[Bret L]

((Simply put, there is no statistically significant nonwhite vote the
GOP is going to get no matter what, at least not in nationwide races,
and not in state governor races either. The Cubans in Miami were rabid
GOP voters of course, but most of them were white, or thought of
themselves as white people, who happened to have learned Spanish back
home and supported the GOP in hopes of ousting Castro and going back.
That generation has passed away largely and the kids don't see it that
way. Less than ten percent of any substantial nonwhite group you can
name consider themselves even fiscal conservatives and 20% of them
might conceivably vote GOP in the most favorable situation, which
means they aren't worth going after in terms of political capital. A
Big Win with Whites is the ONLY hope they have. Bret.))

The White People Party

by Ellison Lodge on August 24, 2009



"When Peter Brimelow was still at National Review, he wrote a piece entitled “Electing a New People” detailing how mass immigration is a disaster for the GOP. He opened with the line, “Demography is destiny in American Politics.” Few Republicans took him seriously at the time. And now when groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center smear Brimelow as a “racist,” they take the quote out of its “in American Politics” context.

The reason is that discussing racial and demographic differences in
voting patterns is slightly less taboo than other areas—such as
immigration or education. It’s nearly impossible to ignore the fact
that 88-95% of blacks vote Democratic while every Republican since
Barry Goldwater has won the majority of the white vote.

But even this area has become frequently sparse of intelligent content
in the age of Obama. The chatter is usually limited to the importance
of pandering to minorities—Hispanics in particular, and how the GOP’s
Southern Strategy to win working class whites that gave Nixon and
Reagan landslide victories was not only immoral but a losing plan.

But in the last few weeks, a number of analysts and strategists have
rediscovered the fact that winning white voters still matters. A July
20 study showed that in 2008, turnout among whites was down 1 percent,
1.5 percent among older whites. While much was made out of the 5
percent increase in black turnout, the total number of white voters
who stayed home was still much greater than the number of new black
voters who came out for Obama.

Coincidentally, that same day, prominent GOP strategist Bill Greener
wrote a typical pandering column for Salon entitled “My GOP: Too
white, too old to win.”

Brookings Institute demographer William Frey had some more thoughtful
reflections,

While the significance of minority votes for Obama is clearly key,
it cannot be overlooked that reduced white support for a Republican
candidate allowed minorities to tip the balance in many slow-growing
‘purple’ states. The question I would ask is if a continuing
stagnating economy could change that.

Of course, there are other factors besides the economy that will drive
white voters to the polls.

Two days later, President Obama told reporters that Cambridge Police
Officers “acted stupidly” in arresting black Harvard Professor Henry
Louis Gates for disorderly conduct. Even though he acknowledged he
didn’t know all the facts about the case, he said that the “long
history” of racial profiling is “just a fact.”
White Americans were outraged at the comments of their apparently not-
so-post-racial present. The reaction to the controversy was more
racially polarized than any event since the OJ Simpson verdict—but
this time, the anger was directed at the President.

Gallup polls show that Obama’s approval ratings have fallen 16 percent
among whites since he was elected. In the week following his attack on
Crowley, his approval slipped from 53 percent to 46 percent. A Wall
Street Journal poll showed that Obama’s approval among working class
whites have fallen 30 percent since January. A Rammussen poll showed
that only 22 percent of whites approved of Obama’s handling of the
incident, and only 21 percent agreed that the police treat blacks
unfairly. African Americans, in contrast strongly supported Obama’s
response (but they’d all vote Democrat anyway.)

Writing in the Washington Independent, libertarian journalist David
Weigel—who has often blamed the Republican electoral defeats on their
opposition to illegal immigration—wrote a piece entitled, “GOP Sees
Opportunity With White Voters After Gates Saga.” Weigel quotes GOP
Strategist George Fletcher,

He got really close to losing the image he has as a post-racial
president. For a few days, the question for a lot of people became,
‘Wait a minute. Is he the president of the United States? Or is he
just the president of minorities?

In addition to the disaffected white Obama voters who might vote
Republican, Fletcher added, “Three to four percent of the white vote
didn’t come out last time. They’re coming out this time.”
Weigel notes that the 70 targeted Republican takeover seats for 2010
are filled with “nine members of Congress elected before the Obama win
who represent Southern districts with sizable numbers of black voters”
along with “dozens of seats where the historic African-American
turnout of 2008 either pushed Democratic challengers over the finish
line or gave extra job security for longtime incumbents.”
Black commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson, author of The Ethnic
Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House, wrote a
piece entitled “The GOP’s White Guy Fix” for the Huffington Post. Mr.
Hutchinson argued that the GOP lost in 2008 in large part because
Bush’s policy alienated whites,

Elections are usually won by candidates with a solid and
impassioned core of bloc voters. White males, particularly older white
males, vote consistently and faithfully. And they voted in a far
greater percentage than Hispanics and blacks…

This strategy failed in 2008 only because of the rage and disgust
of legions of white voters at Bush’s horribly failed and flawed
domestic and war policies. This was more a personal, and visceral
reaction to the bumbles of Bush than a radical and permanent sea
change in overall white voter sentiment about Obama, the Democrats,
and the GOP.

Acknowledging Bush and McCain’s failed attempts to pander, Hutchinson
concluded, “The other hard reality is that the party has absolutely no
chance to win any significant support from black, Hispanic, Asian, and
Native American voters even if they made an honest effort to,” so the
only way for the GOP to win is to “lean on its white guy fix to try to
put it back on the political playing field.”

One commentator who still does not get it is HuffPost Political Editor
and former Washington Post reporter Thomas Edsall. His column, “For
The Modern GOP, It’s A Return To The “‘White Voter Strategy,’” repeats
all the old conventional wisdom about race and politics, so it is
useful to take a look.

Edsall’s piece is filled with contradictions. Putting “White Voter
Strategy” in quotations would suggest that somebody other than himself
has used it, but they haven’t. In fact to him,

it’s all very reminiscent of the party’s notorious Southern
Strategy, which carried the GOP for decades. But that strategy
backfired spectacularly in the 2006 and 2008 elections, and there’s no
reason to think it will work any better in 2010—especially given the
ever-growing importance of the minority electorate.



If the GOP was still relying on the “Southern Strategy” in 2008, and
they are using something “very reminiscent” to it in 2009, then
couldn’t you just call it the Southern Strategy?

Labels aside, Edsall accurately describes what an appeal to working
class whites entails,

The party’s opposition to President Obama’s agenda—particularly
his cap-and-trade energy proposal and health care reform plan—is
resonating strongly with disaffected white Democratic voters.
Republican grievances about Obama, combined with race-baiting
commentary from the far-right ideologues who have become some of the
most dominant voices of the modern GOP, have led to a precipitous drop
in the president’s approval ratings among whites.

Edsall then contradicts himself again by saying that this strategy
might very well work in 2010 and 2012, as it is clear that working-
class whites are quickly fleeing Obama. But this will be disastrous in
the long term because “the demographic trends.” These trends are, of
course, whites’ shrinking percentage of the American population and in
turn, the electorate.

In 1976, 89 percent of the electorate was white. That number fell
every four years, to 88 percent in 1980, 86 percent in 1984, 85
percent in 1988, 83 percent in 1996, 81 percent in 2000, 77 percent in
2004, and 74 percent last year. [Actually it was 76 percent]

Edsall’s comments then devolve into the usual drivel about how the
GOP’s opposition to Sotomayor and mass immigration will keep them from
getting the “44 percent of the Hispanic vote” that Bush received in
2004 actually—38-40 percent in actuality—thus inevitably leading them
to minority status.

While a few of his numbers might be off, the nugget of truth in
Edsall’s point is that as America becomes more non-white, the harder
it will be for the GOP to win elections. This is exactly what Peter
Brimelow tried to argue in his National Review article quoted in the
beginning of this piece.

Most all of the people who’ve taken to the streets this year to
protest government spending and indebtedness appear to have something
in common.


This does not mean, however, that Republican Party will get anywhere
pandering to minorities by abandoning—or continuing not to take up—
issues such as immigration control and affirmative action.

Why?

1) The Southern Strategy did not fail in 2006 and 2008, it wasn’t
used. RNC officials said, “For the last three decades, we’ve had a
Southern strategy. The next goal is to move to a Hispanic strategy for
the next three decades.” Bush’s disastrous positions on immigration,
foreign policy, and the economy turned off white voters from the GOP
in 2006 and 2008, and pushed them towards “Lou Dobbs Democrats.” The
Republicans didn’t lose because of insufficient pandering to
Hispanics.

2) The “Demographic Trends” are not inevitable. The GOP can
successfully appeal to white voters and stop, or at least
significantly slow down, the demographic transition by stopping mass
immigration. Of course had Nixon, Reagan, Bushes I and II, Gingrich,
and Delay made it a priority, we wouldn’t even need to talk about
this.

Furthermore, it is wrong to assume that any position that appeals to
whites will automatically turn off minorities. Opposition to mass
immigration is popular with black voters, and even more popular among
Hispanics than the open-borders Bush or McCain. Even black opposition
to affirmative action—while incredibly low—is significantly higher
than the numbers who vote for Republican.

3) The GOP doesn’t have a “white guy” problem, the Democrats do. In
2008 whites still made up 76.3 percent of the electorate—and only 60
percent of Democratic voters. Despite white’s shrinking percentage of
the population, the GOP share of the vote will likely go up in 2010.
The more the Democrats get attached to their anti-white agenda, the
higher percentage of the white vote can win. Mississippi and Alabama
have huge minority populations, but the GOP can continue to win
elections when whites vote en bloc, as they do across the board in the
South.

It’s true that Southern Whites are relatively more conservative than
in the rest of the country, but this does not mean that these
majorities could not happen elsewhere. Many whites—including Officer
Crowley—were willing to vote for and/or approve of Obama, but will not
stand for a president who immediately sides with a black Harvard
Professor over a working class Irish Cop and appoints Supreme Court
justices who believe that Hispanic women are inherently wiser than
white males.

Furthermore, one of the reasons white Southerners are more
conservative is that they have to deal with more minorities, just as
white Arizonians are more opposed to immigration than whites in Maine.
The more non-white the country becomes, the more whites may begin to
vote en bloc.

Of course what’s good for the GOP is not necessarily good for America.
The Southern Strategy succeeded in electing Republicans, but they
didn’t even bother trying to do anything about immigration or quotas.
Richard Nixon won by appropriating the language of George Wallace, but
went on to increase the Civil Rights department’s budget by 800
percent, institute the Philadelphia Plan for quotas, and a host of
other left-wing racial policies. Reagan signed the 1986 amnesty bill.
Bush I won with the Willie Horton ad, but went on to extend quotas
with the renewed Civil Rights Act. In addition to his constant push
for amnesty, Bush II encouraged the Supreme Court to uphold racial
preferences in the Gratz and Grutter cases.

Many at Takimag probably would be happy to see the Party collapse
under the weight of its disastrous policies of the past forty years.
But an open dialogue about the role race in politics might be a baby
step towards building a Republican Party that doesn’t habitually
betray the people who vote for it year in, year out. It might also be
a baby step towards a real dialogue on the importance of race in
American society—and not just the type Eric Holder wants to have."

http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article..._people_party/