Can Republicans exceed George W. Bush’s minority vote?
by digby
I have a piece up at Salon today talking about a new report that has to have the smarter of Republican strategists very nervous:
[D]espite the fact that the new CPAC organizers encouraged a slightly less fringy tone, they were unable to do anything about the fringy policies. Even the Great Whitebread Hope, Scott Walker (who, predictably, committed yet another embarrassing gaffe), reversed his position on immigration reform. He was for it before he was against it. And needless to say, the legislative game of chicken the House of Representatives was playing in the background over the funding of the Department of Homeland Security proved that the Tea Party wing of the GOP isn’t dead yet. Until the establishment is able to put a stake through its zombie heart, they have a big problem on their hands.
One little discussed CPAC panel on demographics discussed a new bipartisan report which reveals a daunting statistic that will make it very, very difficult for Scott Walker or any other anti-immigration Republican to win the White House in 2016. Ariel Edwards-Levy at Huffington Post reported:
“The fundamental challenge for my side is the seemingly inexorable change in the composition of presidential electorates,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres, whose clients include Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), said during a panel discussing the report. “And there’s no reason to believe that that’s going to stop magically.”
The demographic change poses little problem for the GOP in midterm elections, when young and minority voters are far more likely than older, white voters to stay home. But in the run-up to 2016, the demographic trend has some Republicans citing a need for change.
In 2004, Republicans’ most recent presidential victory, George W. Bush won 58 percent of the white vote, and 26 percent of the non-white vote — numbers that would lose him the White House today, Ayres said.‘”That’s the stunning part for me in running these numbers — to realize that the last Republican to win a presidential election, who reached out very aggressively to minorities, and did better than any Republican nominee before or since among minorities, still didn’t achieve enough of both of those groups in order to put together a winning percentage” for 2016, Ayres said.
George W. Bush did better than any Republican has ever done with racial minorities. He reached out, he spoke Spanish, he had a long-term reputation for being moderate on these issues. He came from a border state and had a cultural affinity with Latinos. When he ran in 2000 the U.S. was in the midst of an unprecedented economic boom and conservatives had temporarily put the xenophobic genie back in the bottle. He just was not widely seen as a bigot of the old style. In any case, the GOP had made great efforts to try to get at least some minorities on board and Bush was successful in attracting about 25 percent of them. That would not be enough for any GOP candidate to win the presidency in 2016.
And that would seem to spell almost certain doom. read on …
Obviously, anything could happen. Maybe the Democrats will end up nominating someone like Jim Webb and depress turnout among the younger, more female, racially diverse coalition that they need to win. Or an external event could throw a monkey wrench into the whole thing.
But all things being equal, Republicans are going to have a very tough time winning the presidency unless they figure out a way not to sound like total cretins toward racial minorities and women. Let’s just say they have a long way to go.
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