GOP problem: 'Their voters are white, aging and dying off'

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/21/politics/gop-census-latino/index.html

GOP problem: 'Their voters are white, aging and dying off'
By Halimah Abdullah, CNN
updated 8:02 AM EDT, Mon May 21, 2012

Washington (CNN) -- When presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney appears before Latino small-business owners in Washington on Tuesday, he'll address a group whose explosive birth rates foreshadow a seismic political shift in GOP strongholds in the Deep South and Southwest.

"The Republicans' problem is their voters are white, aging and dying off," said David Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, who studies minority political engagement.

"There will come a time when they suffer catastrophic losses with the realization of the population changes."

Over the next several generations, the wave of minority voters -- who, according to U.S. Census figures released this week, now represent more than half of the nation's population born in the past year -- will become more of a power base in places like Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. That hold will extend across the Southwest all the way to California, experts say.

[titaniumsalute]

1. If they want to court blacks and Hispanics...they will need to change their platforms

If they change their platforms to court the blacks and Hispanics...then they become Democrats. So really the only thing they have to use to try to court the non-white vote is social issues like abortion and gay marriage.

[Ship of Fools]

2. And I bet the future of political races

is going to go 100% stealth candidates, and I fear a lot of people
aren't going to know what hit us.

[RC]

3. They have already done that with the take over of the Democratic party.

Very few actual Liberal Democrats left.

[LonePirate]

5. That is sad but true. There are not very many liberals here at DU any more.

[Botany]

7. Sorry that we are not living up to your needs

[NNN0LHI]

8. There never were many liberals here at DU

Always had a bunch of people here who call themselves liberals but they are not. They always become hysterical when their own ox is being gored. But when it was someone else getting screwed now so much.

Reaganites.

Want to know how to spot them? Its not hard. They are usually about my age(57), and they say they didn't really become aware and interested in politics until sometime after 2000. And anti-union as hell. Unless it is their own union. Then it becomes all Solidarity for them.

Don

[LoisB]

23. There is at least one real LIBERAL here.

66 year-old Black woman; into politics since 1964; refused to call myself a Progressive because I've never been ashamed of the LIBERAL label; probably left of Bernie Sanders; totally pro-union.

[xtraxritical]

37. I'm an old white guy, totally DEMOCRAT, totally pro-union.

[toddwv]

42. I'm a liberal progressive.

And proud of it.

[Populist_Prole]

43. I know what you mean

Want to know how to spot them? Its not hard. They are usually about my age(57), and they say they didn't really become aware and interested in politics until sometime after 2000. And anti-union as hell. Unless it is their own union. Then it becomes all Solidarity for them.

I know some like this. I call them "save the whales" liberals. They take up a lot of the poster boy liberal issues the ones conservatives like to charicture, but they are economic conservatives who ( at best ) are indifferent to the working class. At worst, they unabashedly sneer at them.

[provis99]

50. yeah, limousine liberals are a dime a dozen around here.

They get all worked up about some three-toed frog in california, or freak about about eating meat, and spend their time here ruminating on how great pot is, but when a working class issue like income equality pops up, suddenly its "fuck you, I got mine".

[Ship of Fools]

6. I agree, but I still get warm and fuzzy that

the prog caucus isn't completely dead (yet, anyway.)

[MrScorpio]

17. Their current problem is that they don't understand the needs of blacks and Hispanics

They think that all we're looking for is a handout and food stamps. Ask any GOP loving, white conservative and I'll bet you Kronas to Krispy Kremes that that's the answer that they'll give you.

[Ezlivin]

4. Voter ID laws are ready to help

Want to know why there's been a rush to enact laws to "protect the integrity of the vote"?

Hint: It's to protect the soft white voters.

[davidpdx]

51. Exactly, if they can't win honestly they cheat

They have been doing it for twelve years now.

By the way I hate the Quizinos ad at the top because I don't have one here in China and miss good subs.

[lunatica]

9. Moctezuma's Revenge.

[liberalnationalist]

10. whites are dying off

par example: I married a costa rican woman (she is whit) I'm white, and our girl is white, but she is 1/4 indian...although she is white does not make her caucasian in the southern fat white evangelical baptist mold...
my daughter is going to grow up liberal

non white babies out number whites now for the first time

I hope this puts an end to the evangelical rightwing movement

[madamesilverspurs]

11. Some of their aging voters are bolting.

Voters like my 93-year-old mother, for 72 years a very active party member, who just last month got so disgusted that she formally left the party. And she's hardly the only one to do so. Her closest friend is on the exec committee of their county republican party and has voiced her own dismay at the ignorance and nastiness of those who attend their gatherings.

With good reason Mom feels betrayed by the party, that sense of discomfort growing for the last several years. For the first time in her life she voted for the Democratic candidate for president in '08, but kept her republican registration in order to have access to conversations to try to reason with people. She knows full well that she is no longer welcome, but she also knows that they are the ones who closed the door. She's supporting Obama this year.

-

[LynneSin]

12. Only one flaw to that theory - these are people who don't believe in birth control

and are probably outbreeding us.

Look at the Duggar family. Nineteen kids and if those kids breed like their mother the Duggars will take over this country like a bad virus

[NNN0LHI]

14. Look at the bright side

With 19 kids the odds are at least one of them is gay.

Always a silver lining.

Don

[Surya Gayatri]

16. Exactly, Lynne, I fear that their natural rate of

attrition is being outstripped by their "quiverfull" breeding policy.

They know that's the only way they can compete demographically.

[treestar]

25. What about that guy with the 30 children?

Maybe we can take a lesson from him. Liberal men, get out there and breed! You can outdo the right wingers; they are limited to one mama.

[GeorgeWW3]

27. I was raised with eight siblings

and never thought for a moment to have more than two children. Out of nine kids only one has more than a few children himself. If I had eighteen siblings, I'm sure my first born would have been an only child.

Saw this on a Tombstone in a dream last night:
"GOP Lyin' and Cryin' 2010-2012 RIP"

[Bandit]

36. According to statistics I have read 98% of ALL women use or have used some form of contraception

It is not the rank and file that are anti contraception, it is the nuts at the top and fortunately there are not too many of them..

[diane in sf]

49. The next generations of these families will not have so many children. That's the way things

have trended for quite a while. The birthrate is dropping almost everywhere. Even in Bangladesh mothers only have around 3 children now, where they used to average around 6.

[SemperEadem]

53. I highly doubt it

even with them breeding like roaches, their contribution has been eclipsed by non-white births.

[Wellstone ruled]

13. This election cycle will shake the Liberal tree.

By the middle of August we will know what is left of us Progressives. Notice how the DNC is working overtime to marginalize us. They have been busting our mail boxes for donations,read the lit,geez,give me a break,you can smell DLC all over the paper.

[Kolesar]

20. That's not saying much.

I cannot figure out what you are trying to say.

[thelordofhell]

22. He/She is saying that She/He is more Liberal than you

And that you will perish in flames

[Kolesar]

24. "More bored"

is more likely

[treestar]

26. But what has that got to do with Republicans being old and white?

The Republicans are the ones who will have to modernize.

Thus the center can move left and the DLC stop being so centrist.

[Dawgs]

15. Wish it were true, but I feel they will only be replaced with more newly uninformed.

For instance, I'd love to see how many of today's older folks were once anti-war (Vietnam) but have voted Republican since Reagan.

[NNN0LHI]

19. I knew plenty of anti-war people during the 60's and 70's who weren't liberals

They just didn't like the idea of going to Vietnam and getting killed.

Nixon was reelected by a landslide right before he resigned.

And for years after he resigned I couldn't find one person who admitted voting for him.

My parents even stopped voting in the primary because they didn't want to identify themselves as Republicans any more.

Crazy world.

Don

[Kolesar]

21. The racists *are* dying out

That is the major change in America.

[Dawgs]

45. Racism is NOT why people vote Republican.

At least not any Republican that I've ever met.

[AlinPA]

47. Most of those I've met do; but as you say, it's not the only reason.

[aikoaiko]

18. I think we shouldn't count those eggs before they hatch.

Or assume those chickens will stay in our coop after a while (to stretch the metaphor).

For example, many of the 1st and 2nd generation Hispanics I know in GA lean left, but there is a lot of cultural conservatism consistent with GOP that could be exploited easily.

John K.

[treestar]

28. The Republicans could gain a lot of those voters if they would

drop the far right Ayn Randian economic conservatism. Interestingly, that's what they hang onto so loudly.

[Zalatix]

29. That's like saying "if only Christians would turn atheist".

Take out Ayn Rand and you have no GOP worth calling themselves the GOP.

[GeorgeWW3]

32. Drop Ayn Rand?

Are you crazy? Rand Ayn, the demonic spawn of Ron Paul, is the great white hope dope for the GOPE (Grand old Party Evil).

[RufusTFirefly]

38. Economic conservatism lies at the heart of the GOP

Most of the social issues that capture the headlines are simply part of a shameless divide and conquer strategy that keeps voters from joining together against the oligarchy and distracts them from realizing that while they're obsessing about Guns, Gays, and God, the party's power brokers are methodically picking their pockets.

[wryter2000]

30. I'll be an old, old lady 21 years from now

I hope I'm alive to see the Republican party die.

[GeorgeWW3]

31. I vote in the Republican Primaries

and although it makes me feel queasy to see "Republican" stamped on my voter ID card, I like that I get over $100 worth of junk mail I can throw away because it supports the USPS, a non taxpayer funded quasi government agency that actually serves ever single human being in the United States of America at a pennies on the dollar rate. But, in the General Election I'm a straight "D" ticket. It wasn't that way until twenty years ago, I actually voted for the individual back then until I discovered that the worst Democrat was better than the best Republican and that sucks.

[stupidicus]

33. that's old news

kinda like the brown demographic tsunami everyone is focusing on. The dying off of their older and graying white supporters only serves to accelerate the impact the browning of America is inevitably gonna have.

As I've seen it and argued it for years, both play a major role, or should, in an explanation for the move towards the rightwingnut cliff the repubs have been on for the last decade and more.

It has been imo, and as noted here before, a "last gasp" effort effort on their part to loot the lower economic echelons of as much money as they can before events overtake their ability to continue to do so, like "socialistic" solutions that things like health care, global warming, peak oil, resource wars (like those looming over water for example, as opposed to ones over oil like Iraq), etc, etc, etc, will inevitably mandate. This is why they are now taking hostages, like with the debt ceiling -- not directly outta this desperation so much as the knowledge that it will likely result in compromises serving the furtherance of their robbing agenda. They are buying time to build their coffers so that when things demand they be eroded, they'll be left with a larger pile after the Piper has his way.

The extremism we're seeing outta them is in response to the many existential threats to their political survival, the white priviledge that has sustained it, etc, that can no longer be ignored by them. I say they haven't been ignoring them, but rather that their behavior in our political world shows their acute awareness (for some time now) of the looming crisis to their stranglehold on political power and their numbered days as Puppetmasters, and behavior which is best seen as that of the cornered rat with zero to very few options of surviving completely intact and unharmed.

[sinkingfeeling]

34. The GOP knows this and this is why they're pushing their 'agenda' so

hard right now. They are seeking, in their death throes, to overturn the social contract and the Constitution.

[loudsue]

35. They're talking about a south that isn't the one I live in.

All those wingnut rambos have filled their kids' heads with so much rightwing bullshit, you'd think it was the Hitler Youth in North Carolina. Their cousins in Alabama, same. Their friends in Texas, same. There is a generation of radical rightwing youth that really do hate everything "regulatory", anything government does that holds them back from making their parents really proud.

Parents around here praise their kids, and say "see, junior gets it! He's such a smart boy! Not like some sissy liberal."

[RagAss]

44. And "junior" has a bright future....

Waxing a "sissy liberal's" car or waiting on his table. Poor dumb fuckers.

[Dawgs]

46. Are you talking about minorities, like in the original article. n/t

[loudsue]

48. No. I'm talking about the generational counterparts to the minority voters

The wingnut programmed white kids around here are spreading the culture of white supremacy to the other white kids.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

39. And, mostly male.

[marlakay]

40. They are trying to get the young

By a combination of fear, greed and religion.

It works for some but I know wives of the ones in it for money voting against their husbands because of women's issues.

Eventually they will have to be more open on social issues to get the middle but how do they do that and not lose the core that for many years now is so far right it's crazy.

I think they have a big problem. With every election more and more are open socially. I think it's why they are dumbing down America and cutting off voting as much as they can.

I am just surprised since this is a fair issue for everyone why dems don't fight harder on voting laws.

The republicans were smart to change the laws state by state, I just wish we were tougher to fight them.

[napkinz]

41. "Oh, so they're afraid ..."

[DCBob]

52. The GOP is well aware of this which is why they are trying to control the media..

so they can brainwash enough of us to still win elections. I think that strategy will work in many situations unfortunately.

[queenjane]

54. They obviously haven't met MY family

(White, by the way.) The younger generation has been poisoned by their elders. Racist, homophobic, fundie, mean-spirited. Suspicious of government. Irony of ironies, most are on some kind of assistance (Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment), because they lack education, have no jobs, refuse to leave the family "compound" to move where there ARE jobs, have children out of wedlock in their teens and hand 'em over to their parents & grandparents to raise. They blame all their problems on minorities, gays, liberals. My family reunions sound like a KKK rally.