...the voting groups growing in numbers — Hispanics, Asians, African-Americans, folks with college degrees, the young — are all trending Democratic, while the voters most loyal to the GOP — white folks and religious conservatives — are declining as a share of the U.S. electorate. And demography is destiny.
But he sees an advantage for Republicans in the culture war issue of gay marriage.
When African-Americans, who gave McCain 4 percent of their votes in California, gave Proposition 8, prohibiting gay marriage, 70 percent of their votes, why would the GOP give up one of its trump cards — not only in Middle America but among minorities? A conservative who could have sharpened the social, moral and cultural differences might, from the exit polls, have done far better.
That is just too stupid for words. All the Proposition 8 vote showed was that in a straight up or down vote on gay marriage most African-American voters were against it. Their feelings about gay marriage have caused few African-Americans to support Republicans up to now and there is no evidence, in the Proposition 8 vote or elsewhere, that very many African-American voters will become single-issue anti-gay rights voters in the future.
In fact the same demographic and intellectual trends that favor Democrats that Buchanan cited are eroding opposition to gay rights in general and gay marriage in particular. In fact, these trends will continue to erode opposition to gay rights until it will be as much a fringe position among the American electorate as is opposition to womens suffrage or support for slavery. But that is the issue Buchanan hopes will stem the tide of Republican decline. What a maroon!
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The Republicans should not imply that they have failed to attract these growing segments of the voting public as they have indeed built their party around a strong hatred for these groups. They regularly express hatred and contempt for gays, foreign born new Americans, poor people who need public assistance, especially blacks who need assistance, older Americans who need Medicare and Social Security to survive, non-Christian Americans, Americans who view science as a good thing, and Americans who believe that Jesus meant what he said when he gave the “Sermon on the Mount.” Their success for the past eight years was due to their ability to convince a large part of the voting public to wallow in a pit of hatred. Republican’s troubles today are that the Democrats have a leader who is lifting the voting public out of the pit of hatred.
Pat Buchanan needs to find a way to convince thinking Americans that the Republicans, who have come to be typified by hate speech, have any sort of moral edge on Democrats lead by President Obama, a man who consistently chooses the high road.
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