The Death Rattle of the Republican Party

What we will be witnessing in the upcoming months will be the end of the Republican Party as we know it.

Time and demographics are not on their side.

As Peggy Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

What happens to the Republicans in 2008 will likely be dictated by what didn't happen in 2005, and '06, and '07. The moment when the party could have broken, on principle, with the administration – over the thinking behind and the carrying out of the war, over immigration, spending and the size of government – has passed. What two years ago would have been honorable and wise will now look craven. They're stuck.

The Bush/Cheney war has made sure that college-age youth, aka "The Millennials" have been pushed to the Democratic party (that, along with the Internet and its values of freedom of expression and color-blind online communities).

And note that when I refer to the Republican Party, I do not mean conservatism.

As Noonan wrote:

"This was a real wakeup call for us," someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York Times. This was after Mississippi. "We can't let the Democrats take our issues." And those issues would be? "We can't let them pretend to be conservatives," he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.

Racial demogaphics are such that the Republican strategy of demonizing Latinos in the illegal immigration debate means that the majority of this electorate leans Democratic as well. And we all know that the browning of America is what the future holds.

The sad part for the Republicans, is that a lot of these black/brown voters would self-identify as socially conservative. A sizable number of black voters are churchgoing Christians, many Latinos are pro-life. However, the race based tactics of the Southern strategy and the nasty anti-immigrant tone have pushed these voters over to the Democratic side. (Really, the Republicans have majorly blown it with the Latino vote by choosing to pander to anti-immigrant fears. They might have been able to make greater inroads had it not been for that.)

The Republican Party has played the card of being the party of the white majority for a long time now. That hand depends on an disinterested, apathetic electorate with low black voter turnout in the South, along with a youth vote that doesn't show up to the polls.

However, that is not the case in this election. Black voters are excited and enthused. And a Southern strategy based on race-baiting and attacking either Barack Obama or his wife, Michelle, will only serve to piss black people off and make them even more determined to get to kick out the racists.

And we've all seen the bright, shining, hopeful faces of those young college-aged voters. These are voters who will have the time and energy to canvass, who will have the passion to sway their undecided family members. They will be educated and articulate about the issues, and will be an attractive face for the Democratic Party.

The main reason the Republicans are doomed, however, is because they have neglected to reach across the aisle into other ethnic groups. They've been playing their white race card so long, they don't have a credible Latino, African-American or Asian (or even a woman candidate!) and until they can grow a few (it has to be more than one) in their ranks, they will be at a disadvantage for many years to come.

Basically, the Republicans are screwed...and they know it.

Obama Effect: Energized Black Voters Could Overturn GOP in South

From New York Times:

The sharp surge in black turnout that Senator Barack Obama has helped to generate in recent primaries and Congressional races could signal a threat this fall to the longtime Republican dominance of the South, according to politicians and voting experts.

...[I]n Southern states with large black populations, like Alabama, Mississippi and Virginia, an energized black electorate could create a countervailing force, particularly if conservative white voters choose not to flock to Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, predicts “the largest black turnout in the history of the United States” this fall if Mr. Obama is the nominee.

To hold these states, Republicans may have to work harder than ever. Already, turnout in Democratic primaries this year has substantially exceeded Republican turnout in states like Arkansas, Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

Some analysts suggest that North Carolina and Virginia may even be within reach for the Democratic nominee, and they point to the surprising result in a Congressional special election in Mississippi this week as an indicator of things to come.

With the strong support of black voters, a conservative white Democrat, Travis W. Childers, scored an upset victory in that race, in a district held by Republicans since 1995. Kelvin Buck, a black state representative who helped the Childers campaign, said he saw a “level of enthusiasm and energy” that he had not seen before from black voters — significantly motivated, he said, by a recent Republican anti-Obama campaign.

Read more here

GOP "Southern Strategy" Dying?

The South might go from red to purple.

From New York Times:

Across the South, Barack Obama’s smashing primary victory in North Carolina last week reflects a new reality — a half-century of rising Republican red tide has crested, with signs of receding.

A week ago yesterday, Democrats won a special Congressional election in a Louisiana district held by Republicans since 1974. That outcome might well be replicated Tuesday in Mississippi, where a biracial Democratic coalition is optimistic in the second round of another special Congressional election.

...In response to Mr. Obama’s energizing of black Southern voters, enlightened self-interest may well convince many of the region’s undecided superdelegates to endorse him. Over the last two years, there have been little-noticed Democratic gains in Congressional and state legislative elections across the South, as the solid black Democratic base has been joined by whites disenchanted with the Bush administration. New concern about the economy may be adding momentum.

Read more here

Barack's Victory Speech in South Carolina

Race and the GOP

The GOP has a long history of appeasing a far-right racist vote. From Paul Krugman in the New York Times:

But the reality is that things haven’t changed nearly as much as people think. Racial tension, especially in the South, has never gone away, and has never stopped being important. And race remains one of the defining factors in modern American politics.

Consider voting in last year’s Congressional elections. Republicans, as President Bush conceded, received a “thumping,” with almost every major demographic group turning against them. The one big exception was Southern whites, 62 percent of whom voted Republican in House races.

And yes, Southern white exceptionalism is about race, much more than it is about moral values, religion, support for the military or other explanations sometimes offered. There’s a large statistical literature on the subject, whose conclusion is summed up by the political scientist Thomas F. Schaller in his book “Whistling Past Dixie”: “Despite the best efforts of Republican spinmeisters to depict American conservatism as a nonracial phenomenon, the partisan impact of racial attitudes in the South is stronger today than in the past.”

Republican politicians, who understand quite well that the G.O.P.’s national success since the 1970s owes everything to the partisan switch of Southern whites, have tacitly acknowledged this reality. Since the days of Gerald Ford, just about every Republican presidential campaign has included some symbolic gesture of approval for good old-fashioned racism.

Thus Ronald Reagan, who began his political career by campaigning against California’s Fair Housing Act, started his 1980 campaign with a speech supporting states’ rights delivered just outside Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered. In 2000, Mr. Bush made a pilgrimage to Bob Jones University, famed at the time for its ban on interracial dating.

And all four leading Republican candidates for the 2008 nomination have turned down an invitation to a debate on minority issues scheduled to air on PBS this week.

Read more here

Black Farmers' Vote Could Win South for Obama

From The Hill:

Presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has taken a leading role on a major civil rights issue affecting black farmers that could give him a boost in Democratic primaries in South Carolina and other states in the South.

The issue is the landmark Pigford settlement between historically disenfranchised black farmers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Signed in 1999, the settlement was intended to make up for decades of discrimination in which black farmers were denied USDA loans and credit while white farmers were granted help.

The Pigford settlement, an obscure issue to most voters, doesn’t even merit an entry on Wikipedia. It is critical, however, among some key Democratic constituencies in the South.

“I have yet to do a town hall meeting and not have someone ask me about the settlement,” said Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), who helped bring the matter to Obama’s attention. “It’s a supremely large issue in the black rural community in the South.”...

...National Black Farmers Association President John Boyd said Obama’s position as a leader on the Pigford issue could “absolutely, unequivocally” help him politically.

“I think this will help Obama with black voters split between Hillary Clinton and Obama,” said Boyd, who said he was happy to see Obama speak out publicly on Pigford because there have been too few champions of black farmers in the Senate.

Read more here:

Black Voters Moving Away from Clinton Towards Obama

In a recent South Carolina poll, the results have shown that black voters are more and more in support of Barack Obama. From the Times and Democrat:

"Early on, African-Americans threw their support to Hillary Clinton, primarily based on the Clinton legacy. However, as African-American voters have gotten to know Barack Obama, support for him has increased significantly. The real tipping point in the Democratic primary election may be undecided African-American female voters -- there are many more African-American female undecideds than males, and Clinton and Obama are dead even among African-American women. It may literally come down to whoever gets the African-American female vote.

I believe Hillary is running on two things: 1) name-brand recognition; and 2) Bill nostalgia.

The problem that Hillary is facing though, is that a lot of people have already made their minds up about her, and I don't think her numbers can move too far from where they are right now. Also, there's the reality that Hill is not Bill--and using her husband as an attraction to draw people in will only go so far.

There are a lot of people out there (especially those across the digital divide who don't get their information from the internet), who simply don't know WHO Barack Obama is. They have all sorts of misconceptions, like "Is he a Muslim?" or aren't aware of his background as Constitutional scholar, civil rights attorney, and community organizer.

But Obama has nowhere to go but up. Once people get to know him, his numbers will only rise.

Why Barack Obama Can Win the South (and the Presidency)

Dirty tricks and Karl Rove’s genius for pitting neighbor against voting neighbor weren’t the only things that helped Bush get elected president twice.

Hillary Clinton is stealing a page from Rove’s playbook by running a national primary campaign and presenting her candidacy as "inevitable," according to Rove colleague Mark McKinnon.

Bush lite? Maybe there’s something to that.

But there’s one Rove strategy Hillary will have trouble imitating. In an NPR interview last week, McKinnon argued that pundits who say Rove put Bush over the top in 2004 by appealing only to the Republican base miss the point.

From NPR:

“If Karl Rove had run a base election then John Kerry would have been president.”

The way Rove won was by EXPANDING the Republican base by 11 million new voters,

McKinnon continues:

“You don’t do that through a base election, you do that through reaching out to new voters with new messages and micro-targeting and adding to the rolls. So the Democrats ran a perfect strategy and turned around and realized that they had run a base strategy and the Republicans reached out to new voters.’’

So who’s the candidate who can expand the Democratic voter base and win? Not Clinton, she represents the Democratic status quo, much like Kerry did. Obama has already demonstrated he can bring in new voters, just look at how he’s brought new donors and voices (like yours truly) into the political process.

Obama’s been campaigning in the South, and that’s one reason why former Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder, a Democrat now mayor of Richmond, said last week on CNN he’s “leaning so strongly’’ toward Obama.

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

"I think that the Democrats for so long have written off the South. They wrote off Virginia . . . We are not a red state. This is not a backward state. The South is not backward. The South is the birthplace of many people who have gone to other places, but the South is also America. And people in the South want representation."

C'mon Dems, the math isn’t that hard to figure out.

The three-way race with Obama and Edwards benefits Hillary by letting her capitalize on name recognition while obscuring the limits of her appeal.

Not so in a general election, where she becomes Kerry. Not only is there little enthusiasm for her among the huge reservoir of non-voters, her crossover appeal with independents who DO vote is nil. Obama can win, she can’t. This interview with Donna Howe, a 49-year-old mother in Colorado who voted for Bush, sums it up.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Like many of her neighbors, Howe is an independent voter who is frustrated by the direction of the country, nervous about national security -- and open to a Democratic candidate "with good ideas on healthcare and a reasonable plan to deal with the Iraq war."

...some independents like Howe, the Highlands Ranch mother, may be ready to vote for a Democrat. In Howe's case, that's unless the nominee is Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, whom she faults for staying with former President Clinton after his affair with a White House intern.

"I have no idea who I'll vote for."