Is GOP Still a National Party?

Is GOP Still a National Party?
By Patrick J. Buchanan

As President Barack Obama delivers his inaugural address to a
nation filled with anticipation and hope, the vital signs of the
loyal opposition appear worse than worrisome.

The new majority of 49 states and 60 percent of the nation Nixon
cobbled together in 1972, that became the Reagan coalition of 49
states and 60
percent of the nation in 1984, is a faded memory.
Demographically, philosophically and culturally, the party base has
been shrinking since Bush I won his 40-state triumph over Michael
Dukakis. Indeed, the Republican base is rapidly becoming a redoubt,
a Fort Apache in Indian country.

In the National Journal, Ron Brownstein renders a grim prognosis of
the party's chances of recapturing the White House. Consider:

In the five successive presidential elections, beginning with
Clinton's victory in 1992 and ending with Obama's in 2008, 18
states and the District of Columbia, with 248 electoral votes among
them, voted for the Democratic ticket all five times. John McCain
did not come within 10 points of Obama in any of the 18, and he
lost D.C. 92-8.

The 18 cover all of New England, save New Hampshire; New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland; four of the major states in the
Midwest -- Michigan,
Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota; and the
Pacific Coast states of California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii.

Three other states -- Iowa, New Hampshire and New Mexico -- have
gone Democratic in four of the past five presidential contests. And
Virginia and Colorado have ceased to be reliably red.

Not only are the 18 hostile terrain for any GOP presidential
ticket, Republicans hold only three of their 36 Senate seats and
fewer than 1 in 3 of their House seats. "Democrats also control
two-thirds of these 18 governorships, every state House chamber,
and all but two of the state Senates," writes Brownstein.

In many of the 18, the GOP has ceased to be competitive. In the New
England states, for example, there is not a single Republican
congressman. In New York, there are only three.

"State by state, election by election," says Brownstein,
"Democrats
since 1992 have constructed the party's largest
and most durable
Electoral College base in more than half a century. Call it the
blue wall."

While that Democratic base is not yet as decisive as the
Nixon-Reagan base in the South, and the Plains and Mountain States,
it is becoming so solidified it may block any Republican from
regaining the White House, in the absence of a catastrophically
failed Democratic president.

What does the Republican base look like?

In the same five presidential contests, from 1992 to 2008,
Republicans won 13 states all five times. But the red 13 have but
93 electoral votes, fewer than a third of the number in "the blue
wall."

What has been happening to the GOP? Three fatal contractions.

Demographically, the GOP is a party of white Americans, who in 1972
were perhaps 90 percent of the national vote. Nixon and Reagan
rolled up almost two-thirds of that vote in 1972 and 1984. But
because of abortion and
aging, the white vote is shrinking as a
share of the national vote and the population.

The minorities that are growing most rapidly, Hispanics and Asians,
cast 60 to 70 percent of their presidential votes for the
Democratic Party. Black Americans vote 9-1 for national Democrats.
In 2008, they went 30-1.

Put succinctly, the red pool of voters is aging, shrinking and
dying, while the blue pool, fed by high immigration and a high
birth rate among immigrants, is steadily expanding.

Philosophically, too, the country is turning away from the GOP
creed of small government and low taxes. Why?

Nearly 90 percent of immigrants, legal and illegal, are Third World
poor or working-class and believe in and rely on government for
help with health and housing, education and welfare. Second, tax
cuts have dropped nearly 40 percent of wage earners from the tax
rolls.

If one pays no federal income tax but
reaps a cornucopia of
benefits, it makes no sense to vote for the party of less government.

The GOP is overrepresented among the taxpaying class, while the
Democratic Party is overrepresented among tax consumers. And the
latter are growing at a faster rate than the former.

Lastly, Democrats are capturing a rising share of the young and
college-educated, who are emerging from schools and colleges where
the values of the counterculture on issues from abortion to
same-sex marriage to affirmative action have become the new
orthodoxy.

The Republican "lock" on the presidency, crafted by Nixon, and
patented by Reagan, has been picked. The only lingering question is
whether an era of inexorable Republican decline has set in.

SOURCE:
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