.  So far, reality does not seem to be sinking in with most members of the GOP who continue to focus on angry whites and Christofascists as their sole audience.  Silver's piece in the New York Times is interesting reading.  Here are some excerpts:

A bill to allow unauthorized immigrants to gain citizenship carries electoral risks and rewards for the Republican Party. On the one hand, if the bill were passed, some of those immigrants would eventually vote. Roughly 80 percent of illegal immigrants are Hispanic, and about 10 percent are Asian — groups that voted heavily Democratic in the last two elections.

On the other hand, such legislation could plausibly improve the Republican Party’s brand image among Hispanics and Asian-Americans, perhaps allowing the party to fare better among these voters in future elections. Which of these effects would outweigh the other?

I’ve designed a tool, in the form of an interactive graphic, that allows you to make different sets of assumptions about immigration reform, population growth and racial voting patterns. Although the graphic contains a number of simplifications, we hope it will be useful to experiment with.

The graphic begins with 2012 voting results as a baseline. In each state, and the District of Columbia, I’ve estimated the vote for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in the five racial categories (white, black, Hispanic, Asian and “other”) that are tracked in exit polls.

Because the exit poll data is incomplete — 19 states did not have exit polls last year, and the polls often did not break down the results where a racial population was small (for instance, Asian-Americans in Montana) — I had to rely on various forms of extrapolation and interpolation to fill in the missing data points.

The interactive graphic then allows you to make three sets of assumptions to consider how the vote might change going forward.

Step 1: Population Growth
Immigration reform is being contested against a background of an increasingly nonwhite electorate. Seventy-two percent of voters were white in 2012, down from 74 percent in 2008 and 81 percent in 2000.

The graphic allows you to consider the effects of further population changes by entering growth rates for the five major racial groups. As a default, it assumes that the number of white voters will grow by 0.5 percent a year, the number of black voters by 1 percent a year, the number of Hispanic and “other” voters by 3 percent a year and the number of Asian voters by 3.5 percent a year. These figures represent a rough consensus of various population growth estimates.

Step 2: Unauthorized Immigrants
The graphic also allows you to consider the effects of legislation that would introduce new citizens to the electorate. These changes are assumed to have a one-time effect: that is, they would affect the status of the roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants who are already in the United States, but not future groups of immigrants. The calculation assumes that this impact is separate from the long-term changes in the voter population evaluated in the previous step.

Step 3: Changes to Racial Voting Patterns
Finally, the graphic allows you to evaluate the effects of changes in the share of votes going to each party from each racial group. The changes are assumed to be uniform across states. So, for example, if your assumption is that the G.O.P. does five percentage points better with Hispanics nationally than it did in 2012, the Republican share of the Hispanic vote is assumed to grow to 44 percent from 39 percent in Florida, to 23 percent from 18 percent in Illinois, and so forth.

The most interesting application, however, is in seeing how the various positive and negative effects for Republicans might play out against one another.

Suppose, for example, that the voter population grows in accordance with the defaults assumed in the model. This would produce a net of 6.3 million new votes for Democrats by 2028.

And suppose that 25 percent of the immigrants currently here illegally gain citizenship and vote by 2028. The model calculates that this would provide another 1.2 million votes for Democrats.

But suppose also that, as a result of immigration reform, the Republicans go from winning about 28 percent of the Hispanic vote and 24 percent of the Asian vote (as they did in 2012) to 35 percent of each group by 2028. That would shift about 4.8 million votes back to the G.O.P. — about four times more than it lost from the immigrants becoming citizens and voting predominantly Democratic. However, it wouldn’t be enough to outweigh the Democratic gains from long-term population growth.

I remain dumbfounded that the GOP still does take demographic change seriously  - or not seriously enough.  Racism, bigotry and embracing white supremacists may continue to allow some successes in the short term, but in the long run, the GOP seems bent on suicide.

The Republican Party’s Refusal to Make Meaningful Changesings

In the wake of the RNC's report on the reasons why the GOP did disastrously in the 2012 elections, there have been all kinds of recriminations and a denial that the GOP's policies themselves as opposed to "poor messaging" are the root cause of the party's inability to win voters, especially at the national level.  Conservative columnist Michael Gerson at the Washington Post looks at the GOP's shortcomings.  Here are some excerpts:

Recent brutal attacks on the GOP have claimed that minorities often think that “Republicans do not like them or want them in the country.” That younger voters are “rolling their eyes at what the party represents.” That former Republicans view the party as “scary,” “narrow-minded,” “out of touch” and populated by “stuffy old men.”

But these were not Democratic attacks. The quotes come from the Republican National Committee’s “Growth & Opportunity Project” report, which, as far as I can tell, is unique in the history of party-sponsored self-reflection. Losing parties generally look in the mirror and see the need for cosmetics. This report calls for reconstructive surgery. In the aftermath of the 2012 election, it describes a party unpopular with the public, fading in must-win states and progressively marginalized at the national level.

The report, inevitably, set off an internal GOP conflict. This is not so much a matter of ideology; a number of politicians with tea party roots, such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, have fully internalized these political realities. The emerging argument is between political realists and ideological entrepreneurs. 

The RNC report engages this divergence of purposes in a forthright manner: “We have become expert in how to provide ideological reinforcement to like-minded people, but devastatingly we have lost the ability to be persuasive with, or welcoming to, those who do not agree with us on every issue.” The role of a political party, the report insists, is different from the pursuit of “universal purity.” 

But the report recognizes that Republicans require more than changed tone or technique; they need relevant, appealing policies. 

The 2012 election revealed insufficient GOP enthusiasm among working-class Americans and plummeting support among rising demographic groups, particularly Asians and Latinos. Appealing to these voters will require more than repetition of the Republican economic message circa 1980. They want the reassurance of a modern, functioning safety net and the realistic hope of economic and social mobility. Republicans have yet to effectively address either priority. 

This is partly an institutional problem. A smattering of conservative policy experts is working on these issues — conservative alternatives on health and education reform or promoting social capital and family stability. But the major conservative think tanks tend to be driven by ideological and donor priorities. Few conservative institutions operate effectively at the confluence of policy and politics.

Major Republican donors seem perfectly willing to support the presidential races of quixotic candidates. They foot the bill for television attack ads. They seem less interested in funding the revival of ideas and policy that is a prerequisite to reestablishing a GOP majority. It is a strategic failure of the first order. 

Those concerned about the Republican future hope for the arrival of a transformational candidate. But he or she will need something compelling to say. 

The GOP's Big Asian-American Problem

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There is much political dialogue about the Republican Party's "Hispanic problem."  But as the last presidential election revealed Asian-Americans showed a similar disdain for Mitt Romney and the GOP in general and, like the Hispanic population, Asian Americans represent another exploding demographic.  By chance and happen stance - as well as respectful treatment and competent legal services - I have built a sizable law practice with Asian American clients, those of Indian descent in particular.   Some know that I am gay, some do not.  Those who do seemingly could care less about who I love.  My perception is, however, they deeply care about the GOP's constant racism and immigrant bashing and the GOP's allegiance to Christofascists who want to trample on the religious freedom of non-Christians and other Americans who do not subscribe to the Christofascists' ugly version of Christianity.  A piece in American Prospect looks at the growing problem that the GOP faces with Asian American voters.  Here are highlights:

Still overlooked in the immigration discussion are Asian Americans, who are the fastest growing demographic group in the country—and one of the most diverse. The bulk of Asian American immigrants (83 percent) come from China, the Philippines, India, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan. At present, they’re 5.8 percent of the total population, nearly half of whom live in the West, with a large concentration on the Pacific coast. Seventy-four percent of Asian American adults were born outside of the United States, and in 2009—according to the Pew Research Center—Asian American immigration outpaced Hispanic immigration for the first time in recent history.

The Republican Party’s standing with Latinos is solid compared to where it is with Asian Americans. A whopping 73 percent of Asians supported Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, up 11 percent from four years ago. When you disaggregate by nationality, the difference between Asian support for Obama and Romney is even more stark and begins to approach African American-levels of support for the president.

Obama won the three largest demographic groups—Chinese, Indian, and Filipino Americans—with more than 76 percent support. Filipino identification with the GOP is as large as you would expect—26 percent are enrolled in the Republican Party—but only 9 percent of Indian and Chinese Americans identify with the GOP.

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Simply put, the Republican Party has an “Asian problem” that rivals their “Latino problem” in size and scope. So far, it’s gone under the radar. But given the pace of Asian immigration to the United States—and the growing Asian populations of states like Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia—Republicans can’t ignore it for long.

Asian Americans have clearly figured out that if you aren't an angry white conservative Christian or a billionaire, then the Republican Party is not your friend.  Until the GOP can see the common humanity in all of us,  the allegiance of Asian Americans to Democrats will grow - as it has among minorities - who can plainly see that they are despised by the GOP almost as much as gays and blacks.  Long term, the GOP is committing suicide.

Asian Americans Turn Dramatically Towards Democrats

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With all of the chatter among the pundit class about the Republican Party's alienation of Hispanic voters another emerging demographic has been largely missed, especially in areas where its members are not plentiful as yet.  An article in the Los Angeles Times looks at this other demographic that the GOP has lost by dramatic margins over the last two decades: Asian voters.   Not coincidentally, in my view, this dramatic shift tracts directly with the rise of the Christofascists and white supremacist elements within the Republican Party.  It is the same time period that has seen a steady exodus of moderates and non-religious extremists from the GOP.   Here are some article highlights:

As the dust settles on the presidential election, there seems to be a new theory daily as to why Mitt Romney lost and what it signals for the future of the Republican Party. Common to nearly all the speculation are the partisan implications of demographic change. The United States is shifting gradually toward a majority-minority electorate, with ever-growing numbers of Latino and Asian American voters. Notably, these groups are increasingly voting as Democrats. According to exit polls from Nov. 6, 73% of Asian Americans and 71% of Latinos voted for President Obama.

The high levels of Latino support for Obama were in line with expectations.  .  .  .  . But the fact that nearly three out of every four Asian Americans voted for Obama caught most pundits by surprise. Moreover, Asian Americans, who voted in record numbers in 2008, appear to have mobilized an even higher turnout in 2012. Asian Americans are no longer a swing vote or a crouching tiger in the electorate; their political stripes are now distinctly Democratic blue.

Many people have begun to ask: Why are Asian Americans so Democratic, and how did thy get that way? These questions take on greater intrigue when we look at exit poll data over the last two decades. Asian Americans have demonstrated the biggest shift in their presidential voting preferences of any demographic group, whether by race, gender or age.

First, it is no accident that the move toward the Democratic Party started during Bill Clinton's presidency. Although detailed polling data on Asian Americans in the 1990s are lacking, this is a period when the Democratic Party developed a new pro-business image, economic growth was strong, Asian Americans naturalized in unprecedented numbers and Clinton made public efforts to woo them, including nominating the first Asian American to the Cabinet.

Since 2000, the Republican Party has moved more sharply to the right than the Democratic Party has to the left, especially on issues that resonate with Asian Americans. For example, Republicans in Congress escalated their heated rhetoric on immigration and, despite the Bush administration's efforts, consistently scuttled efforts toward comprehensive immigration reform. Our 2008 National Asian American Survey also found very strong support among all Asian American groups for universal healthcare and for bringing a quick end to the Iraq war, two issues on which the Republican Party did itself no favors with these voters.

[T]he Republican Party has not been helped by its close liaison with the tea party movement, which received low favorability ratings in our 2012 survey, nor by presidential candidates and party activists emphasizing Christian values. Thus a Pew report on Asian American religion showed the highest Democratic Party support among Hindus and the religiously unaffiliated who, together, account for more than 35% of the Asian American population.

As noted many times on this blog, the GOP sold its soul to the Christofascists (and their close cousins, the white supremacists) and now social moderates, non-whites, and non-Kool-Aid drinkers are fleeing in droves.  Yet, as reflected by Ken Cuccinelli's rise to apparent GOP standard bearer here in Virginia, the GOP apparently has not gotten the message that extremism loses voters and loses elections.