Columns
Is the GOP Headed for the Boneyard?
Around the State
Eighteen states have voted Democratic in six straight elections. Among the six are four of our most populous: New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and California. And Obama has now won two of the three remaining mega-states, Ohio and Florida, twice.
Only Texas remains secure -- for now.
At the presidential level, the Republican Party is at death's door.
Yet one already sees the same physicians writing prescriptions for the same drugs that have been killing the GOP since W's dad got the smallest share of the vote by a Republican candidate since William Howard Taft in 1912.
In ascertaining the cause of the GOP's critical condition, let us use Occam's razor -- the principle that the simplest explanation is often the right one.
Would the GOP wipeout in those heavily Catholic, ethnic, socially conservative, blue-collar bastions of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Illinois, which Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan swept, have anything to do with the fact that the United States since 2000 has lost 6 million manufacturing jobs and 55,000 factories?
Where did all those jobs and factories go? We know where.
They were outsourced. And in the de-industrialization of America, the Republican Party has been a culpable co-conspirator.
Unlike family patriarch Sen. Prescott Bush, who voted with Barry Goldwater and Strom Thurmond against JFK's free-trade deal, Bush I and II pumped for NAFTA, GATT, the WTO and opening America's borders to all goods made by our new friends in the People's Republic of China.
Swiftly, U.S. multinationals shut factories here, laid off workers, outsourced production to Asia and China, and brought their finished goods back, tax-free, to sell in the U.S.A.
Profits soared, as did the salaries of the outsourcing executives.
And their former workers? They headed for the service sector, along with their wives, to keep up on the mortgage payment, keep the kids in Catholic school and pay for the health insurance the family had lost.
Tuesday, these ex-Reagan Democrats came out to vote against some guy from Bain Capital they had been told in ads all summer was a big-time outsourcer who wrote in 2008, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt!"
Yes, the simplest explanation is often the right one.
Republicans are also falling all over one another to express a love of Hispanics, after Mitt won only 27 percent of a Hispanic vote that is now 10 percent of the national vote.
We face demographic disaster, they are wailing. We must win a larger share of the Hispanic vote or we are doomed.
And what is the proposed solution to the GOP's Hispanic problem, coming even from those supposedly on the realistic right?
Amnesty for the illegals! Stop talking about a border fence and self-deportation. Drop the employer sanctions. Make the GOP a welcoming party.
And what might be problematic about following this advice?
First, it will enrage populist conservatives who supported the GOP because they believed the party's pledges to oppose amnesty, secure the border and stop illegals from taking jobs from Americans.
And in return for double-crossing these folks and losing their votes, what would be gained by amnesty for, say, 10 million illegal aliens?
Assume in a decade all 10 million became citizens and voted like the Hispanics, black folks and Asians already here. The best the GOP could expect -- the Bush share in 2004 -- would be 40 percent, or 4 million of those votes.
But if Tuesday's percentages held, Democrats would get not just 6 million, but 7 million new votes to the GOP's less than 3 million.
Thus, if we assume the percentages of the last three elections hold, the Democratic Party would eventually gain from an amnesty a net of between 2 and 4 million new voters.
Easy to understand why Democrats are for this. But why would a Republican Party that is not suicidally inclined favor it?
Still, the GOP crisis is not so much illegal as legal immigration. Forty million legal immigrants have arrived in recent decades. Some 85 percent come from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Most arrived lacking the academic, language and labor skills to compete for high-paying jobs.
What does government do for them?
Subsidizes their housing and provides free education for their kids from Head Start through K-12, plus food stamps and school lunches, Pell Grants and student loans for college, Medicaid if they are sick, earned income tax credits if they work and 99 weeks of unemployment checks if they lose their job.
These are people who depend upon government.
Why would they vote for a party that is going to cut taxes they do not pay, but take away government benefits they do receive?
Again it needs be said. When the country looks like California demographically, it will look like California politically. Republicans are not whistling past the graveyard. They are right at the entrance.
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?" To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM
Comments (4)
How can conservatives find a way out of this house of mirrors? I don't see one that doesn't destroy the party itself. Each leg of the platform is the tar baby of a group of zealous proponents, who are not going to give up easily. It's unfortunate, for the U.S., though, because we need a strong Republican party that can debate the real issues to help America progress. We don't need a second party whose main objectives are to obstruct government and pass abortion measures. I fear for another 70 year reign of a single party. Come back to us, conservatives.
That would give manufacturering in the U.S. a more level playing field. And the money taken in could be used to reduce the corporate tax rate for U.S. manufacturers.
(Liberals would favor it because it would encourage some of the other countries to better their environmental and worker safety laws and stop the idea that we need to lower our standards in order to compete.)
As for legal immigration, they should put a moratorium on it (still allowing 250,000 a year) until we come up with a sane, sustainable immigration policy. One that doesn't favor family members over talent, etc. They could sell that to the liberals as an environmental and social justice issue.
(90% of the projected population growth over the next 40 years- 100-150 million-is predicted will be from new immigrants and their offspring. We don't really have the resources or the infrastructure to accomodate that kind of growth.)
As for illegal immigrants living here, perhaps the answer would be to give them all a year to come forward, become documented but put on notice that they may be asked to leave in the future. In the meantime, anyone who hasn't come forward and is picked up for any reason gets deported right away. Once we figure out what jobs they have, and where we really do need them we could talk about giving them guestworker status. But no citizenship unless they apply for it like any other- after the moratorium on legal immigration is off and we have a new policy in place.
They could also require E-verify for all employers- period. If we don't have enough migrant ag workers, then we increase the numbers of guestworkers. We do not continue to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration. They can sell that to the liberals because that would improve the worker conditions for guestworkers, and it would allow them to look for better opportunities because they aren't here illegally. And being able to cross the border more easily they wouldn't have to bring their families with them. - which ultimately would improve their country without hurting ours. Etc.
Also, grow a pair and make birthright citizenship only for babies born to at least one legal U.S. citizen. That's being abused and has to end.
Among other things....
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