How the Republican Party got lost in the Bushes (NJ.com reaction to a Buchanan column.)
Pat Buchanan had a column the other day headlined, “Has the bell begun to toll for the GOP?”
Buchanan’s thesis is that the Republican Party is doomed by demographic shifts. Thanks to changes in voting patterns due to mass immigration, the party no longer competes on the national level in two of the three biggest states, California and New York.
“When Texas — where whites are a minority and a declining share of the population — tips, how does the GOP put together an electoral majority?” Buchanan asks. It doesn’t. If Texas goes the way of California, the Republican Party goes the way of the Whigs.
Many people are under the mistaken impression that the recent wave of mass immigration was the handiwork of the Democrats. Not at all. It was a Republican president, Ronald Reagan, who signed the 1986 immigration amnesty. That act called for enhanced enforcement, in addition to amnesty.
Unfortunately, the enforcement was left mostly to presidents named Bush. In the time that law has been in effect, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush controlled the White House for longer than Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Those Democrats had an excuse for not enforcing immigration regulations. (Ignoring the fact that Obama has enforced immigration regulations much more effectively than Reagan or either Bush.) The new immigrants could be expected to eventually form the party base in key states. As for both Bushes, what was their excuse?
The second President Bush represents the fulfillment of a prophecy: “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” That prediction by H.L. Mencken certainly came true with the 2000 election. Bush’s failure to act on immigration was only one-half of his effort to destroy his party’s prospects.
The other half was his implementation of Rove’s effort to remake the Republican Party, so that the base consisted of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant voters in the red states — exactly the same voters he was busy consigning to demographic irrelevance.
These demographic trends have not taken full effect in the rest of the country yet. So there’s still a good chance Mitt Romney will win in November (let's hope NJ.com is wrong about that!). Assuming he does, though, Romney will inherit a party that appeals mainly to an aging white population that will soon be replaced by a surging minority population.
http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2012/05/how_the_republican_party_got_l.html
This piece was apparently written by a conservative expressing frustration with Bush and Rove but it is an interesting view of the teeth gnashing going on in the republican party.
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