They Turned the GOP Into the Tea Party

[babylonsister]

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/3/8/0356/23401

They Turned the GOP Into the Tea Party

by BooMan
Thu Mar 8th, 2012 at 12:35:06 AM EST


I'll probably do a longer piece on GOP turnout tomorrow, but I just want to start a discussion on this:

Only 5 percent of eligible voters younger than 30 cast ballots on Super Tuesday, roughly splitting evenly among Romney, former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), according to an analysis by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.

So far, only about 600,000 voters younger than 30 have cast ballots in all the Republican primaries, said Peter Levine, ­CIRCLE’s director. That’s fewer than half the number who voted for then-candidate Obama prior to Super Tuesday in 2008, although it’s an imperfect comparison because more primaries in 2008 were before Super Tuesday.

But the difference is so large that it points to a big potential weakness, Levine said.

And don't miss this:

White and gray.

That's the clear pattern for turnout in the Republican presidential race over its first two months.

After Super Tuesday, exit polls have now been conducted in 14 states from all regions of the country. In all 14 of those states, white voters, and voters over 50, both comprised a significantly larger share of the electorate in this year's GOP primary than they did in the 2008 general election. In many cases, the gap on each front has been enormous.

You will be flabbergasted by the numbers in that article. It's like the Republican Party has been left on an ice floe to die.

http://decoded.nationaljournal.com/2012/03/the-bucket-list-why-older-whit.php
The Bucket List: Why Older Whites Are Dominating the GOP Primaries

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/as-primary-season-drags-on-republicans-are-battling-voter-fatigue/2012/03/07/gIQAuv6pxR_story.html?hpid=z2
As primary season drags on, Republicans are battling voter fatigue

[zipplewrath]

1. The quiet reality

The GOP dare not discuss it, and the left doesn't really know what to say. But it is becoming unavoidable. "No one" is showing up for the primaries. Even in states that are "hotly" contested, turnouts are low, and probably would be even lower if not for the Paul voters, that are probably "new" or "additional" voters from previous elections. Some are even suggesting that it is a further indication of how weak Romney is, that he can't get enough people to turn out to overwhelm Santorum et.al. If there is an "enthusiasm gap", it appears to be in the GOP, not on the left.

Add to that the little factoid that some 20% or so of republicans are leaning towards OBAMA for goodness sakes, and the GOP is in some real serious trouble.

The big question left is how deep this problem is. Does the GOP have a total problem, or just a presidential problem? Will this affect the outcome of congressional and state level races?

It's a long way to the general election, but I wouldn't want to be the GOP about now.

[daleanime]

2. Which means the Democrats have to respond by....

moving to the center.

[KharmaTrain]

5. The Rushpublicans Are In Denial...

There's a battle about whose the "true conservative"...a purity war that has accelerated in recent years. The greed and excesses of the booooosh era left a bad taste in many right wingnut's mouths...and the social conservatives felt they got a total shaft. The republican brand had been tarnished so bad that party powers that be looked to create a new brand to energize the old worn out one...and thus the teabaggers were manufactured. The problem was that they created their own monster in the process as the teabaggers represented all the rhetoric with none of the reality. Its widened a rift as we now see three decades of moving to the right knocking the party off the political abyss.

In this election season we've seen the rushpublicans retrograde...back beyond Raygun to the battles of the 50s and 60s. These people have lived in their bubble so long they only want to believe the talking points and want to fight or refight every social and economic battle of the past half century. In essence they're fighting for their own soul...which was sold long ago.

[lunasun]

3. i feel sorry for the freak repugs that are left in that generation...Who??

$ons of a rich, or Jesus campers and there will always be racist. sexist, greedy or easilily manipulated couch potato types so lets hope that enlightenment for 100% is right around the corner, generation wise.

Commitment today paves the way for the next to advance forward!!

Try to """Imagine""" the future


White and grey
yep that's the true colors

[Alcibiades]

4. 2010 was the oldest, whitest electorate we will ever see

An outlier, to to be repeated.

Of course there was a greater than average decline in the share of the minority vote: this was because 2008 marked the peak, to date, of the minority share of the electorate. Many of these voters in 2008 were first-time, younger, poorer voters, all of which makes them less likely to vote in an off-year election.

What's really remarkable is the graying of the GOP base. Yes, the George Wallace Democrats who became Reagan Democrats who became Bush Republicans are still voting for the GOP, but fewer of their children are. It's not simply the youth vote: the GOP has a problem with the Gen X vote as well, folks in my cohort who cannot be counted among the "youth" anymore.

As far as this comment: "Democrats who are hoping to get the same kind of energy that was demonstrated in 2008 are going to be gravely disappointed when they notice that minorities are not going to be as effervescent as they were in 2008."
That's pure wishful thinking on the part of this particular GOP operative. Minority voters are not going to abandon this president in his campaign for reelection. Are black voters going to abandon him? Hell no. In my state, the president captured, for example, 100% of the black women's vote. You read that right: 100% of the black women's vote in NC went for Obama. Not surprising, in that it completely makes sense, but there's no way any of the GOP alternatives can beat that.
Are Latinos going to vote for any of the GOP folks? Not hardly. Latin voters will be a bigger part of the electorate this time around, and they know that the GOP has gone cookoo, to the right of Pete Wilson on immigration. If you spend four years demonizing people, it's hard to reach out for their votes.

And younger voters? Most of them are at odds with the GOP. Romney is the squarest candidate the GOP has had since, well, John McCain. And Santorum? Most young folks practice birth control.

The GOP has boxed itself into a corner. They cannot credibly tack to the middle, because their base of old white voters has tracked so far to the right. What's truly amazing is that even these voters still support them, given what the GOP would do to Social Security if they were in charge.

[starroute]

6. Could the era of television-dominated campaigns be coming to an end?

One paragraph in the Post story that caught my eye was this: "But Blackwell sees an evolutionary shift at work. There was once a greater emphasis on waging campaigns at the level of handshake to handshake, he said. But in the era of the Super PAC — in which nominally independent committees can raise and spend unlimited sums to support a candidate — campaigns are waged more than ever in the haze of negative TV advertising."

But it sounds to me like Ken Blackwell is fighting the last war -- or at least touting the last generation's generational shift. My experience is that young and young-ish people don't watch TV much any more -- or at least not in the same way. From satellite TV to Hulu to DVR's, the under 35's are either avoiding commercials or getting their shows on a national system that doesn't include the local ads.

So for all that PAC money, I suspect the message domination the party operatives think they're buying is mainly reaching the over-50's. Everyone else is either tuning out entirely or having their opinions shaped by social media and whatever goes viral on YouTube.