Serious Q for Republicans

[hopper]

Doesn't it concern you at least somewhat that Democrats wipe the floor with you each and every election with minority voters?  There isn't even a positive trend.  Yet every 4 years they become an additional 2% of the vote.  You do realize at some point winning becomes implausible unless you improve among African Americans/Hispanics/Asians right? 

What is the long term strategy here?

Another thing to keep in mind... people that are around 25-45 are probably the most liberal current generation, thanks in large part to George W. Bush.  This group is going to replace the 80+ year olds who die off in the next 10-20 years.  So the country is probably going to get more liberal as well...

....and Barack Obama who minorities voters took/take a heavy liking too.

[hopper]

Not a Republican, but I assume President Trump's supreme court and the state legislatures will have disenfranchised all of those people and closed the borders by then so that Republicans can still coast to victory on their white dominance

No borders aren't being closed off even by The Trump Administration.

[hopper]

This is no longer a long term problem for the Republicans. Trump was the first President elected who was affected by this problem. Minorities made up 29% of the electorate and their 75-24% support to Clinton couldn't be offset by a historically high 21% margin among whites. The House GOP eked out the popular vote by 1%, and they won the white vote by 22%.

If you do the math, every 4 years, they need like an extra 3% of the white vote to just offset minority growth. This means the GOP has to increase their white vote totals to 61%, then 64%, then 68% or so by 2028. As an comparison, Bush won whites by 17% in 2004. Trump won it by 21%. That's a shift of 4 points in 12 years. The big difference between Bush and Trump is that Bush won 44% of Latinos and 44% of Asians and 40% of others. Trump hit 29% of Latinos and Asians and 11% of blacks, roughly the same as Romney.

And the 3% growth among white support just translates into 51% support each election. It means that the GOP is vulnerable to defections from say, groups of whites, who are not a homogeneous group. So, basically, the mathematical model says the GOP is locked into decades of 51% wins without growth among minority support, and that's being generous and saying the white vote will increase 3% each election for the GOP.

White population is set to decrease beginning in 2024, as well. That just heightens the minority bloc's importance. Even if you put in a national voting restriction law, it's been shown they decrease the Democratic margin by 1-2%, so you're only protecting yourself in a close race, not a landslide.

Somehow, the concern that was there during the Bush years has been completely lost in the Trump years. Their Muslim ban, the border wall with Mexico, everything doesn't seem geared towards minority voters but to the 90% white base.

Romney won the white vote by 21% points too but he didn't win in 2012.

White Population has been decreasing as a % of the US Population for a few decades because of Hispanic Growth so its nothing new. I know you are trying to say the White Population won't even be growing by 2024 but overall growth of the White Population has been flat since 2000 or  maybe even the 1990 Census.

[hopper]

Somehow I don't see the Hispanics being that into the party that has a President that calls them rapists and mocks them and wants to build a wall with Mexico. Seems to me that it's the kind of thing that prevents them from backing that Party.

They voted 65-29% Democratic for a reason and they've been voting Democratic since the 1960s. Republicans aren't changing that trend. Simply put if Republicans insulted my lineage and my background I'd be pretty sure I'd be hostile to them. “Otherizing“ a group seems a surefire way to get that group to consistently vote against you.

Trump did no worse than Romney with Hispanic Voters though in the end though.

Build a wall-Didn't Congress vote to build a fence in 2006 along the Mexican Border but the fence was never built?

[hopper]

It will be interesting to see what happens with the Hispanic and Asian vote.  I think it could be argued that Black Americans - for a variety of reasons - have been very adamant about NOT assimilating into "mainstream White America" (whatever that means), and they also vote Democratic for a variety of historical reasons, but groups like the Irish and Italians - once fiercely loyal to the Democratic Party for literally the exact same reasons that Hispanics would support them today (White WASP Republicans came off as anti-immigrant, and the Democrats' progressive economic policies - especially in cities - helped them out economically, which is what matters most to voters in dire situations) - are now Republican-leaning groups, because those people don't feel alienated from the majority.

However, the GOP of the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s took a decidedly more liberal tone on immigration, and I don't think Italian and Irish Americans warm up to them if they don't.  So, take note, 21st Century GOP.

Asian Vote will be Dem for a long long time because of where they live: San Francisco, Bergen County, NJ, New York City, and Northern Virginia.

[hopper]

Also Hispanics are overwhelmingly concentrated in states like Texas, California and New York that are not currently competitive so they have less impact on the election than thought because they are inefficiently located for the Electoral College.

Well Arizona as well.

[hopper]

As Hispanics assimilate (just like the Irish, Italians, and Jews did), they will become part of the white mainstream (at least the majority of Hispanics who have white skin), so America will never truly be majority-minority (or anywhere close to it).

This might have happened... then Trump came alone.  See California over the last 20 years for more on this topic.

-Californian Hispanics are strongly Democrat because California's non-Hispanic Whites are strongly Democrat. California is filled with liberal elitists, including some of the first non-Jewish ones to switch to the Dems.

True the White Vote although shrinking as a % of CA's electorate has gone or swung more Dem than in a lot of other states of late.

[hopper]

As Hispanics assimilate (just like the Irish, Italians, and Jews did), they will become part of the white mainstream (at least the majority of Hispanics who have white skin), so America will never truly be majority-minority (or anywhere close to it).

This might have happened... then Trump came alone.  See California over the last 20 years for more on this topic.

Trump? Hispanics didn't vote any differently for Trump than they did for other GOP Presidential Nominees pre-Trump.

Jewish People-They are a D voting group although Romney won 37% of the Jewish Vote in 2012 but Trump only ran low-mid 20's with them.

[hopper]

If Kasich and Rubio don't count as "conservative" by your definition, clearly your definition is very narrow...

And wrong, LOL.

Anywho, I won't get into why I think being a protectionist in Coolidge's age is completely different than being one today (and, using Coolidge's own pro-business rhetoric on the issue, arguably closer to being for free trade today ... motive is ALWAYS more important than method, period), as I have discussed it so many times here.  Bottom line is that people like Eharding (and, ironically, Non Swing Voter on the other side of the aisle) are absolutely adamant that affluent Republicans - some of the voters who have been with the party the longest, LOL - will eventually just become straight-ticket Democrats, and the idea is ridiculous for a number of reasons that they aren't willing to listen to (two particularly funny ones are that this BS "college degree" correlation has a hell of a lot more to do with the AGE of the White voters in question than some magical political change that happens if you go to college and also that the exact types of people they think are going to be exiting the GOP HAVEN'T EXITED THE GOP AND ARE VERY INTENT ON STAYING, haha), but that is not the narrative either of those groups (Trumpist populists and self-deluded liberal hacks) want to push; neither furthers the grand battle they perceive themselves to be fighting.

-You know the state that voted Republican the most times was Vermont, right? It had a GOP Senator as recently as 2000. Times change.

Trump literally hired the CEO of ExxonMobil as his Secretary of State. He's one of the most pro-business presidents in history.

Yeah Trump is pro-business but he is a populist on the issue of trade for example.

[hopper]

So far, death patterns have actually been helping the GOP due to the death of the New Deal Democrats.

People who grew up under FDR have long since passed or become such a small portion of the population that its irrelevant. That happened over a decade ago. Over the past decade the people who have been increasingly dying off in large numbers if the Silent generation - people who grew up mostly under Truman and Eisenhower, who have all tended to skew more Republican. Within 5 - 8 years all of the remaining silent gen. will be over 80 years old, which would be a very small portion of the electorate.

Point is, since 2007-ish, the death rates have increasingly and very disproportionately affected Republicans due to the heavy GOP leanings of the silent generation. Because the GOP relies heavily on Boomers and the older portion of Gen. X, old voters "aging" out of the electorate will disproportionately affect the GOP for the next 20 - 25 years at least.

-If Romney won 50% of Latinos with no gains with non-college Whites, he would still have lost in the electoral college. Think!

It's more about long-term viability. Consistently scoring these kinds of numbers among Hispanics is going to eventually bring down states like TX, AZ and put states like NV/CO permanently off the map. Florida may also be another concern in this regard. Problems with minorities and Millennials is showing similar trends to other states slipping from the GOP's grasp, with the caveat here being that the constant influx of older voters and an electorate whose white voters have shifted more Republican has bought the GOP more time to dick around.

-

The GOP can't just write off these portions of the electorate. And waiting for them to assimilate and start voting like whites is ridiculous. It is basically the same as saying "we have no plan." There is no guarantee that will ever bring you close to the support you need long-term. It's also a pretty lazy approach that I can only imagine future Republicans will resent the older GOP generations for.

Yeah but Silents weren't always as Republicans as they are now. They either split 50/50 between the 2 parties from 1993-2008 or slightly leaned R. They have only swung heavily R since the 2008 Presidential Election. Silents actually voted for Clinton in '96 and Gore in 2000 that were 18 years of age when Eisenhower was President. Silents who were 18 when Truman were President voted for Gore in 2000 and were only 1 point more R than the overall Presidential Vote in 1996.

True Silents who were 18 years old when Eisenhower was President voted for Bush W. in 2004 but they voted at the Presidential Popular Vote average. Also, yes Silents voted for Bush W. in 2004 and were 3 points more R than the overall Presidential Popular Vote.

[hopper]

As Hispanics assimilate (just like the Irish, Italians, and Jews did), they will become part of the white mainstream (at least the majority of Hispanics who have white skin), so America will never truly be majority-minority (or anywhere close to it).

This might have happened... then Trump came alone.  See California over the last 20 years for more on this topic.

Trump? Hispanics didn't vote any differently for Trump than they did for other GOP Presidential Nominees pre-Trump.

Jewish People-They are a D voting group although Romney won 37% of the Jewish Vote in 2012 but Trump only ran low-mid 20's with them.

My point was more directed to the fact that in California the Governor at the time went after hispanics and ever since Hispanics there shifted markedly to the Democratic party... Trump has already shown signs of going after Hispanics, so I wouldn't be surprised if the group moves further to the Democratic party similar to the margins they get in California (70-30 or so).  If this happens it will be disastrous for Republicans.  They cannot lose black voters 90-10, hispanics 70-30, and asians 70-30 and expect to win nationwide elections going forward.  There are simply not enough white voters that they can convert to offset this.

Black Voters have been voting 90-10% D for 50 years and I don't think that's changing anytime soon. The Republicans get around 27-30% of the Hispanic Vote each Presidential Election nationally. In California I think the Republican Candidate gets 20-25% of the Hispanic Vote each Presidential Election.

No, that's a myth actually that the California Governor(Pete Wilson) and Prop 187 that the Hispanic Vote got more Dem. I read somewhere(I think it was National Review) that 23% of Hispanics identified as Republicans in CA in 1990 but in 1992 that number was only 12%. 33% of Hispanics actually voted for Prop 187 in 1994 and Pete Wilson got 21% of the Hispanic Vote but he actually did win 20% of the Black Vote that year.

The Asian Vote is only important in VA and NV. I do think with Rubio and Kasich a Republican Presidential Candidate could have done well in NOVA in order to win Virginia or at least come close to winning it but Trump was the wrong republican candidate for the state.

[hopper]

As Hispanics assimilate (just like the Irish, Italians, and Jews did), they will become part of the white mainstream (at least the majority of Hispanics who have white skin), so America will never truly be majority-minority (or anywhere close to it).

This might have happened... then Trump came alone.  See California over the last 20 years for more on this topic.

-Californian Hispanics are strongly Democrat because California's non-Hispanic Whites are strongly Democrat. California is filled with liberal elitists, including some of the first non-Jewish ones to switch to the Dems.

Yes and this realization highlights one of the problems to the strategy I see being proferred here a lot... which is... Republicans will have an easier time picking off more white voters than minorities in the future... no... there will always be a solid 30%+ of white voters who will be the Democrats' most loyal constituency based on some ideological reason (abortion, gun control, gay marriage)... also there are certainly sub-groups of white voters (LGBTQ, Jewish, etc.) that will probably continue to staunchly support the Democratic party, ensuring Democrats a consistent share of the white vote.  Make no mistake, if Republicans don't improve with minorities they are going to have a problem going forward.  The fact that Trump won a bunch of swing states by tiny margins does not change that fact.

I hate to continually use Virginia as an example, but this is the future... Republicans maxed out the white vote... the minority population kept growing...  Republicans couldn't counter it and they couldn't improve further among whites in NOVA who are ideologically too liberal to swing over.

Yeah but the state changed very little in terms of demographics from 2004 when Bush W. carried Virginia in the Presidential Election to 2006 when Jim Webb beat George Allen in the 2006 US Senate Race there.

[hopper]

Working class Whites, by how you both defined them, will not be a significant part of the GOP in 20 years.  The future of minority outreach is getting affluent minorities to appreciate conservatism that would benefit them.

-Affluent minorities do not and will not "appreciate conservatism" because they aren't conservative. The WWC is. Your predictions are quite far from reality. Would you have predicted in 1996 that the Dems would win DuPage County in 2012?

Hispanics actually vote more R the more money that they make. With Asian and Black People income means very little in terms of voting R vs D although the poorest Asians do vote more D than the Asian Vote as a whole.

WWC is conservative-Depends which WWC's you are talking about. If you are talking WWC Conservatives than yes but if you are talking about WWC Moderates than no. WWC's aren't conservative as a whole I don't think. Obama only lost WWC Moderates by 13% in 2012 where as Hillary lost them by double that by 26% from an article I read on Real Clear Politics.Com  a couple months ago.

[hopper]

EHarding, you keep mentioning Williamson County, TN as an example of an upper-income place that voted against Trump in the primary and then refer to these types of places as places that will eventually be Democratic strongholds.  Do you really expect Williamson County- which The Daily Caller ranks as the most conservative place in America- to become Democratic territory?

-By fits and starts, eventually. Not in 2024, but maybe 2036. The model for this is DuPage county, IL. Nearly the same percentage of Williamson County, TN voters went for HRC in 2016 as DuPage County, IL voters went for Michael Dukakis. Twenty years after 1988, DuPage County, IL voted Dem for the first time ever -and will stay that way on the presidential level for a long, long time. But I expect Delaware County, Ohio and the Texas suburbs to flip first. Who will be Texas's Democratic John Tower, I wonder?

I don't know if I am going off on topic here but without Cook County and it wouldn't matter how DuPage County votes Illinois is probably politically like Missouri.

[hopper]

Demographics is destiny,  Part 87744081116664327 - as the Democratic Party controls quite close to absolutely nothing at any level of government.

I'm sure the Dems numbers will go up in 2018 with controlling Governors Mansions and Congressional Seats.

[hopper]

I think the fundamental disagreements about which groups are, which groups aren't, and which groups could potentially be conservative has to do with the fact that the different ideological factions of conservatism are splintering and in the process of potentially realigning. The foreign policy conservatives are already some of the most alienated from the current shift under Trump, which is why so many of the former Reagan through Bush Jr. era security-intelligence community and state department officials overwhelmingly backed Clinton. Socially moderate, fiscal conservatives were also appalled by Trump and swung against him in many suburbs across the nation during the election, and this is the group that has the greatest potential for even further alienation from the conservative coalition. College-educated Whites compose a rather large percentage of this branch of the conservative coalition, and college educated whites are far less receptive to authoritarian populism than working class whites.

And then there's the social conservatives, who I would argue are the true lifeblood of the Republican party, and also the reason that the original conservative coalition is possibly on the verge of unraveling entirely. The Religious Right has so heavily affixed themselves to the Republican platform that they have essentially politicized the Republican party into a self-styled "Christian" party. No, you don't have to be Christian to be a Republican, but "traditional" Christian values are a hallmark of the Republican brand. The crux of the matter is that American society is increasingly not accepting traditional Christian values as the standard, and the Evangelicals, conservative Catholics, and conservative Mainlines have as a result fulfilled the role of cultural reactionaries. Trump has finalized the transfer of a new group of cultural reactionaries who aren't nearly as religiously minded yet still have political enemies in common with social conservatives: liberals, illegal immigrants, and Muslims.

Trump is now overwhelmingly backed by conservative Christians despite a cool reception at first, because he has promised to be their culturally reactionary champion. He has pandered to them in the most obscenely hollow of ways, yet that in itself should indicate how they will accept anybody who pantomimes their values no matter how insincere and shallow the display may be. They are desperate to turn back the tide of a diversifying, liberalizing, and increasingly pluralist society that doesn't follow their norms.

The threat here is that Trump could end up realigning the axis of the Republican party. Traditionally, social conservatives and social moderates in the right wing have found common ground on economic issues. Trump has the potential to shift that alliance into one between social conservatives and economic protectionists by having cultural reactionism usurp fiscal policy as the unifying link between factions. That would wholesale alienate the majority of your educated suburban, socially moderate Republicans that already swung against Trump in the general election. That should serve as an omen to what could happen to an even greater degree if cultural issues become the defining feature of the Republican party under Trump's auspices, because college-educated, fiscally conservative Republicans have more in common culturally with college educated liberals than they do with either social conservatives or the Trump faction.

I'm not saying this necessarily will happen, but if it does, it's the recipe for Republicans delegating themselves to the status of a minority party for at least a couple of decades. They would become the party of White Christian nationalism during a period of time when a rising tide of minorities, immigrants, Millennials, and college-educated Whites want nothing to do with White Christian nationalism. This is what the Republicans must keep in mind if they want to remain a viable party on the national level.

I think this analysis is 100% correct and there are already major signs of this shift... I was shocked by the margins Hillary won rich Republican towns in Fairfield County, CT.

The Trump strategy was viable in 2016 and perhaps will even be viable in 2020 because the trade off is OK for the short term (write off moderate suburbs in CT, CO, VA, IL but win more voters in MI, PA, etc. and you net more swing states)... but I agree this trade off is disastrous in the long term for Republicans... not just because there aren't enough religious white nationalists to support a national party but because then the GOP will also alienate the entire college-educated and higher class of people that controls big business, law firms, newspapers, media, technology, etc.

CT hasn't gone Republican in a Presidential Election since 1988 and it has been solid Dem at the Congressional Level since the 2006 mid-term elections. Same thing with IL in that a Republican Presidential Candidate hasn't win the state since 1988. I think if the Hispanic Population keeps growing as a % of the states population that IL might be enough for a Generic Dem Presidential Candidate to keep the state in the D Column for a long while even with Cook County losing overall in migration numbers.

Not enough religious white people-maybe.  Not enough white nationalists- no. Not enough nationalists-maybe.

The GOP alienates big business-I don't see that.
Law Firms-Attorneys donate to mostly Dems anyway.
Newspapers-Articles written in newspapers that are political are mostly written by Dems.
Media-Mainstream Media has always voted for Dems.
Technology-Maybe, but Silicon Valley is Dem anyways.

[hopper]

If Kasich and Rubio don't count as "conservative" by your definition, clearly your definition is very narrow...

-Rubio's conservative, Kasich is not. It is, thus, notable, that Rubio (much as I dislike him) voted for Trump and Kasich didn't.

Based on this post, all I can assume is that "whether or not they voted for Trump" is your only qualifier for "conservatism", which I still consider to be a very weird definition.

-Nope. I'm going by Congressional voting record here. Jeff Flake's conservative, for instance.

Okay, I'll bite. On which issues is Kasich not conservative on?

-Immigration, Medicaid expansion, Roe v. Wade, same-sex marriage, Common Core.

Immigration-He supports Immigration Reform-yes.
Medicaid Expansion-Yes he supported Medicaid Expansion in his state.
SSM-He supports traditional marriage but is not hardline against SSM like other Republicans are on the topic.  He attended a gay friends wedding.
Common Core-He likes the ideas of the program but not the program itself.
Abortion-He did defund Planned Parenthood in his state but supports exceptions on the topic like rape and incest.

[hopper]

I don't respond to EHarding when he rambles about his devotion to this ideal of white America and his constant fears of "New Mexico" America but a funny thought about the white vote struck me. Atlasia is vastly majority white, American, and would run into the 60s-70s leftist. I can't help but wonder if Atlas liberals represent the constant of 35-38% whites who vote Democratic in federal elections. If that's the case, Atlasia Democrats and minorities might be enough to derail EHarding's hopes.

Oh, and Trump won 18-29 whites by less than Romney did. They were 47-43% Republican, compared to 51-44% Republican in 2012.

-It's called Massachusetts. I know it exists, and why: the marriage gap+liberal elitism. I prefer current New Mexico to current Massachusetts, but only due to the rent differential.

That 18-29 Whites number sounds dubious; HRC was a much worse candidate for young people than Barry O. The Upshot says White northern voters 18-29 without a college degree had the strongest anti-Dem trend of any age group:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/upshot/how-the-obama-coalition-crumbled-leaving-an-opening-for-trump.html?_r=0

I'm sure your world is just as insulated as mine based off of all of these comments, but you act like there aren't just as many elitist conservatives as there are elitist liberals.  You're wrong.

-There are as many rich conservatives as there are rich liberals, but elitism isn't quite the same as wealth. Yes; conservative elitism still exists in the U.S.; the Mercers are a big example. Williamson TN and Delaware OH haven't gone Dem yet. But a whole lot of traditionally Republican elites really showed their true (liberal) colors when Trump appeared before them. Just look at East Grand Rapids.

Considering you can't put TRUE tolerance (not SJW crap) on a simple left-right scale, a lot of those people - in addition to being turned off by Trump's, err, less-than-sophisticated language toward certain Americans - opposed Trump on the grounds that he wasn't ENOUGH in line with conservative thinking on issues such as entitlements, trade and foreign policy, so that's just a load of shlt.  Your ideology and that of Trump's most loyal supporters might be in the right at the end of the day, but conservatism is not officially defined by whatever angry Whites are feeling, in fact quite the opposite.  White Southerners who felt left behind during the Great Depression weren't conservatives, period.  Non-college Whites who flocked to Trump, similarly, don't get to redefine an ideology to describe whatever the hell they think.

-RINO, people like you did not vote for HRC because she was an avatar of conservatism. Look at your political matrix score. Now look at mine. These people were merely Carter-hating low-tax liberals. I'm not a fan. As for the True Conservatives, every single county in Indiana that went for Cruz in the primary trended towards Trump in the general. And every county that trended against Trump in Indiana had a Kasich vote share above that of Indiana as a whole. It wasn't conservative Republicans that crossed party lines this year to vote for HRC. It was the least conservative portion of the party. Just compare Kasich and Cruz's congressional voting records.

See that might be a problem in the future for Republicans in that are people are moving to cities which are Dem and suburbs around the cities which is where the least Conservative parts of the Republican Party are located. People aren't moving to counties which Cruz won and that trended towards Trump. Republicans might have to have modify their policies on the Federal Level sooner or later because of where people are moving to currently.