“I’m
tired of hyphenated Americans,” complains Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal in “We’re
All Americans,” a television spot aired by Believe Again, the super PAC
supporting the presidential hopeful’s bid.
“We’re not Indian-Americans or
African-Americans or Asian-Americans. We’re all Americans,” he continues as the
audience applauds.
Jindal thinks the way most
conservatives and Republicans do. They generally prefer to focus on individuals
(and individual liberty) and decry the Democrats’ interest group view of
politics and their emphasis on group membership and equality.
But while railing against “hyphenated
Americans” may well resonate with the party faithful, it also shows many
Republicans don’t understand how some Americans see themselves and their
communities of interest.
In the 1970s and 1980s, organized labor
was the Democratic Party’s key “special interest” group, but now the party’s
growing electoral strength is based on racial and ethnic groups, younger voters
and white liberals. In many ways, “identity politics” now defines the
Democratic Party.
Of course, both parties engage in what
one Republican political consultant calls “tribalism.”
“The only difference between their
tribalism and ours is that we are appealing to different tribes,” he said. “Oh,
and they are getting a higher percentage of their tribes than we are getting of
our tribes,” he joked, accurately.
In 2012, Mitt Romney’s strongest age
group was older voters, age 65 and above. He won 56 percent of them. On the
other hand, Barack Obama’s strongest age category was voters age 18 to 29.
He carried 60 percent of those voters.
Romney
drew 59 percent of whites, but Obama drew 93 percent of blacks, 71 percent of
Hispanics and 73 percent of Asians.
Romney won 59 percent of voters who
attended church at least weekly, while Obama received 62 percent of the vote
among voters who never attend church. And while Romney carried 60 percent of
married men, Obama won 67 percent of unmarried women.
The
exit poll numbers from 2008 are even more dramatic. They showed Obama rolling
up bigger numbers among core Democratic constituencies than John McCain did
among normally Republican demographic groups.
Moreover,
while the GOP has its “identity” groups — white evangelicals, pro-lifers, older
white males, gun owners, highly religious voters, etc. — a number of Republican
tribes are shrinking in political importance. That’s not the case with
African-Americans, Hispanics or Asian-Americans.
It’s now obvious Republicans have
missed the boat on identity politics. Most in the party have preferred to argue
minorities’ views on social issues should make them ripe for the picking by
Republican candidates. But that’s not how many of those non-white and Hispanic
voters see things.
Hispanics and Asians have not yet
melted into the American melting pot the way Italians, Irish and Poles have
(though those older immigrant groups retain some of their identity). While it
is possible they may do so in another generation or two, they could easily hold
onto their group identities for an extended period, as Jewish and
African-American people have.
Republican
problems with racial and ethnic minorities stem from the perception in those
communities that the GOP is hostile to them. The rhetoric of some Republicans
on the subject of illegal immigration and immigration policy changes is a big
part of the problem, but the party’s generally unsympathetic treatment of
“outsiders” is the larger issue.
The
more Republicans fight against affirmative action and gay rights while also
defending the Confederate flag, the more racial and ethnic minorities see the
GOP as the enemy.
Most
GOP strategists have finally gotten the message, of course. They see the face
of the country is changing and note what that could mean for future elections.
And
some Republicans have made inroads with minority communities without changing
their issue positions. Exit polls showed David Perdue received 42 percent of
the Latino vote in the 2014 Georgia Senate race, while Greg Abbott drew 44
percent of that vote in the Texas governor’s race.
And
while exit polls didn’t provide data for the Colorado Senate race, sources
close to the campaign of the winner, Republican Cory Gardner, say they believe
he drew in the “upper 30s” among Hispanics based on the campaign’s internal
polling at the end of the campaign.
But
those successes are the exception, not the rule.
Since
the party’s base is so white and so angry, and so many GOP members of Congress
represent districts and states overwhelmingly white, it’s difficult to convince
some Republicans that showing tolerance and being sensitive to the opinions of
racial, ethnic and other groups that rarely vote Republican is important.
Democrats
are taking advantage of the nation’s changing demographic makeup and have
benefited in the Electoral College.
Some states reliably Republican in the
1980s, such as North Carolina, Virginia and Florida, have become competitive,
while once-competitive states — including New Mexico, New Jersey, Delaware and
even Oregon — have become uncompetitive in federal contests.
Democrats still woo interest groups
(e.g., public employee unions) and liberals (on issues such as gun control,
Social Security and Medicaid, and economic inequality), but they increasingly
can count non-white and Hispanic voters who support them primarily because
those voters feel unwanted by the Republican Party.
Columnist Josh Kraushaar might be correct that Democrats may
ultimately pay a price for their current brand of identity politics (see his April 7 National
Journal piece, “Democrats Have an Identity-Politics Problem”),
but right now it is Republicans who are on the losing side of the numbers game
because they refuse to understand that some people see events through the eyes
of their groups.
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