“Either Way, They Could Be Screwed”: The GOP Might Just Stick With This “Party Of White People” Thing
Since the 2012 election, most (not all, but most) Republicans have agreed that if they’re going to remain viable in presidential elections in coming years, the party will have to broaden its appeal, particularly to Latino voters. There has been plenty of disagreement about how to go about this task. Especially over comprehensive immigration reform, which many Republicans see as too high a policy price to pay to achieve some uncertain measure of good will from those voters. But outside of conservative talk radio, there weren’t many voices saying that they should junk the whole project. Every once in a while some voice from the past like Phyllis Schlafly would come out and bleat that the party should focus on the white folk who make up the party’s beating heart, but to many it seemed like the political equivalent of your racist great aunt saying at Thanksgiving that she doesn’t feel comfortable around those people.
But as immigration reform wends its tortured path through Congress, more mainstream Republicans are having second thoughts. In fact, significant backlash is brewing, not just to this bill but to the whole idea of Republicans working to appeal to minorities. Benjy Sarlin at MSNBC has an excellent article explaining how this backlash is spreading, noting that even some people who six months ago were blaming Mitt Romney’s position on immigration reform for his loss are now saying that the only viable path to victory is getting turnout up among white voters.
I’ll get to why this is a very bad idea in a moment, but the logic at work isn’t completely crazy. After all, by now the Republican party going after minority votes is like the fast-food joint that puts a salad on its menu amid all the bacon cheeseburgers and chili fries. It’s there so they can say they’re offering something for people with different tastes, but they don’t expect anyone to order it. And when Rush Limbaugh warns that a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants will create millions of new Democratic voters, he’s probably right to a degree. Under the bill the Senate passed it would be 13 years before any undocumented immigrant could earn citizenship and vote, but as Sarlin discusses, the argument some Republicans make that Latinos are “natural conservatives” has always been weak.
After every election, a significant number of people within the losing party argue that the problem wasn’t one of persuasion but one of turnout. They just didn’t get enough of their voters to the polls, so they don’t have to change what they’re arguing. There’s often some truth to it; when only 50 to 60 percent of eligible voters are coming to the polls, turnout on your side could always be higher. But the problem the GOP now faces is that the way you relate to one group of voters affects how other voters perceive you.
This was something George W. Bush and Karl Rove understood well when they built his 2000 campaign. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” consisted mostly of things like pulling African-Americans on stage with him and putting lots of pictures of Latinos on his web sites. It got him a few extra votes among minorities, but that was always just a bonus. The real target was moderate white voters, who saw it and learned, in the phrase reporters repeated over and over, that Bush was “a different kind of Republican.” He wasn’t like those mean-spirited old white guys who seemed to dominate the GOP, and they’d be comfortable voting for him.
By the same token, if you decide that you’re going to focus your efforts on turning out the white vote, you won’t only be sending a message to Latinos (and African Americans, and the fast-growing Asian American population) that you’re not interested in them, you’ll also be sending a message to moderate whites that your party might not be the kind of place they’d feel comfortable. This goes double for young white voters, who have grown up in a much more diverse culture than their parents and grandparents, and aren’t going to be so hot on joining the Party of White People.
This is a dilemma for Republicans. Both paths are strewn with obstacles and dangers. Whichever one they choose, there’s likely to be trouble.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, July 2, 2013
“Widening The Gender Gap”: Prioritizing Recruitment Over Policy, The Unfortunate Timing Of The GOP’s “Project Grow”
We talked last week about a new Republican project, designed to “advance the role of women within our party.” On Friday afternoon, the initiative, which will fall under the umbrella of the National Republican Congressional Committee, was formally launched, along with its new name.
With a stagnant number of women in its caucus, the House GOP’s campaign organization announced a new program Friday, Project Grow, to recruit, mentor and elect more female candidates in 2014.
“We need more women to run,” Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said. “Project Grow will plant that seed that will get them thinking of doing it.” […]
“Women are the majority, and we need to do a better job, and that’s what this is all about,” NRCC Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said of Project Grow at the event.
According to the project’s website, it’s actually an acronym: “Project GROW” stands for “Growing Republican Opportunities for Women.” (Yes, the “G” in “GROW” stands for “grow.”) Once the initiative was launched, the Republican National Committee touted the effort with an unfortunate choice of words: “We need to be a party that allows talented women to rise to the top.”
This, of course, led DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Shultz to immediately respond to the use of the word “allow”, “Democratic women DO rise to the top. We don’t need permission.”
Stepping back, it’s worth noting that there’s nothing especially wrong with the idea behind “Project GROW,” and I think there’s value in major parties recruiting more women candidates to seek and hold public office. The Republican Party is currently dominated by men, especially in Congress — remember the House committee chairs? — and if the party is committed to making gender diversity a priority, more power to ’em.
The problem, however, is what Republican leaders think efforts like these will do for the party.
GOP officials seem to understand that the gender gap is large and getting larger. The party is not only alienating racial and ethnic minorities at an alarming pace, it’s also watching women become more Democratic with each passing year.
It makes sense that Republicans want to do something about this. It doesn’t make sense that Republicans have a diagnosis that has nothing to do with the underlying ailment.
I haven’t seen any polling on this lately, so I’ll concede that my assessment is based more on observation than quantitative analysis, but I have a strong hunch that if a pollster were to ask American women nationwide about why the GOP is struggling with women voters, “candidate recruitment” would not be near the top of the list.
Rather, the problem seems to be with the Republican Party’s policy agenda. If “Project GROW” brings a more diverse slate of candidates, that’s nice, but if the candidates are pushing the same proposals that drove women voters away in the first place, Republicans will probably be disappointed with the results.
Indeed, even the timing of “Project GROW” helps reinforce the larger issue — the national party is prioritizing candidate recruitment, while Republican policymakers at the state and federal level are pushing measures that severely undermine women’s rights.
Adding insult to injury, Republicans have chosen Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) to play a leadership role in this project, despite the fact that she opposes pay-equity measures for women, and voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act.
Let’s make this plain for party leaders: recruitment matters, but policies matter more. If Republicans want to close the gender gap, they’ll need to reconsider their agenda, not just their slate of candidates.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 1, 2013
“Trapped In A Conservative Box”: The Cost Of The GOP’s Redistricting Wins Presents A Real Problem
Sometimes in politics you can lose by winning. Witness the problems the Republican Party is experiencing trying to govern with a majority that is widely believed to be unshakeable in the near future thanks to the redistricting job GOP state legislators did after the 2010 census.
Politico’s Alex Isenstadt has a report today suggesting that the party’s success has trapped Republicans in a conservative box, “narrowing the party’s appeal at a time when some GOP leaders say its future rests on the opposite happening.”
This isn’t necessarily a new thought. As I wrote back in early March:
In a sense the GOP’s success in the last round of redistricting – creating what the Cook Political Report sees as over 200 safe GOP districts – is proving Pyrrhic. If you’re a Republican member of Congress your greatest existential threat comes from primary challenges, so that’s what shapes your agenda, even if it comes at the cost of national political viability.
I was writing then about the GOP’s doubling down on the same policy agenda that voters rejected last November. That hasn’t changed in the intervening months. In fact, if you watched most House Republicans (and more than a few senators and other elected officials) you would not know that the party lost last year on multiple fronts: The presidential race wasn’t close and Obama became the first candidate since Dwight Eisenhower to crack 51 percent two elections in a row; Democrats picked up seats in both chambers of Congress and won more House votes than did the GOP, though Republicans held the lower chamber because, in large part, of their redistricting success. Meanwhile, the national GOP brand remains terrible.
Isenstadt is writing about “recurring drama within the House Republican Conference – from the surprise meltdown on the farm bill to the looming showdown over immigration reform,” but it’s the same basic problem: Conservatives unchecked by practical considerations such as what will help the party nationally.
The Politico piece has a couple of telling nuggets:
Of the 234 House Republicans, just four now represent districts that favor Democrats, according to data compiled by The Cook Political Report. That’s down from the 22 Republicans who resided in Democratic-friendly seats following the 2010 midterms, prior to the line-drawing.
They’re also serving districts that are increasingly white. After redistricting and the 2012 election, according to The Cook Political Report, the average Republican congressional district went from 73 percent white to 75 percent white. And even as Hispanics have emerged as America’s fastest-growing demographic group, only about one-tenth of Republicans represent districts where the Latino population is 25 percent or higher.
The piece also has the obligatory conservative quote about how what the party really needs is not to broaden its appeal but more starkly state its case. But this proceeds from an incorrect assumption of conservatism’s nationwide appeal. I am always reminded of this passage from Ryan Lizza’s Eric Cantor profile a few months ago. Lizza spoke with Georgia Republican Rep. Tom Price, a conservative leader:
He explained how surprised he was when one of his colleagues from a Northern state told him that he favored a tax increase on millionaires. “It hit me that what he was hearing when he’s going home to a Republican district in a blue state is completely different than what I’m hearing when I go home to a Republican district in a red state,” he said. “My folks are livid about this stuff. His folks clearly weren’t. And so we weren’t even starting from the same premise.”
Price is no tea party freshman just finding his way around the Congress. He’s the vice chairman of the House Budget Committee and has been in Congress for eight years. And yet it only just recently occurred to him that not every district holds the same political beliefs as his. That’s a real problem for Republicans and it’s one their redistricting success is only exacerbating.
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, July 1, 2013
“The Party Isn’t White Enough”: Get Ready For More Republican Party Race Baiting
You, unsuspecting citizen, probably take the view that the Republican Party is too white. It’s the conventional wisdom, after all, and last year’s election results would seem to have proven the point resoundingly. But you’re obviously not up with the newest thinking in some conservative quarters, which is that the party isn’t white enough, and that the true and only path to victory in the future is to get whiter still. Some disagree, which gives us the makings of a highly entertaining intra-GOP race war playing out as we head into 2016. But given this mad party’s recent history, which side would you bet on winning?
The situation is this. The immigration reform bill passed the Senate yesterday. It will now go to the House. A few weeks ago, as I read things, there were occasional and tepid signals that the House would not take up the Senate bill. Now, by contrast, those signals are frequent and full-throated. For example, yesterday Peter Roskam, a deputy GOP whip in the House, said this: “It is a pipe dream to think that [the Senate] bill is going to go to the floor and be voted on. The House is going to move through in a more deliberative process.”
“Deliberative process” probably means, in this case, killing the legislation. House conservatives, National Journal reports, are increasingly bullish on the idea that they may be able to persuade John Boehner to drop the whole thing.
Last December, such an outcome was supposed to mean disaster for the Republicans. But now, some say the opposite. Phyllis Schlafly and talk-radio opponents of the bill like Laura Ingraham have been saying for a while now that the party doesn’t need Latino votes, it just needs to build up the white vote. And now, they have the social science to prove it, or the “social science” to “prove” it.
Sean Trende, the conservative movement’s heavily asterisked answer to Nate Silver (that is to say, Silver got everything right, and Trende got everything wrong), came out with an analysis this week, headlined “Does GOP Have to Pass Immigration Reform?,” showing that by golly no, it doesn’t. You can jump over there yourself and study all his charts and graphs, but the long and short of it is something like this. Black turnout and Democratic support have both been unusually high in the last two elections, which is true; Democrats have been steadily losing white voters, which is also true; if you move black turnout back down to 2004-ish levels and bump up GOP margins among whites (by what strikes me as a wildly optimistic amount), you reach White Valhalla. Somehow or another, under Trende’s “racial polarization scenario,” it’ll be 2044 before the Democrats again capture 270 electoral votes. Thus is the heat of Schlafly’s rhetoric cooled and given fresh substance via the dispassionate tools of statistics.
Karl Rove says this is bunk. He wrote in The Wall Street Journal yesterday that to win the White House without more Latino support, a Republican candidate would have to equal Ronald Reagan’s 1984 total among whites, which was 63 percent. Rove thinks this unlikely—Trende thinks it’s pessimistic—and counsels some Latino reach-out (naturally, none of them ever says anything about black reach-out). The party used to listen to Rove, but most of them have zoomed well past him to the twilight zone of the far, far right.
These Republicans and the people they represent—that is, the sliver of people they care about representing—don’t want any outreach. They almost certainly won’t let a path to citizenship get through the House. And they’ll attack minorities in other ways, too. It’s been mostly civil rights advocates who’ve denounced the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act decision, and one can obviously see why. But trust me, that decision, as Bloomberg’s Josh Green shrewdly noted the day it came down, is a “poisoned chalice” for the GOP.
Why? Just look at what’s already happened since the decision was announced—the party is launching voter-suppression drives in six of the nine freshly liberated states. All the states, of course, are down South. These drives might “work.” But they will attract an enormous amount of negative publicity, and they’ll probably induce massive backlashes and counter-movements. This effort will lead to even greater distrust of the GOP by people of color, and it will reinforce the captive Southern-ness of the party, making it even more Southern than it already is. And Republicans won’t stop, because they can’t stop. Race baiting is their crack pipe.
And here’s the worst part of this story. If the House Republicans kill immigration reform, and Republican parties across the South double down to keep blacks from voting, then they really will need to jack up the white vote—and especially the old white vote—in a huge way to be competitive in 2016 and beyond. Well, they’re not going to do that by mailing out Lawrence Welk CDs. They’re going to run heavily divisive and racialized campaigns, worse than we’ve ever seen out of Nixon or anyone. Their only hope of victory will be to make a prophet of Trende—that is, reduce the Democrats’ share of the white vote to something in the mid- to low-30 percent range. That probably can’t happen, but there’s only one way it might. Run the most racially inflamed campaign imaginable.
That’s the near-term future we’re staring at. We can take satisfaction in the fact that it’s bad for them, but unfortunately, it’s not so good for the country.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, June 28, 2013
“Obamacare Is For Republicans, Too”: If GOP Governors Think Stonewalling Health Exchanges Hurts Only Democrats, They’re Wrong
Three months from now, Americans will get their first look at whether Obamacare works. The answer will depend a lot on Republican governors and legislatures — and they should want the law’s exchanges to be successful as much as the president does.
The new state insurance exchanges are supposed to start selling health coverage Oct. 1. The idea behind these marketplaces is that allowing apple-to-apple comparisons between health plans will foster competition and lower prices. Most Republican governors and legislatures, however, have resisted running their own exchanges; 19 states have refused to play any role whatsoever.
Continued resistance could hamper an already fraught process. In a report this week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office warned that the federal government is behind schedule in building exchanges in states that have refused to do so. This makes it even more crucial that all states pitch in to help.
Why should Republican opponents of the exchanges change tack now? First, there are the crass politics: Many residents who stand to benefit are their constituents. Federal exchange subsidies are available for people earning between 138 percent and 400 percent of the poverty level, or $32,500 to $94,200 for a family of four. According to 2012 exit polls, 42 percent of people with family incomes between $30,000 and $50,000 voted for Mitt Romney; for those earning between $50,000 and $100,000, the share was 52 percent. If Republican governors think stonewalling exchanges hurts only Democrats, they’re wrong.
Then there are the economic reasons: States with weak exchanges could become less attractive to businesses. John Hickenlooper, the Democratic governor of Colorado, said this week that his state supports its insurance exchange in part to help small businesses, which want healthy and productive workers.
Finally, and most compellingly, there is the human reason – – rather, 25 million human reasons. Well-run exchanges will make getting health insurance easier and more affordable. Even philosophical opponents of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act must concede this practical point. Obamacare also happens to be the law of the land.
Some Republican governors have already accepted a role in their exchanges. Iowa and Michigan are partnering with the federal government, while Idaho, Nevada and New Mexico agreed to build their own. It’s too late for other states to follow those courses, but there are still meaningful steps they could take.
One thing they can do is smooth the path for “navigators” – – people or organizations that will help others shop for insurance on the exchanges. Florida requires navigators to register with the state, and Pennsylvania is considering a similar move. This should be fine as long as registration is quick and straightforward.
States should also build solid lines of communication between the exchanges and state-run programs, especially Medicaid. Exchanges can use the information that states keep about people’s income and insurance status to determine whether they’re eligible for subsidies. Easy access to Medicaid databases will mean fewer errors and faster service for people in both programs.
State insurance regulators, who have the authority to approve insurance plans sold on federally run exchanges, can do their part by monitoring the participating insurance plans aggressively enough to keep rates down.
Perhaps the single biggest thing Republican officials could do is simply be ready and willing to address the inevitable hiccups. If states look for ways to stall progress, they’ll find them. Conversely, if governors who oppose the law nonetheless direct their officials to cooperate, the exchanges are more likely to survive those hiccups.
Governors could set a positive tone by reminding their residents that the exchanges are coming. Instead of saying the exchanges “are not going to work,” as Texas Governor Rick Perry did in December, they should encourage their constituents to see whether they’re eligible for subsidies. It doesn’t need to cost the states anything.
By: The Editors, Bloomberg, June 20, 2013
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 