What are the three demographic groups whose electoral impact is growing fastest? Hispanics, women, and young people. Who are Republicans pissing off the most? Latinos, women, and young people.
It's almost as if the GOP can't help itself.
Start with Hispanic voters, whose electoral heft keeps growing as they comprise an ever-larger portion of the electorate. Hispanics now favor President Obama over Romney by more than two to one, according to a recent Pew poll.
The movement of Hispanics into the Democratic camp has been going on for decades. What are Republicans doing to woo them back? Replicating California Republican Governor Pete Wilson's disastrous support almost twenty years ago for Proposition 187 -- which would have screened out undocumented immigrants from public schools, health care, and other social services, and required law-enforcement officials to report any "suspected" illegals. (Wilson, you may remember, lost that year's election, and California's Republican Party has never recovered.)
The Arizona law now before the Supreme Court -- sponsored by Republicans in the state and copied by Republican legislators and governors in several others -- would authorize police to stop anyone looking Hispanic and demand proof of citizenship. It's nativism disguised as law enforcement.
Romney is trying to distance himself from that law, but it's not working. That may be because he dubbed it a "model law" during February's Republican primary debate in Arizona, and because its author (former state senator Russell Pearce, who was ousted in a special election last November largely by angry Hispanic voters) says he's working closely with Romney advisers.
Hispanics are also reacting to Romney's attack just a few months ago on GOP rival Texas Governor Rick Perry for supporting in-state tuition at the University of Texas for children of undocumented immigrants. And to Romney's advocacy of what he calls "self-deportation" -- making life so difficult for undocumented immigrants and their families that they choose to leave.
As if all this weren't enough, the GOP has been pushing voter ID laws all over America, whose obvious aim is to intimidate Hispanic voters so they won't come to the polls. But they may have the opposite effect -- emboldening the vast majority of ethnic Hispanics, who are American citizens, to vote in even greater numbers and lend even more support to Obama and other Democrats.
Or consider women -- whose political and economic impact in America continues to grow (women are fast becoming better educated than men and the major breadwinners in American homes). The political gender gap is huge. According to recent polls, women prefer Obama to Romney by over 20 percent.
So what is the GOP doing to woo women back? Attacking them. Last February, House Republicans voted to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. Last May, they unanimously passed the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," banning the District of Columbia from funding abortions for low-income women. (The original version removed all exceptions -- rape, incest, and endangerment to a mother's life -- except "forcible" rape.)
Earlier this year Republican legislators in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Idaho, and Alabama pushed bills requiring women seeking abortions to undergo invasive vaginal ultrasound tests (Pennsylvania Republicans even wanted proof such had viewed the images).
Republican legislators in Georgia and Arizona passed bills banning most abortions after twenty weeks of pregnancy. The Georgia bill would also require that any abortion after 20 weeks be done in a way to bring the fetus out alive. Republican legislators in Texas have voted to eliminate funding for any women's healthcare clinic with an affiliation to an abortion provider -- even if the affiliation is merely a shared name, employee, or board member.
All told, over 400 Republican bills are pending in state legislatures, attacking women's reproductive rights.
But even this doesn't seem enough for the GOP. Republicans in Wisconsin just repealed a law designed to prevent employers from discriminating against women.
Or, finally, consider students -- a significant and growing electoral force, who voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008. What are Republicans doing to woo them back? Attack them, of course.
Republican Budget Chair Paul Ryan's budget plan -- approved by almost every House Republican and enthusiastically endorsed by Mitt Romney -- allows rates on student loans to double on July 1 -- from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. That will add an average of $1,000 a year to student debt loads, which already exceed credit-card debt.
House Republicans say America can't afford the $6 billion a year it would require to keep student loan rates down to where they are now. But that same Republican plan gives wealthy Americans trillions of dollars in tax cuts over the next decade. (Under mounting political pressure, House Republicans have come up with just enough money to keep the loan program going for another year -- safely past Election Day -- by raiding a fund established for preventive care in the new health-care act.)
Here again, Romney is trying to tiptoe away from the GOP position. He now says he supports keeping student loans where they were. Yet only a few months ago he argued that subsidized student loans were bad because they encouraged colleges to raise their tuition.
How can a political party be so dumb as to piss off Hispanics, women, and young people? Because the core of its base is middle-aged white men -- and it doesn't seem to know how to satisfy its base without at the same time turning off everyone who's not white, male, and middle-aged.
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Robert Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at Berkeley and former
Secretary of Labor, is the author of Beyond Outrage. His widely-read blog can be found at www.robertreich.org.
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Robert Guttman: Primarily, the Primaries Work
 |
 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
The most vulnerable in our society, the young, the old, latinoS and women are just the first large groups to experience casualties in the REPUBLICAN WAR AGAINST AMERICAN WORKERS.
"Kris Kobach is/was/appears to be Mitt Romney’s main immigration advisor and the major author of Arizona’s anti-immigration law — which Romney has praised — and Hethmon is his sidekick at the Immigration Reform Law Institute. There has been a dance around Kobach’s exact role with the Romney campaign as Mittens tries to shake the etch-a-sketch in order to somehow appeal to the Hispanic voters he needs to win but who are currently rejecting him in polls by five to one.
"What Hethmon tells the Post is:
"Immigration is 'on track to change the demographic makeup of the entire country. You know, what they call minority-majority,' said Hethmon, who is general counsel at the Washington-based Immigration Reform Law Institute. 'How many countries have gone through a transition like that — peacefully, carefully? It’s theoretically possible, but we don’t have any examples.'"
"So Hethmon is motivated by concerns about a transition from a white U.S. majority, which he fears may not be “peaceful”? He’s working on anti-immigrant measures for Republican policymakers nationwide to prevent whites from slipping into the American minority?
Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/is-anti-immigrant-rhetoric-about-maintaining-a-white-majority.html#ixzz1tXFUSB4L
Bang on! And you first have to grasp reality before you can do anything about it. Reality is but an alien concept to that core base as their world (mine also) dissipates and evolves into the future. But, they will not go down easily and still control the levers of power. It only buys them the time to make the fall all that much more harsh in its consequences.
'The Arizona law now before the Supreme Court -- sponsored by Republicans in the state and copied by Republican legislators and governors in several others -- would authorize police to stop anyone looking Hispanic and demand proof of citizenship. It's nativism disguised as law enforcement.'
Actually, false.
http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070s.pdf
Even as early as page 1 makes it clear that 'reasonable suspicion' (B. line 20) and/or 'probable cause' (E line 37) are preconditions for detainment and review of status. Merely 'looking Hispanic' simply doesn't make the cut.
A call comes in from a shopkeeper complaining about 'kids loitering'. Cop arrives, asks them to disperse.
Which group is the cop more likely to ask to verify citizenship, and (when they don't all have drivers licenses or other ID), more likely to detain?
" Two-thirds (65%) of Latino registered voters say they plan to support the Democratic candidate in their local congressional district, while just 22% support the Republican candidate, according to a nationwide survey of Latinos."
And you were saying?
Inequality does not offend them; they like being overlords. They use social issues to distract and enrage their base, while they continue to raid the economy and push the wealth of this country into the hands of a tiny minority that is already at the top of the economic pile.
The guys in the board rooms do not give a tinker's drat about religion or even abortion and will use any issue that leaves them in control.
When you understand that, you understand why Romney is caught contradicting himself so often; he is not interested principles, only principal (as capital).