Yesterday, while on Fox News Sunday, Mitt Romney ascribed his defeat in November to his campaign\u2019s failure to take \u201cour message to minorities, to Hispanic-Americans, African-Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doubtless, this is the conventional wisdom among Republicans.<\/p>\n
As I write this, I am listening to Bill Bennett\u2019s morning talk show.\u00a0 The host is speaking with City Journal\u2019s Heather MacDonald, discussing the electoral prospects of the Republican Party.<\/p>\n
MacDonald, to her credit, is quite sensible.\u00a0 Unlike many of her fellow partisans, she is well aware that it is primarily the promise of ever larger government\u2014and little else\u2014that lures the vast majority of blacks and Hispanics to vote for the party of Barack Obama.\u00a0 And, unlike her fellow Republicans, MacDonald seems to recognize the notion that her party will be able to transform legions of Hispanics and blacks into good little Republicans for the fantasy that it is.<\/p>\n
Yet conspicuously absent from this<\/em> discussion of the GOP\u2019s woes is any mention of a painful fact that is conspicuously absent from all such discussions:<\/p>\n Millions of Americans who have always voted Republican refused to do so during the last two national elections.\u00a0<\/p>\n In other words, the losses that the GOP has suffered cannot be attributed solely, or even primarily, to their abysmal showing among non-whites.<\/p>\n In fact, I would go even further on this score.\u00a0 Blacks have been voting overwhelmingly for Democrats for decades and decades, even as their percentage of the nation\u2019s population has remained relatively stable.\u00a0 So, this is nothing new.\u00a0 Neither is it news that Hispanics vote predominantly for Democrats.\u00a0 It is true that Hispanics constitute a larger portion of the country\u2019s population now than at any time during the past, but even this demographic change isn\u2019t nearly the seismic shift that it is often made out to be.\u00a0 Hispanics are only about 15% ofAmerica.<\/p>\n The point is this: even with black and Hispanic votes against them, Republicans were winning national elections handily until very recently.\u00a0 The problem is not that the GOP has failed to expand its base with new non-white voters<\/em>.\u00a0 The problem is that its base has contracted.\u00a0 <\/em>And it has contracted because it has lost <\/em>the support of millions of whites <\/em>who had voted for them until the elections of 2008 and 2012.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The omission of this tidbit from conversations over the future of the GOP is glaring.\u00a0<\/p>\n Republican politicians and commentators will eagerly flagellate themselves for failing to \u201cdo more\u201d in the way of minority \u201coutreach.\u201d But they are most unwilling<\/em> to acknowledge that the ranks of their party are populated mostly by whites.\u00a0 And they are that much less willing to speak of an outreach program to this <\/em>demographic.<\/p>\n The irrationalities of political correctness explain this to some extent. For a fuller explanation, though, we must turn elsewhere.<\/p>\n For Republicans to admit that they have hemorrhaged millions of white voters is for them to admit the reasons <\/em>for this.\u00a0 However, this is one task in which they would prefer not to engage, for when it comes right down to it, the reason for why legions of conservatives and libertarians abstained from voting for their party in \u201908 and \u201912 can be summed up in two words: Big Government. <\/em><\/p>\n Far from reducing the size and scope of the federal government, Republican reign under George W. Bush resulted in its expansion.\u00a0 Both domestically and, especially, internationally, the national government grew at a rate and to a size that it had never been before. Those scores of Republican voters who once turned to the GOP to protect the constitutional liberties for which their ancestors fought and died became disenchanted.\u00a0 They felt betrayed.<\/p>\n And so they refused to be treated as suckers again.<\/p>\n There is another point here that shouldn\u2019t be missed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Former Texas Congressman and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul was treated as persona non grata <\/em>by the establishment of his party.\u00a0 The latter paid a hefty price for this.\u00a0 Paul is the one national Republican figure who walked the GOP talk of \u201climited government.\u201d He also commanded a significant, and intensely devoted, following.\u00a0 No one\u2014not Sarah Palin, not Barack Obama\u2014could energize a crowd like Ron Paul.\u00a0 Moreover, many of his followers were young voters.\u00a0<\/p>\n Many, and maybe most, of these millions of Paul supporters were among those who sat the last election out.<\/p>\n If the Republicans want to be victorious once more, then they should spend more time looking within <\/em>their party, and less time looking beyond <\/em>it. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday, while on Fox News Sunday, Mitt Romney ascribed his defeat in November to his campaign\u2019s failure to take \u201cour message to minorities, to Hispanic-Americans, African-Americans.\u201d Doubtless, this is the conventional wisdom among Republicans. As I write this, I am listening to Bill Bennett\u2019s morning talk show.\u00a0 The host is speaking with City Journal\u2019s Heather…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n