As a Fox News contributor using his television visibility to catapult him into the Ohio governor's mansion, John Kasich can fashion himself as almost the anti-Palin. The new governor appeals to a constituency that used to be referred by some as "Good Government Republicans." A fiscal conservative, Kasich takes his convictions seriously enough that he was once willing to team up with Ralph Nader in arguing on behalf of closing corporate tax loopholes, and generally avoids staking out conspicuous positions on hot-button social issues. In these respects, Kasich can be considered something of an outlier from the increasingly vituperative, evolving mainstream of his party.
In other crucial respects, however, Kasich has proved himself neither better or worse than the rest of the GOP.
In naming the 20 full-time agency directors who so far constitute his cabinet, all of Kasich's selections have been white. (Four have been female.) Responding to criticisms for these selections, Kasich has argued -- reasonably enough -- that he has a right to appoint whomever he feels will be the most helpful to these important executive posts, telling the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
"I don't look at things from the standpoint of any of these sort of metrics that people tend to focus on, race or age, or any of those things ... It's not the way I look at those things. I want the best possible team I can get, and hopefully we will be in a position that we are fully diverse as we go forward. But I can't say I need to find somebody to fit this metric, not when I am trying to get a state that is in deep trouble out of trouble."
Yet while Kasich may be justified in principle, it strains credulity to believe that not one of the 20 most qualified individuals to assist the governor in his cabinet is a person of color. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, non-white citizens (including Hispanics) make up approximately 17 percent of the state. The last Ohio governor whose entire senior Cabinet did not feature a single non-white secretary was Michael DiSalle, a Democrat, who last served in 1962.
Ohio serves as a microcosm for a more general problem afflicting the Republican party. At the 2009 Republican National Convention (RNC), held in St. Paul, Minnesota, an astonishing 93 percent of delegates were white. In the 2006 elections, 69 percent of Latinos, 57 percent of women, 90 percent of blacks, 60 percent of voters under 29 and 57 percent of independent voters voted Democratic.At the 2004 RNC, a slightly less staggering but still disproportionate 85 percent of delegates were white. Only six percent were black.
To say this puts the GOP at odds with national -- and electoral -- trends would be an understatement. Nate Silver, in a June 2009 post, called attention to the fact that in 1980, 32 percent of the electorate consisted of white voters who cast ballots for the Democratic candidate (Jimmy Carter). In 2008, Silver continued, 32 percent of the electorate consisted of white Obama voters. But whereas in 1980 just 9 percent of the electorate were non-white Carter voters, 21 percent of the electorate were non-white Obama voters in 2008.
Typical estimations suggest that America will be a majority-minority country by 2050; a primary reasoning behind this prediction is the surge in the Latino voting population. A former Bush administration official has estimated that to remain competitive in national elections, the GOP will need to win 40-44 percent of the Latino vote. The Republican yield in 2008, under the banner of the (then, at least) relatively immigration friendly John McCain? 31 percent.
Thus, whatever gains the GOP makes in year-by-year elections, it still seems as if they're losing the long game as far as demographics are concerned. But what's most frightening for the future of the Republican party, as the example of Kasich highlights, is that the bulk of Republican powers-that-be seem remarkably unconcerned.