It's been only two days and I'm already at the Tina Fey point of wanting to scream about a word, only the offensive word, in this latest instance, is "demographics." For 48 hours it's been interviews and discussions and newspaper columns and miscellaneous blogging about the GOP and its demographics problem. The story is that the old white guys' party is coming up short with women, with blacks, and with Hispanics. It's been a veritable "news-and-info"-wall of demographics, demographics, demographics, when it should be a story about the party's opacity.
In the immediate aftermath of the GOP's 2008 shellacking, Jeb Bush and Eric Cantor went on a "Listening Tour." Remember? They hit the road to hear "the people," many of whom--egads--were not old, white, and grumpy. And it was during that tour that Mr. Bush uttered a vivid reality: We're losing the demographics game, he said, and we won't start re-winning until we change our playbook and actually try to attract women and minorities. His analysis was quite simple and very clear and penetratingly accurate. So pretty much everyone in his party, including his touring buddy, either promptly ignored him or failed to comprehend.
Jeb Bush's analysis wasn't really insight, though. It was elementary math. Of what he warned wasn't some arcane, enigmatic cryptology meant only for the discerning ears of the supremely wise. It was, rather, the kind of stuff a child of five could understand: more folks on your side mean more votes on Election Day. Pretty simple.
Yet here we are, four years later, and this is all coming as news to the Republican Party? I'm sorry. It's not so much that I violently disagree with their prehistoric ideologies, which of course I do. It's that they're just too stupid to govern.
As usual, you are correct. The story should not be the demographics, as if somehow or other that was the reason the GOP lost. It should be how the GOP shot itself in the foot by totally ignoring the demographics and/or promoting policies that made the demographics a problem for them.
And this is the Party that thinks it should be in control of the government whenb it can't even see the hand in front of its face and acts surprised when that hand turns into a fist that knocks it into the next county.
Posted by: japa21 | November 08, 2012 at 06:54 PM
Listening Tour....they only listen to what they want to hear. Did all of you look at the crowds in Chicago and Boston election night...Chicago: old, young, white, black, asian, latino...Boston a sea of white faces, hows that for demographics.
Posted by: sueme | November 08, 2012 at 07:06 PM
Just saw the Romney campaign has conceded Florida...that gives President Obama 332 elec. college votes....so how does that compare to Bush's mandate?
Posted by: sueme | November 08, 2012 at 07:31 PM
The theory was doubtless that piles of cash and the proper marketing campaign could overcome these difficulties. Bad theory and it will not mprv with age. The other buzzword being bandied about by the conservatives is that they need to rebrand. Which apparently means they need to change the pitch without changing the underlying bullshit.
Posted by: Peter G | November 08, 2012 at 07:42 PM
O'Reilly said it. "It's not a traditional America anymore." That's right. We now have women in this country. And Hispanics. And black people.
When did women get the vote? And all those Mexicans prance around California and Texas as if they owned the place. And, okay, there might have been some black people here for a long time, but they got a free ride here! And now they want stuff. Go figure.
Posted by: Sharon | November 08, 2012 at 09:40 PM
Jeb! and Cantor went on a "listening tour"? I'd forgotten that. Not that it did any good. Which makes me think of how even more intransigent the GOPteabag would have been had they won this year. We have been spared, at least four a couple of years, of seeing the GOPteabag on steroids.
Posted by: Bulworth | November 09, 2012 at 12:23 PM