End of The Aging Cracker

Will the Republican Party be able to pull itself, kicking & screaming all the way, into the 20th century? Obviously we can't expect the 21st yet, but they'd be in much better shape if they could get to 1970 or so.

What, for example, does Beltway Boy Mort Kondracke have to say?

But step 1 is to fire Limbaugh and his ilk as the intellectual bosses of the GOP. They shouldn't be muzzled, as some liberals want to do by reviving the "fairness doctrine" in broadcasting, just ignored more frequently. In recent years, Republicans have let right-wing talk-show hosts whip the GOP base into frenzies -- over immigration, brain-damage victim Terry Schiavo and same-sex marriage -- that have branded the party as troglodyte.

The result is that the demographic groups representing the future of American politics shifted decisively to the Democratic Party in 2008 -- Latinos, young people, the well-educated, moderates, working women, first-time voters, suburbanites and "seculars." As former White House political guru Karl Rove observed last week, "the GOP will find it hard to regain the majority" if it keeps losing Latinos. [...] At a briefing last week jointly sponsored by the "New Democrat" Progressive Policy Institute and Web site Democratic Strategist, author Ruy Teixeira said that the gist of his 2002 book, "The Emerging Democratic Majority," is now becoming reality. "Democrats are going where they're growing," he said, while Republicans are isolating themselves in a fading portion of the population -- old, white, less-educated, highly religious Southerners.

In other words, the people your grandparents moved to the city to get away from. And Mort neglects to mention rural. McCain didn't win any counties (or cities or some jurisdictional unit) w/ a population over 50,000.

Just as Mort is not a screeching loony, but a grizzled veteran of the Beltway interior & its cocktail parties, so are Cokie Roberts & her husband Steve, who have a wonderful, Parade magazine-style, easy to digest wrap-up of the election, & just which demographic groups Johnny Mac lost.

The lesson is clear: No party can win a national election depending mainly on voters who are pale, male and gray. As Jon Huntsman Jr., the Republican governor of Utah, puts it: "We're fundamentally staring down a demographic shift that we've never seen before in America."

One might almost say "The Party's over." Or even, "The Party's over, whitey!"

[W]ell-educated suburbanites [...] fault Republican leaders for overemphasizing some issues (abortion, same-sex marriage) while ignoring others (the environment, climate change).

Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, wrote recently in the Washington Post: "Unless the Republican Party ends its self-imposed captivity to social fundamentalists, it will spend a long time in the political wilderness."

[...]

YOUTH. Voters under 30 favored Obama by 66 percent to 32 percent, the biggest margin for any party since exit polling began in 1972. Underlying trends are even more threatening to Republicans. Younger voters are more racially diverse than their elders: Only 62 percent were white compared to 74 percent for the electorate as a whole. And they are more likely to be female and secular, both signs of Democratic tendencies.

What? The Sixties have come true at last? Young people are more intelligent than they act & appear? We're not holding our breath in anticipation.

As Republicans plot their return to power, one stark fact emerges from the 2008 election: They can't count on the white guys anymore. There are just not enough of them. And their influence will continue to diminish in the years ahead.

Well, that's a relief, for us & the nation. By the time the editor here, as an aging white male, is too old to wield any power there won't be any left for him to wield.