The GOP’s white-man problem

Renée LothThe Boston Globe

If demographics are destiny, the Republican Party is facing “a serious quandary of electoral math,” said Renée Loth. Nearly 87 percent of its registered voters are white, and this may be the last national election in which the GOP can get away with directing its message primarily to this one group of voters. As Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) recently observed, “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” In recent years, nearly all of the nation’s population growth has come from minorities. This year, a record 24 million Hispanics will be eligible to vote, and by a 62-to-25 percent margin, they favor the Democratic Party. The GOP has two choices: It can stick with its harsh policies on immigration, poverty programs, and other racial wedge issues, and hope to suppress minority voting through voter ID laws. Or it can broaden the party’s appeal, and stop alienating African-Americans, Hispanics, gays, and single women. If the GOP relies solely on “the grievances of a diminishing faction of white men,” it will soon become irrelevant.