http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/05/20/liberals_at_odds_over_the_republican_party_s_demographicsLiberals at Odds Over the Republican Party's Demographics
May 20, 2015
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RUSH: Mr. Snerdley went out and found this piece I referred to earlier that is in Salon.com. I'm sorry, Slate. Well, Slate, Salon, what the hell is the difference? Okay, it's at Slate.com, and it's written by a guy named Jamelle Bouie, who is a Slate staff writer covering politics, policy, and race. He's African-American. What he's actually doing is reacting to a piece that he ran into on Politico. And the title of his piece here is: "Republicans Are Not on the Edge of Extinction.
He says: "The GOP is an aging party, but it isn’t about to die out." Now, the conventional wisdom, again, in Washington, the conventional wisdom of political scientists, political professionals, is that the Republican Party is aging and white and is soon to be eclipsed into nonexistence, on the basis of demographics alone. Nothing to do with issues. It has everything to do with hip, cool, and age. And this guy, Jamelle Bouie, does not think that necessarily is the case.
"The Republican Party controls Congress, the majority of governorships, and the majority of statehouses. But, argues Daniel McGraw in Politico Magazine, it’s dying. Literally. 'Since the average Republican is significantly older than the average Democrat, far more Republicans than Democrats have died since the 2012 elections,' he writes. 'To make matters worse, the GOP is attracting fewer first-time voters. Unless the party is able to make inroads with new voters, or discover a fountain of youth, the GOP’s slow demographic slide will continue election to election.'" That's in The Politico magazine.
Mr. Bouie says: "It’s hard to argue the numbers of McGraw’s assessment. Republican voters are disproportionately elderly, and it’s safe to assume a large slice of the party’s voters will die by 2016." You know, one thing that's never factored here is they never do factor the number of Democrats who die in the womb. They never do that. They never factor how Democrat voters are being -- well, they're dying, too, in abortion, 1.3 million a year, and that does add up. You throw that out over five or ten years, and those people live long enough to become 18, 21, able to vote, they don't exist, hello immigration.
There are many reasons why the Democrats are for open borders, and one of the reasons is they are aborting many of their future voters, as a matter of policy. Abortion is the sacrament. Every abortion that can happen, must happen, and when an abortion happens, a future human being dies. And in the case of abortion, most of those future human beings would be Democrats. So they've gotta replace 'em somehow, but you see how the Republicans are dying off. The Democrats, I guess the perpetual party of youth, a never ending supply of it? Yes.
"At the same time, at least since 2008, the number of young people who become Republicans has declined from its earlier highs. Barring a major shift in the youth vote from its allegiance to the Democratic Party (young voters reject Republicans, 35 percent to 65 percent), Democrats will pick up 2 million new voters in 2016. By contrast, notes McGraw, the youth split plus the death numbers 'puts Republicans at an almost 2.5 million voter disadvantage.'"
And again, just to sum this up, it's because certain Republicans are gonna die because they're elderly, and they're not gonna get very much of the youth vote. So if you combine the low percentage of the youth vote with death, the Republicans are gonna be down two and a half million voters.
Never forget this, though, that in 2012 there were anywhere between three and four million Republican voters that didn't vote because they were fed up, they were not happy with Romney as the nominee, and it was a protest to stay home. There was not a shortage of Republicans in 2012, they just had a significant number of them not show up. Had they showed up and voted for Romney, we'd be in a different world right now.
But these guys want to convince themselves the Republican Party's dying. And they want to convince themselves that the Republican Party is losing young voters by a margin of two to one. Or, actually, three to one. Now, here back to Mr. Bouie, who is at Slate.com. It is Slate, right, not Salon, Slate, because it doesn't say here. Slate.com. "There's no doubt," he says, "that the GOP is in a tight spot. But it’s too much to argue, as McGraw does, that the party is primed for decline. For starters, the trends McGraw identifies for 2016 were also true in 2012 and 2008.
"In fact, for most of the last decade, it has generally been true that ... Democrats have had an easier time getting and replacing voters than Republicans, who rely on a demographically narrow group of whites in both the South and the nation’s interior. Nevertheless, Republicans have won two midterm elections and come close to grabbing the White House from an incumbent president. The reason it didn’t had less to do with its aging base and more to do with the macroconditions of the 2012 election. The economy was just good enough to give President Obama a second term. Add higher unemployment and lower growth, however, and you’re likely looking at President Romney in 2013."
No, if the Republicans had nominated a conservative, not a pretend conservative. If they had nominated a conservative, we would have been looking at president conservative Republican in 2012. It wasn't the economy. Obama didn't get any credit for the economy. It was all there in the exit polls. There were two things from the exit polls that we learned in both years, 2008 and 2012.
The big question, "Cares about people like me," 81% Obama, 19% Romney. And those who thought the economy was a problem blame George W. Bush for it. Hello, media, and hello, Republicans for failing to campaign against Obama in 2012 as the architect of a ruinous economy. Because they were of the belief that independents don't want to hear Democrats criticized. They even let him off the hook of Benghazi, with the help of Candy Crowley in a presidential debate. They handcuffed themselves.
Consultants out there say, "Don't go after Obama, just go after his policies." How do you separate the two, I always asked. Anyway, Mr. Bouie at -- is it Salon or Slate? Mr. Bouie at Slate.com says: "The same will go, in general, for 2016. For as much as Republicans are at a demographic disadvantage, it is also true that their ultimate performance depends on the fundamentals: If Obama’s approval rating declines and the economy hits a snag --" Hits a snag? It's been a snag for six and a half years now. What do you mean, if the economy hits a snag?
This is what I mean by insulting my intelligence. There's not an economic recovery. There's not even a pretend economic recovery going on out there. Anyway, I got a stick with this. You know, I could have an editorial comment after every sentence. "If Obama’s approval rating declines and the economy hits a snag, then voters will turn against Democrats and Republicans will recover the White House, even as they struggle to replace their core supporters," who are dying. How's that possible? Would somebody explain to me? It's demographics or it isn't.
If the demographics are gonna kill the Republican Party then how in the world can Obama being blamed for the economy save 'em? If their voters are dying, what else matters? If their voters are dying and more are gonna be dead in 2016 than were alive in 2012 or whatever, and if they're not getting the youth vote, what does it matter? See, that's where these people get all wet. They think they're the smartest people the room and they start talking demographics, and they get Republicans believing this horse hockey, and that's how Republicans end up thinking they've gotta be for open borders to get the Hispanic vote, and they've gotta be for this and that to get the women's vote, they gotta be this and that to get whatever group's over there vote.
And yet the Democrats tell 'em you can't win unless you agree with us and somehow get your voters to not die. But Obamacare's taken care of that. But which is it? What matters here, demographics or does actual policy or events matter? And why isn't the Obama economy gonna hurt Hillary? If this economy were going to exact a price on the Democrats, it would have done so already. But, remember, we discussed this in the first hour yesterday. There is more Gallup polling data out there that people think the country's heading in the wrong direction left and right. I mean it's in the wrong direction, heading down the wrong direction fast, but they don't blame Obama for it. They're blaming the country.
A majority of Americans think the country's better days are over, but they don't associate this with Obama. And the reason they don't is because the Republicans have not tied any of this to Obama. You can't rely on people concluding what you want them to conclude. You have to lead them to it. Which is what a campaign is, which is what a persuasive speech is. You have to identify your opponents, and you have to tie them to their policies that have been ruinous.
Obama's economic policy of growing the government, shrinking the private sector, it's impossible mathematically for the economy to be growing here at any significant replacement levels because Obama's commandeered so much of it. It literally is shrinking. The government is becoming more and more the gross domestic product, and the government doesn't have any money until it takes it from somewhere. It takes from the private sector, which is shrinking, and that's where your careers are, Millennials, that's where your jobs are, and Obama's taking it.
Take a look at the number of businesses closing down. Take a look at the number of businesses not starting up. Where do you think your careers are? They're somewhere in the federal government having been subsumed by some bureaucracy. And somehow this becomes the country's problem, the country's fault, not Obama's.
It says here, "And in the medium term, Republicans will begin to make up for the death rate of their most loyal supporters." How? "Eventually, the GOP will find a working national majority, even if the country becomes as brown and liberal as some analysts project. Put differently, the real question of Republicans and elderly voters isn’t if the party will die -- the only time a major party 'died' is when it was killed by sectional disputes around slavery -- it’s whether a future, younger Republican Party will still have a conservative movement." And there we get to the nub of this.
The point of this story is to say the only future the Republican Party has is if it wipes out and destroys the conservative movement within it. And how do they do that? This is in Salon.com or Slate? This is Slate.com. I guarantee there's a bunch of Republican consultants who believe that very thing, that the only future of the Republican Party is to get rid of their conservative wing. And if they do, then the party can grow and become hip by being pro-choice in certain sectors where they have to be, and for open borders and amnesty in certain states where they have to be, and whatever else that they have to do to be more like Democrats, they'll be free to do when they get rid of the conservative wing.
Now, what these guys all know -- they're are very crafty guys. What they all know is that if you get rid of the conservative wing of the Republican Party, that's when it dies. It doesn't matter if your elderly voters are dying. It doesn't matter if you're getting the youth vote or not. If you wipe out the conservative movement, you get rid of Fox News and talk radio at the same time, then you have gotten rid of the Republican Party. And that's what's it's all about.
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RUSH: Chris in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It's great to welcome you to the EIB Network. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Rush, dream of a lifetime. Thanks for having me on.
RUSH: You bet, sir.
CALLER: I have a question for you.
RUSH: Yeah?
CALLER: I'll be brief. You mentioned earlier that, you know, anybody with a (D) next to their name is gonna get 234 electorally votes. What Republican politician hires a consultant that is ready to concede that right off the bat?
RUSH: I hear you.
CALLER: That's like hiring a coach that is conceding 28 points before they even start the game.
RUSH: Well, no, no. The correct analogy is, you hire a coach who expects you're gonna lose seven or eight games a year.
CALLER: That's right. So who would hire that coach?
RUSH: Well, Cincinnati Bengals did for the longest time. The Oakland Raiders have done that. (chuckles) Just throwing it out there.
CALLER: (laughing) Thank God I'm not a Raider.
RUSH: No, it's a good question. Let me cut to the chase here. He heard me talking yesterday that there's been bunch of different ways of people looking at a presidential election. I happen to be one who looks at it as the whole country's up for grabs and it's based on articulation of issues and persuasion and showing people you care about them and identifying the issues that matter.
And then there's another school of thought that looks at the Electoral College map and concludes going in that the Democrats are gonna win a minimum of 200 electoral votes or 230 and there's nothing you can do about it. They arrive at this by looking at the states that the Democrats are guaranteed to win. They start with New York and California, they add those electoral votes, and they say, "Democrats start with those, and we can't win 'em and there's no way we can win 'em and there's no way we should spend any money time there."
And then they add other states. They'll add Massachusetts in there and they'll add, obviously, liberal-Democrat blue states. And the Republicans are doing the same thing, by the way. And your question is, "Why would you hire anybody that's gonna write off entire states in geographic regions?" and you --
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: You do it because of money. You only have so much money -- no matter that it may set a record -- and it has to be allocated in places where they think it has a chance of being effective. That's why I have heard... You want to get further irritated? Get this. I have heard -- I wish I could remember who, but it was a Republican consultant, and it was in something I read, and it's been months ago now -- that the 2012 election was gonna be one in three states.
If Republicans didn't win these three and all the ones that they are assumed to win, then it was over. And one of the three was Florida, one of the three was Ohio, and I forget which the third one was. And they believe this. They believe it, and the reason for this is obviously population, registered voters, voter turnout. And it becomes hard to argue. Mean, it's a hard case to make that the Republicans could win California. They just... Do you know there's not a single Republican that holds statewide office in California?
The last Republican to win California was Reagan. Do you know that Richard Nixon won California all four times he ran there -- and Reagan did, too, counting times he ran for governor? It was 1988, last time a Republican won California, or '84, maybe. I don't know whether Bush carried California or not, but this '84, '88. Now, stop and think of this for a second. What happened? What changed? What in the world happened? The Republican Party... I mean, Pete Wilson, those guys, we owned California not that long ago, a generation.
We owned California. Never New York, but we owned California. I'll tell you exactly what happened, folks. It's called Simpson-Mazzoli 1986, and they opened the flood. We did not do any immigration from 1924 to 1965. We assimilated all the people who had emigrated prior to 1924. And Ted Kennedy comes along and starts agitating for opening the borders again, and Simpson-Mazzoli comes along and we legalize it. We amnesty three million.
Since we did that, the Republicans have been written off in California, and they don't even hold a single statewide office. It's kind of depressing to think the Republicans used to own California, had the governorship. There was a day when the only powerful Democrat in that state was Willie Brown at the state assembly, and the mayor of San Francisco, where that happened to be. It's a far cry. You can pinpoint it to immigration. There are other factors as well, but, anyway, we'll continue this. I'm glad you called, Chris.
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RUSH: We just had The Politico piece, and was Salon.com or Slate? It was Slate.com. Salon.com? Sorry, it was Politico saying that the Republican Party's finished 'cause it's dying. Of course, nobody ever calculates the Democrat Party's problem. I mean, how many African-Americans are in jail by virtue of their own complaint? They can't vote -- and if you listen to civil rights leaders, African-Americans are dying unfairly because of it's unfair in America.
We never hear about these impacts on the Democrat Party. We only hear about Republican voters dying. Anyway, the Politico says Republicans are dying because they're dying and the party is gonna die with 'em. The guy at... Was it Slate or Salon.com? The guy at Slate.com says (paraphrased), "No, no, no, it doesn't matter as long as they're... See, they're gonna figure that out. The thing that the Republican Party needs to do is get rid of its conservative wing, and if it does that, then we Democrats are gonna have a formidable enemy.
"As long as the Republicans hold on to their conservative wing, no problem for us. That's this guy's point in Slate.com. Yet, if you go to the New Yorker -- which I have done here, right here my formerly nicotine-stained fingers -- there's a story there warning that the GOP is about to run the table in 2016. It's a story by John Cassidy, and he writes... This is an excerpt.
"[T]ake a peek at a new analysis of the American political firmament by Sean Trende and David Byler, of the Web site Real Clear Politics. It's a data-driven article that examines what's happening not only in Washington but in legislatures and statehouses around the country, which also have a significant impact on people's lives. Trende and Byler conclude that the Republican Party is already stronger than it has been for many decades," and that, by the way, is very true, thanks to the midterm elections in 2010 and 2014.
The Democrats got smoked down the ballot. I mean, it's a major landslide in two midterm elections, and these guys are exactly right about that. "With a good result in 2016, including a takeover of the White House, it could virtually sweep the board. Indeed, Trende and Byler say, the Republicans could end up in their strongest position since 1920, the year women got the vote. If the spectre of today's Republican Party monopolizing most of the levers of power at the federal, congressional, and state levels isn't enough to get people exercised about 2016, I don't know what is."
This is the guy writing at the New Yorker. "At this stage, Democratic control of the White House is about the only thing holding the Republicans back..." So there's an entirely different take from the New Yorker, from Slate.com and The Politico. And the reason the New Yorker is worried about this is because this is "data driven." This is all poll analysis, and these people live and die by that. So there you have that.
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