{"id":650,"date":"2012-11-27T11:26:51","date_gmt":"2012-11-27T16:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=650"},"modified":"2012-11-27T11:26:51","modified_gmt":"2012-11-27T16:26:51","slug":"why-the-right-is-wrong-about-the-gops-present-and-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/11\/why-the-right-is-wrong-about-the-gops-present-and-future.html","title":{"rendered":"Why the Right is Wrong about the GOP’s Present and Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the presidential and senatorial defeats it suffered this past Election Day, the Grand Old Party has been wrapped in the throes of an identity-crisis.<\/p>\n

The thing of it is, far from being the epiphany that the usual talking heads on the right are making it out to be, the identity-crisis to which they speak is the very same crisis over which they have been perspiring for decades now.\u00a0 It is the same crisis of identity of which Republicans become acutely conscious at least every four years\u2014whether they win or lose.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

From all of the moaning and groaning, a common refrain can be gotten: The Republican Party must win over non-whites or else.\u00a0 On this score, Democrats and Republicans agree.<\/p>\n

Yet as is almost always the case with conventional wisdom generally, this piece of conventional wisdom in particular is deeply flawed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The speciousness of the conventional wisdom derives, not from what it says, but from what it fails to say.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For one, the nation\u2019s changing racial demographics of which Republican and Democrat alike can\u2019t seem to stop talking are not the forces of nature that the pundits\u2019 tone would suggest.\u00a0 Asians and Hispanics\u2014especially the latter\u2014owe their growing numbers in no small measure to American immigration policy, specifically, immigration policy since 1965.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Until this juncture in our history, our immigration policy had always favored immigrants of European stock.\u00a0 But even throughout this time, there were several moments\u2014like in 1924\u2014when immigration was halted so as to allow for assimilation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In glaring contrast, the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 assigned pride of place to Third World immigrants, about 90% of whom have constituted all immigrants to the U.S. over the span of the last five decades. Of these non-white immigrants, the vast majority stems from below our southern border.<\/p>\n

Since 1965, not only has the American government refused to arrest the flow of immigration.\u00a0 It has actually encouraged<\/em> it via the non-enforcement of its laws, the allocation of all manner of goodies (entitlements) to illegal<\/em> immigrants, bilingualism, and the granting of amnesty in one form or the other.<\/p>\n

The point is this: unlike the shifts in the Earth\u2019s tectonic plates, the tectonic-like shifts in America\u2019s racial demographics are the products of design.\u00a0 <\/em>They are the results of policy. <\/em>This means that something can be done about them.<\/p>\n

The conventional wisdom is mistaken in another respect. \u00a0To hear the talking heads, particularly the Democratic talking heads, it is hard not to think that underlying all of the fatalistic chatter over the hemorrhaging of the white vote is the desire to expedite this pattern along.\u00a0 Some perspective here is desperately needed.<\/p>\n

Although blacks, Hispanics, and Asian voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama (93%, 71%, and 73% respectively), with just 59% of the white vote, Mitt Romney still lost the popular vote by only 2%.\u00a0 In short, he would have defeated Obama handily had he garnered just 61% of white support.<\/p>\n

This he could have<\/em> done.\u00a0 At any rate, he stood a far greater chance of doing so than any Republican stands of increasing appreciably their party\u2019s share of non-white support.<\/p>\n

Sean Trende, of Real Clear Politics, <\/em>has noted that over six million fewer whites showed up at the polls this year than in 2008.\u00a0 These whites dislike Obama, he notes, but, thanks to the President\u2019s negative campaign strategy against his rival, they aren\u2019t too keen about Romney either.\u00a0 Romney, these jaded white voters believe, really is the aloof, vulture capitalist that Obama depicted him as being.<\/p>\n

Trende\u2019s analysis is cogent as far as it goes.\u00a0 But it only goes so far.\u00a0 Romney, like the typical Republican that he is, took these whites\u2019 votes for granted. If their perception of him was flawed, it was up to him to rectify it.<\/p>\n

And he could have.\u00a0 He could have fought back against Obama\u2019s smear campaign by speaking to those issues\u2014affirmative action, Third world immigration (legal and illegal), crime, etc.\u2014that are near and dear to the hearts of just those white voters who decided to stay home on Election Day.\u00a0 In doing so, he could have knocked out several birds with one stone as he advanced themes that were simultaneously conservative and American while speaking to the precarious economy in a way that would resonate with such voters. (The language of national debts and deficits and all of the zeros that it entails just isn\u2019t the stuff of which the passions of the average working man or woman are made.)<\/p>\n

Radically revise current immigration policy and genuinely work <\/em>for an ever greater portion of the white<\/em> vote.\u00a0 This is what the Republican Party must <\/em>do if it wants to survive.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the presidential and senatorial defeats it suffered this past Election Day, the Grand Old Party has been wrapped in the throes of an identity-crisis. 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