Demographics make it hard for conservatives to win?

[SteveT]

I'm going to combine a few things I've posted just to get more discussion.  Please bear with me, if you've read them, or if you haven't.

Obama's coalition is young voters, minorities and traditional liberals.   McCain's was older white voters (obvious problem with that demographic, they die).  If the 2008 election had been whites only, McCain would have won.   In 2008 the voters were 74% white, 26% minorities, in 2012 it's looking to be 70% white, 30% minorities.   That's a huge expansion of Obama's base through no other means than just demographics (i.e. not policy).   Furthermore, the success of Obama's campaign among young voters ages 18-29 was around 70%, some of these voters will obviously go the other way, but he's likely to keep most of them in 2012 when they will be the 22-33 age bracket.   The voters who are now 15-18 who couldn't vote last year will probably also follow their near peer group and vote for Obama again.

Having YOUR voters die off while the nation's demographics increase your opponent's has to be a nightmare situation for any political strategist.   Pat Buchanan of all people wrote a column about this noting that in 5 election cycles starting in 1992 18 States with 248 electoral college votes went Democratic EVERY time (This was called The Blue Wall in a noted paper), while 13 states with 93 electoral votes went Republican.   Imagine the difference for Karl Rove and James Carville.   Rove has to find 178 electoral votes to win, while Carville has to find only 23.   It's a huge uphill climb.

Because of increased legal Hispanics, how does a Conservative party win elections?   The party that woes the Hispanic vote will win in increasing numbers, and while Hispanics can be socially conservative on many issues, they love entitlement programs.    I'd be interested in anyone's reasonable (meaning real world) answers to how conservatives will win national elections in the future.

If you didn't read the thread I initially posted on you missed this:

makattak wrote:

Liberals plans are unsustainable.

Liberals don't breed at replacement rates.

Conservatives will win because liberals will die off. Your analysis is the near future. Long term, liberalism will die.


I had to look this up...

It's from the center for vital statistics, and the numbers quoted are yearly per /1000.   This is as 2006

Birth rate was 11.6 for non-Hispanic whites, 16.5 for non-Hispanic blacks, 14.8 for American Indians, 16.5 for Asians and 23.4 for Hispanics.[45]

[jackdanson]

I say no.  Obama won because a bunch of middle roaders wanted rid of Bush and didn't think Mccain was different enough from Bush, that was all.  Now that they see hopey-changey is a lot more of socialist-samey I don't think he is going to win again. (that all depends on who the Repubs run though)

Honestly if they run another Bush/Mccain/Palin type I'll scream.  Too close to the dems, time for some actual conservatives.

Also older white people are the ones who tend to show up to the polls in greatest numbers, making their voice dispoportionate.

[MicroBalrog]

Either you can reach beyond your current demographics, or you deserve to lose anyway.

[roo_ster]

Well, that's what the pro-illegal alien forces are doing: reaching beyond the citizen demographic in the hopes of amnesty and a bunch of new Dem voters.

[Monkeyleg]

Minorities and younger voters won't turn out in the same numbers as 2008. The novelty of the first black president has worn off, and those two groups are historically less likely to vote than other groups.

Unless Obama changes course dramatically and soon, independents will break for someone else.

[Balog]

The party that woes the Hispanic vote will win in increasing numbers, and while Hispanics can be socially conservative on many issues, they love entitlement programs.

Your statement is factuially incorrect, at least about legal Hispanics not the criminals who snuck over the border.

Honestly if they run another Bush/Mccain/Palin type I'll scream.  Too close to the dems, time for some actual conservatives.

What in Palin's record do you find unconservative?

Either you can reach beyond your current demographics, or you deserve to lose anyway.

I don't see the R's reaching out to their own demographic all that much...

[longeyes]

It's not just about entitlement, it's about tribalism.  More and more the world is reverting to racial, ethnic, and religious alliances and allegiances.  This, of course, is exactly what the Founders were trying to reach beyond.  Unfortunately, our "educated" classes, who should know better, are precisely to people who have increasingly embraced a vision of humanity as carved out into neat sociological categories that divide rather than unite.  Multiculturalism is the new religion of this tribalism.

[Perd Hapley]

    I'd be interested in anyone's reasonable (meaning real world) answers to how conservatives will win national elections in the future.

For one thing, we must avoid thinking like Democrats.  Conservatives will never win by trying to appeal to various demographic groups.  Unlike the Democratic Party, whose platform depends on granting favors to selfish interest groups, conservatism is a political movement that seeks a just, humane, reasonable, limited government.  To focus too much on the movement's appeal to various factions just doesn't fit that very well. 

Honestly if they run another Bush/Mccain/Palin type I'll scream.

While Bush and McCain are much the same "type," Palin is a different type.  That being the case, I can only assume you were thinking of someone other than Palin. 

[Jamisjockey]

The party that woes the Hispanic vote will win in increasing numbers, and while Hispanics can be socially conservative on many issues, they love entitlement programs.

You have a cite for this?

Oh, and its "woos", not "woes".   

[AJ Dual]

The Republicans have pretty much won the gerrymandering/redistricting war in the past ten years, and they consistently win in individual fundraising.


Also, major Democrat backers like unions and the MSM have been slowly dying.

Which is the reason behind everything they've been doing lately, like healthcare, which if it gets the camel's nose in the tent on a public option/single-payer system they'll be in the position of "owning" the health-care electorate, much the way they do the AARP/Senior segment with how they claim when they want to increase Medicare by 10% and the Republicans only want 5%, the Republicans want "cuts".

They hope to put the whole nation in that group they can scare.

Also add to that the universal voter drives, opposing voting ID, illegal alien amnesty, and card-check to try and unionize Walmart etc., it almost starts to look like desperation.

[MechAg94]

IMO, if the Republicans get back to a limited govt, fiscally conservative message and actually walk-the-walk in addition to talking, they can win anywhere.  It is when the got away from that thinking and started with the "big tent" mind set that they lost. 

I am not saying they shouldn't campaign with all cultural groups in the US, but they should carry a consistent message across to all those groups and sell it. 

I think I heard someone mention that the vote against gay marriage in California was very heavily favored among black and hispanic people.  One radio guy I heard was saying that if they can figure out how to get those voters on their side in the general election, Republicans can even win there.

[Balog]

IMO, if the Republicans get back to a limited govt, fiscally conservative message and actually walk-the-walk in addition to talking, they can win anywhere.  It is when the got away from that thinking and started with the "big tent" mind set that they lost. 

Yup. Pandering to demographics is the D's specialty, and it's a game the R's can't win.

[Perd Hapley]

Yup. Pandering to demographics is the D's specialty, and it's a game the R's can't win.

This.

[brimic]

I sometimes carpool with a coworker of mine who is about 10 years younger than me. He has always ranted from a left wing viewpoint and I just sat and listened for the most part.  Last week we rode to work together as he was on 1st shift for a day because of News Years early shutdown. "You ever listen to Mark Levin?" I told him sometimes, when I'm working in the shop later at night. He then said " I like that guy and his viewpoints, I like listening to Rush on the way in to work too." I asked him about his lefty politics and hatred of Bush etc. He replied that "He thought that Obama was a good change at the time, but has come to realize that democrats have crossed his personal lines in the sand and found that their liberal philosophies were in direct conflict with his well being." I just nodded my head.

Often enough, young liberal voters do see the light.

[jackdanson]

What in Palin's record do you find unconservative?

I like Ron Paul, we'll just put it that way.

::dons flame suit:: (looks like wookie suit, but resists flames)

I don't have a huge problem with Palin, I don't think she can win though.  I don't like that she supported the first bailout, that was unconservative.

[MechAg94]

Honestly, at a VP candidate, I don't think she was in a position to speak on anything but McCain's platform.  I think that goes with the job. 

I think Palin can win at some point, but she seems to be someone the liberals and media love to hate so it would be an uphill battle.  If the Republicans ever need a distraction, she is a good choice. 

[longeyes]

At the current pace of the Great Unfolding by 2012 we will be looking for a leader who is made of sterner stuff than even Sarah P.

[mordechaianiliewicz]

The demographics will make it hard for Republicans to win.... that was the whole point of the Immigration Act in the 1960s. While it was assumed by the Democrats that the population dynamics would remain much the same, they figured that immigration change things around. They didn't foresee (it seems, by reading their stuff), that their insistence in breaking down the church, increasing taxes, and supporting abortion would have a decimation effect on their numbers.

That is what has kept this as even as it has been.

If we can cut off immigration for even twenty years, or limit it to genocide victims who aren't going to be let in by anyone else, this can seriously be turned around. But, as it stands, the fact that Conservatives don't look at children as an imposition on their lives seems to be Conservatism's greatest strength at the moment.

[longeyes]

Children are a strength--but not if they are Wards of the State and de facto living get-benefits cards from a welfare state.  If we want to turn things around we're going to have to review and reform the whole concept of birthright citizenship now exploited by illegal aliens.

[zahc]

Not to mention public education.