Unreal Times Are Real for the GOP

As the Republican party continues its autopsy of its epic failure to unseat an incumbent Democratic President laboring under the worst economy since the Great Depression, it should keep in mind the figures 124 million and 62 million.  If at least 124 million Americans vote in a presidential election, they are almost certain to put Democrats in the White House.  In truth, President Obama could have given up as many as four million of his 65.6 million votes last month and still won.  In the 48 months between the election of 2012 and 2016, another 2.4 million HispanicLatinos will turn 18 and most will be eligible to vote.  These new voters represent an increasingly politically-engaged group that last month voted more than 70 percent Democratic.  That is how real and deadly the future seems for Republicans.

In many ways the future is unmanageable for the GOP.  It is one thing to gaze at the spectacle of House Speaker John Boehner dealing with the Tea party in the Republican Caucus in the House of Representatives.  That is bad enough.  But even if Republicans at the national level can somehow moderate their views on issues of importance to HispanicLatinos, women, gays and lesbians and independent voters in general, they will have to deal with radical Republicans at the state level – which for all practical purposes in a digital, 24/7 world can produce unrelenting chaos.  Any story coming out from any state capitol or county courthouse can become a national sensation in a microsecond.  Think Joe Arpaio in Arizona or Todd Akin in Missouri.  That is what makes the 62-million figure important.

 

In the past three presidential elections, the Republican nominee for President pulled in 62, 60 and 61 million votes (Bush in 2004, McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012).  It seems that 62 million is the marginal high point for a Republican candidate that the spending of one billion dollars by the GOP this year could not reach.  It would take a pretty disastrous Democratic candidate to lose a presidential election in the years ahead.  Any nominee better than John Kerry – who barely lost to George W. Bush in 2004 – could win enough electoral votes to achieve the Presidency.  And just getting to 62 million votes will prove more difficult for Republicans in a nation with a growing population.  Each year, the number of white, non-HispanicLatino voters – the base of the party – contracts in proportional and real terms.

The best barometer of the challenge ahead is what almost happened in Arizona to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio – the most visible anti-HispanicLatino Republican in the country.  Arpaio won just 50.7 percent of the vote, according to the Arizona Capitol Times as participation among HispanicLatino and revulsion among moderate Republican voters increased.  What a victory it would have been for the GOP had Arpaio lost in a state Mitt Romney won.

From a strategic perspective the nation’s demographic numbers look appalling for Republican candidates at the presidential level.  And from a tactical perspective, the fiscal-abyss and gun-control narratives playing out in Washington today are a disaster. As worrisome for Republicans reviewing the fiasco of eight weeks ago is the news that the Obama political machine that churned out almost four million more votes than needed on Nov. 6 is going to keep going in some form or another.

The advantage that Democratic strategists developed through a better understanding and use of technology and, finally, through the appreciation of the country’s demographics is not one to be surrendered soon by relatively young men and women who have their entire political futures ahead of them.  This bright, energetic and talented group has tasted power and already has changed history.  It hardly seems possible that they do not have larger worlds to conquer.

If these modern-day wunderkinds are now thinking about targeting the last redoubt of Republicanism in the country – state legislatures in marginal states taken over by Republicans in the 2010 Tea party tide and the big enchilada, Texas – then the GOP has bigger problems on its hands.  It will have to fight populations numbers trending against them, have to figure out how to change its political positions and have to deploy valuable resources to defend its last bastions of power.  Not to mention having to explain upcoming decisions by a Supreme Court with a Republican-appointed majority that wants to take the country backwards in time.

The postmortem Republicans are conducting of the 2012 election will reveal that their party was stuck in a prolonged period of antemortem that might make it impossible to revive an organization that expired from self-inflicted wounds but more so was afflicted by reality.

Jesse Treviño is the former editorial page editor of The Austin American-Statesman.