Saturday, February 18, 2012

GOP Demographics

Bill King spells out the Republicans' problem in this Houston Chronicle column.

Memo to Republicans: There are not enough old, angry white people to win a national election.

The modest inroads the Republicans had made with African-Americans in the Bush years have pretty much dissolved with their relentless personal attacks on President Obama. Latinos, who Bush had very effectively wooed, are running for the Democratic hills and away from the vitriolic Republican anti-immigration rhetoric. And the roughly 2.5 million Muslims in the U.S., who had historically heavily supported the Republican Party, are now leaning towards the Democrats because of the demonization of their faith by many Republican candidates.

But the problem is that Republicans have not just turned off these ethnic groups. They have also alienated young people as well. Recent polling shows that younger Americans, primarily turned off by the Republican social agenda, heavily favor the Democratic Party.


This echoes similar statements made by conservative blogger David Frum on the likely electoral catastrophe for the GOP as it moves further and further to the right.

--Ballard Burgher

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