Republican Senator Lindsey Graham almost hit the nail on the head in August when he told the Washington Post that the Republican Party is “not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” Where he missed the mark was thinking that this is a long-term problem and not a short-term failure as well.
Our changing America is a trend that Democrats have adjusted to and, in doing so, reaped political benefit. President Obama has managed to put together a minority majority. That is, through his campaign’s inclusive position toward Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, single females and young people, the Democratic Party has been able to create a coalition of voters who have been excluded and sold as second-class citizens by the Republican Party. This coalition was strong enough to hand Republicans a resounding defeat in the 2012 elections, in which President Obama won reelection soundly and the Democrats made improbable gains in the Senate and were victorious with ballot initiatives for marriage equality in Maryland, Maine and Minnesota.
It is no longer hyperbole to say that the Republican Party is the party of old white people. Exit polls show that Romney took 59 percent of the white vote, while Obama was able to make up for such a loss by taking 93 percent of the black vote, 71 percent of the Hispanic vote, 73 percent of the Asian vote, 67 percent of unmarried women and 60 percent of 18-29-year-olds. To quote Democratic strategist Tad Devine, “You combine that with blue-collar union workers and upper-educated whites, and you have a majority, especially in battleground states.”
Bill O’Reilly may take the prize for racist comment of the year on election night. His comments reflected the attitude Republicans appear to be adopting. To wit: “It’s a changing country, the demographics are changing. It’s not a traditional America anymore… Whereby 20 years ago President Obama would be roundly defeated by an establishment candidate like Mitt Romney. The white establishment is now the minority. And the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama’s way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?”
What O’Reilly misses is that these groups have not rushed to the Democrats because they have offered “things” to court them, but rather because the modern Republican Party has in many ways offended these key demographics both in sound bites and in law.
Moments after the election was called for Obama, Republican elites, including Senator Marco Rubio, called for the Republican House to start working on an immigration bill with President Obama to win back some of the minority vote. This, of course, is unrealistic to say the least, as Republicans spent the primaries insulting Hispanics, calling for self-deportation, electric fences around the border and the revival of welfare racism. And let’s not forget the “47 percent” comments from Mr. Romney.
The shallowness of this idea was put best by David Frum of The Daily Beast, who knocked the ability for immigration reform to bring voters on its own, saying, “It’s necessary of course to refrain from insulting Latinos, or, for that matter, anybody. But the crying need in the GOP is for a more middle-class orientation to politics, one that addresses concerns like healthcare as well as debts and deficits. But the ideas that dominated the past four years won’t become more attractive if all conservatives do is translate them into Spanish.”