By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
In 2004 Republicans President George Bush won over 40% of the Hispanic vote and he was reelected. In 2008, John McCain won just 31% of the Hispanic vote and lost. While Mitt Romney handily won the solid Republican demographic of the White married churchgoers, that was not nearly enough. Romney won the White vote by an impressive 20 percentage points. Historically that would have been enough to be swept into office in a landslide, but this is 2012. Mitt won just 27% of the Hispanic vote, which was 10% of the total votes cast. Black voter turnout remained higher than normal at 13% of the vote cast with President Obama receiving over 90% of the Black vote. That combination along with the support of new voters with Middleastern and Asian ancestry proved a difficult hurdle for the best funded Republican campaign in history to overcome.
Different Republican factions will now turn their guns on each other. The Teaparty Republicans will be blamed by Republican moderates for turning the nation against the GOP. Teaparty activists who successfully hoisted fringe candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock upon the Party in Republican primaries have clearly cost the party two Senate seats……that would have been won by virtually any other Republican nominee. Teaparty Republicans will fire back that it was establishment Republicans that hoisted Mitt Romney on the party…….a Massachusetts moderate who couldn’t even put his home state in play. And there may be more than a little bit of truth on both sides there.
Conservatives will of course say that Mitt Romney was not conservative enough. Moderates will say that catering to the extreme right to win Republican primaries forced Romney and the party to say things and adopt positions that took both too far to the right to win enough of the middle to win this election. Books will be written, TV pundits will preach one position or another, and ideological zealots of all stripes will claim their way is the only way; but the undeniable truth is that the nation is changing.
The nation is getting more Latin. White births are down. The country is much less religious than it was 40, 10, or even 5 years ago. At too many of our Churches when we bury one of the valiant members of the Greatest Generation we don’t have anybody who take their places in the pews and often the Republican Party can’t replace them on election day either. Many more families are headed by single women. Single women and atheists are demographics that went solidly for Barack Obama.
I am a 40++ multiple gun owning suburban/rural White southern male with a hunting license who goes to my Church 5 to 7 times a week, heck I am even an usher. I vote Republican…..ALWAYS. My St. Clair County Republican Party Card is in my wallet right next to my NRA membership card; but if the party caters to people like me we are going to be a permanent minority as I represent the America that WAS more than I do the America that IS.
We have a younger generation in this country that is more likely to be promiscuous for years or even decades before marriage, is not friendly to the pro-Life cause, is much more likely to be multi-racial, is much more likely to have their children out of wedlock, is much less likely to be gainfully employed than we were at that age, is much less likely to be at their Church on Sunday or even to self-identify themselves as Christian, is pro-gay rights, favors marijuana legalization, and is in many ways hostile to the image of America as the world’s super power who can enforce our will anywhere at any time……..often at the cost of members of their generation’s blood.
I am not saying that the Republican Party needs to target the atheist, pot head beatnik illegal alien vote; but we need to find many more people out there that we can find common cause with than we have now or 2016 is going to be an even worse disaster than 2012 was.
