Good summing up from Paul Krugman.
In fact, I suspect that the underlying importance of race to the Republican base is the reason Rudy Giuliani remains the front-runner for the G.O.P. nomination, despite his serial adultery and his past record as a social liberal. Never mind moral values: what really matters to the base is that Mr. Giuliani comes across as an authoritarian, willing in particular to crack down on you-know-who.
But Republicans have a problem: demographic changes are making their race-based electoral strategy decreasingly effective. Quite simply, America is becoming less white, mainly because of immigration. Hispanic and Asian voters were only 4 percent of the electorate in 1980, but they were 11 percent of voters in 2004 — and that number will keep rising for the foreseeable future.
Those numbers are the reason Karl Rove was so eager to reach out to Hispanic voters. But the whites the G.O.P. has counted on to vote their color, not their economic interests, are having none of it. From their point of view, it’s us versus them — and everyone who looks different is one of them.
So now we have the spectacle of Republicans competing over who can be most convincingly anti-Hispanic. I know, officially they’re not hostile to Hispanics in general, only to illegal immigrants, but that’s a distinction neither the G.O.P. base nor Hispanic voters takes seriously.
Republicans had a shot to win the Hispanic vote, especially on socially conservative issues there is some common ground - but just like with black voters, the GOP has allowed their racism to cut off yet another voting bloc. At some point the rich white male demo is not going to carry them over the finish line any more.
As John Gibson has revealing pointed out in his urging of white people to breed more, what conservatives truly fear in immigration, affirmative action, and multi-culturalism in general is the loss of dominance of their main constituency: white Christian males.
And in the strictest survivalist sense, I can understand it. No one welcomes the loss of their own dominance or power. But as the demographic shift becomes more and more pronounced, their reaction to it will become more and more extreme.
For more on this subject, see what Digby has to say:
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Follow Your Instincts
by digby
Sometimes you have to see it to believe it:
LIMBAUGH: Here’s [caller] in Lake Orion, Michigan. Thank you for calling. Great to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. It’s great to talk to you. I talked to you once before. I’ve been listening to you for a couple of years now, and I think I’m getting brighter, but there’s a lot to be learned. I know I’m no expert in foreign affairs, but what really confuses me about the liberals is the hypocrisy when they talk about how we have no reason to be in Iraq and helping those people, but yet everybody wants us to go to Darfur. I mean, aren’t we going to end up in a quagmire there? I mean, isn’t it — I don’t understand. Can you enlighten me on this?
LIMBAUGH: Yeah. This is — you’re not going to believe this, but it’s very simple. And the sooner you believe it, and the sooner you let this truth permeate the boundaries you have that tell you this is just simply not possible, the better you will understand Democrats in everything. You are right. They want to get us out of Iraq, but they can’t wait to get us into Darfur.
CALLER: Right.
LIMBAUGH: There are two reasons. What color is the skin of the people in Darfur?
CALLER: Uh, yeah.
LIMBAUGH: It’s black. And who do the Democrats really need to keep voting for them? If they lose a significant percentage of this voting bloc, they’re in trouble.
CALLER: Yes. Yes. The black population.
LIMBAUGH: Right. So you go into Darfur and you go into South Africa, you get rid of the white government there. You put sanctions on them. You stand behind Nelson Mandela — who was bankrolled by communists for a time, had the support of certain communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia. You do the same thing.
CALLER: It’s just — I can’t believe it’s really that simple.
[...]
LIMBAUGH: Right. That’s exactly right. You’ve got it. You’ve got it. Now you just have to believe your own instincts from here on out.
—
I’m sure I don’t have to point out that there are no elected Democrats who “can’t wait to get us into Darfur” unless you consider Joe Biden’s passionate outbursts about Darfur in the debates to be proof of such a thing. In fact, Darfur is a human tragedy of epic proportions, happening right now before our eyes, and pretty much nobody, certainly not the political class of either party, is much interested in it. So let’s just set that aside.
The hideous, racist assumptions in that little “analysis” are so blatant that it’s startling, even from the disgusting Limbaugh. The charge that African American voters vote on the basis of African politics is so bizarre I don’t even know how to deal with it. And anyway, even if it were true, the fact that the Republicans are a bunch of racist pigs who insisted on supporting apartheid until the bitter end would likely have been the motive, especially since those same Republican racists couldn’t stop talking about welfare queens and running their political campaigns based on thinly veiled racist attacks. While I’m sure black Americans care about Darfur and South Africa as much as the next decent human being, they know very well that the Republican party is filled with racist haters like Limbaugh who despise them. Voting for the Democrats isn’t really that complicated in light of that.
And apparently, the only reason he and his bigoted ditto-head listeners can imagine that anyone would oppose apartheid in South Africa or be horrified at the genocide in Darfur is their own craven political interests. I’m afraid that says more about him than it does about Democrats.
Rush says, “you just have to believe your own instincts from here on out,” and I think we know exactly what that means. Look for more of this over the next few months as the Republicans make their case against “the Bitch,” “the Black” and “the Breck girl.” Limbaugh and Coulter and the boys will do this kind of crude dirty work for them, but there is going to be an awful lot of it that’s way more subtle.
Yes, it’s really going to be this bad.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/follow-your-instincts-by-digby.html
Rich white demo couldn’t carry a casket never mind an election.
As part of the poor white demo I think I have more on common with my next door neighbors (African Americans, African immigrants, Mexican immigrants other poor white people) then any ruling class white folks.
That said there are some very stupid white people who vote against their own economic interest because of boogieman reasons, like gay marriage.
Then again there are gay Republicans, go figure.
I wonder what code word they’ll cough up for Hispanics. “Illegal immigrants” is the current one, but way too obvious. Something more subtle like “welfare mothers” meant “black folks” back in the 1980s.
In re andrerastensi Respublicanensi: (yeah, I just came up with that for “In the matter of gay Republicans;” I’m proud): Think of it not in terms of social ostricism, but rather money, and it makes some sense. Gays, as a group, are quite well-to-do and well-educated. At some point, money talks more than sexuality.
The modern Republican party has been taken over by the old line big government Dixiecrats. Vote fraud, vote suppression, endemic corruption and white supremest sympathizers. I’d say their “southern strategy” got them more than they bargained for. What was it Thomas Jefferson said? “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
I think, in a lot of ways, an Obama-Richardson ticket would be a real nightmare for the GOP. It would maximize minority turnout, make vote suppression a non-starter(because it gives your opposition ammunition to paint you as racist, which alienates educated middle class whites, esp. women voters), and make it impossible to prevent the venom from spewing forth on right-wing talk radio,tv, blogs, and even some op-ed pages. At least a couple wingnuts in media would make career-ending “gaffes” that would make Imus’ look enlightened by comparison.
considering Kerry only got about 42% of the white vote last time, is there really a downside? I doubt Obama would get less than 40% of the white vote…