Pat Buchanan poses an either/or question.
From these Census figures, white folks are losing interest in politics and voting. Yet, whites still constitute three-fourths of the electorate and nine in 10 Republican votes.
Query: Is the way to increase the enthusiasm and turnout among this three-fourths of the electorate for the GOP to embrace amnesty and a path to citizenship for 12 million illegal foreign aliens?
Or is it to demand the sealing of America’s borders against any and all intruders?
Just asking.
Here’s the problem. The answer is neither. It doesn’t matter what they do; they’re screwed either way.
Because we have winner-take-all elections, we can really only sustain two parties over any length of time. It’s possible for one party to be essentially replaced by another, but it’s basically a binary system. The Republican Party can survive just fine, but conservatives cannot. They are either going to drive the GOP into oblivion, in which case some other party will replace them that can actually win elections, or they are going to be purged themselves.
There’s a third possibility, but it isn’t very attractive. The third possibility is that the Republicans will endure a very long period of sustained losing as they did in congressional elections for roughly sixty years between 1933 and 1994.
I don’t think that is imminent, however. What is already here is an Electoral College map that is pretty near impossible for the Republicans. And it is going to get worse every four years for as far as the eye can see.
I don’t blame conservatives for having principles. But the GOP cannot win with those principles on the national level. Insofar as the principles are malleable, the party can adjust and run on issues that have broader appeal. But they will find, increasingly, that it’s the conservative principles that have to be jettisoned, or at least shrouded, if they are going to prevail.
They ask the question: “How can we win without changing?”
The answer is that you can’t.
You can restrict access to the ballot but that just resulted in record black turnout. You can bash Latinos, but that could mobilize a sleeping giant that has a lot of uncast votes lying around. You can gerrymander districts, but that won’t win you the presidency. You can destroy campaign finance laws and try to have corporations buy elections, but Obama just crushed that effort.
It’s conservatism that is in its last throes. Whether the GOP will die with them is a separate issue.
So, support immigration reform or oppose it. It really doesn’t matter.
