If you believe that the country is undergoing a historic demographic transformation and that a new America has emerged with a majority of the country realizing it needs a new way forward, then you need to look no farther than last night’s Republican presidential forum in Arizona.  The debate was for and about the old America, that is to say, that part of the country that is willing to hear candidates for the Presidency who would spend 25 minutes…on birth control.  The discussion last night was of interest to voters who care about the issues that hardly matter to the rest of America: The bailout of the auto industry that worked; immigration that helps prop up a declining national population and, of course, birth control.  And that was the first hour.

In the second hour of a two-hour forum of misleading information, evasion and demagogic assertions, not until the last 18 minutes of the debate was anything said about kindergarten education, primary education, middle school education, high school education, college education and post-college education – where the bulk of the new America resides.  Once breached, the education discussion was limited to No Child Left Behind and testing – for a total of seven minutes.  Twenty-five minutes on birth control; seven minutes on education.

I get – and the new America gets – why President Obama is opening up enormous leads in the polls – especially in states that are critical to his re-election.  A genuine survey of HispanicLatinos would show that a vast majority heard nothing that could possibly interest them in the Republican nominee.   The same thing for most women, college students, the unemployed, the uninsured but, more so, for voters who sense that we are a nation under intense pressure from global competition, the emergence of nations with billions of people who are gearing up to become mammoth machines of production and a financial oversight system that might not hold back another near-disaster.  None of those issues were discussed last night.

The new America coalesced around Barack Obama in 2008.  If the GOP does not somehow transform itself – and soon – into something that most of America can even begin to think understands the new world around them, then its nominee to occupy the Oval Office will not save the party in the election — nor from from oblivion.

Feel free to forward these blogs adapted from previous writings, with additional thoughts published invariably in between.