Fade to Darkness?

[Valin]

WSJ:

No, the Republican Party isn't doomed.

JAMES TARANTO

3/6/12

 

It's now or never for Republicans, or at least for conservatives, claims the nasty liberal writer Jonathan Chait of New York magazine. "The modern GOP--the party of Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes--is staring down its own demographic extinction," Chait claims. Republicans, in his view, are right to worry "that conservative America will soon come to be dominated, in a semi-permanent fashion, by an ascendant Democratic coalition hostile to its outlook and interests."

 

It's not an original argument. As Chait acknowledges, it dates back at least a decade, to John Judis and Ruy Teixeira's book, "The Emerging Democratic Majority." In brief, it is that demographic groups that tend to vote Democratic--blacks, Hispanics, college-educated professionals--are growing in number, whereas working-class whites, now the GOP's base, are diminishing. Within a few decades, by most estimates, whites will no longer even be a majority of the U.S. population. Chait doesn't think the demographic tipping point has quite arrived yet--unlike many of his fellow libs, he believes Barack Obama could lose--but he thinks this year may be the Republican Party's last chance to win a presidential election unless it reconstitutes itself as a considerably more liberal party.

 

There are, to say the least, some problems with this analysis. Most obviously, the three Democratic demographics are actually quite different. Blacks have been overwhelmingly Democratic for almost half a century. But Hispanics, while usually trending donkward, do so by considerably smaller margins.

 

(Snip)