If you talk to a Republican today, things look pretty good for the party. The GOP controls the White House and Congress, and if George W. Bush wins in November, they could remake the Supreme Court in a more reactionary image.
However, two writers think that while the current far-right GOP is ascendant, it will not have a healthy future. James Kirchick writes in the New York Sun that Americans under the age of 30 do not have the same atttitude about gays as the current makeup of the party does. He writes:
"...it [homosexuality] will become a political liability down the road as homophobic public policies become increasingly anachronistic with young people. The polls bear this contention out, and Karl Rove would do well to pay attention. In 2000, Mr. Bush nearly split the 18-to-29-year-old vote with Mr. Gore. But in a recently released Washington Post-ABC News poll, Mr. Kerry now leads the president among that same demographic by a 2-to-1 margin. While the war and the economy are paramount in creating this shift, the one glaring issue that separates this age group from older voters — who are evenly split in the presidential race — is gays."
He continues:
"If the Republican Party wishes to have a future, it must come to grips with the fact that its stances on issues related to homosexuality, while perhaps not strategically risky right now, will prove disastrous in the future if they do not evolve. Voters under 30 are “gay friendly.” Half of us support gay marriage and a sizeable majority of us support full legal rights via civil unions. We can claim more openly gay friends, relatives, and coworkers than any other generation of Americans. We view any remark that hints of anti-gay animus with the same mix of disdain and ironic bemusement as we do retrograde comments endorsing racial supremacy.
And he's right. Kids today know friends who are gay. They see gay characters on shows like "Will and Grace" or "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." Those kids who are just starting to vote or will vote in the coming years, think that all this emphasis on hating gays is just plain silly and mean. What this means electorally, is that they will vote for the Democrat who will at least mouth gay-friendly platitudes than for the homophobic Republican who tries to wrap their hatred in God and the flag.
John Judis writes in the New Republic about how different the Republican Party of George Bush is different from the GOP under Ronald Reagan. Reagan's party was a coalition of Southern Conservatives, Sun Belt Libertarians, Midwestern Moderates and Northeastern Liberals. Bush's party is really just a coalition (if you can call it a coalition) just of Southern Conservatives and they are reshaping the party into it's more radical outlook on life. However, Judis notes that American political parties, unlike European political parties, are not ideologically-based but built on coalitions. Judis writes:
"there are disadvantages to Bush's tightly knit conservative coalition. Electoral majorities--from William McKinley's in 1896 to Franklin Roosevelt's in 1932 to Reagan's in 1980--have always, by necessity, been socially and politically heterogeneous. McKinley drew together Northern labor and capital; Roosevelt combined the urban North and the rural South. The new Republican conservative coalition, however, achieves homogeneity at the expense of majority support. America is not Cobb County, Georgia, or Midland, Texas, writ large. Most Americans don't think government should be dismantled and abortion outlawed. They don't want creationism taught in schools or environmental regulations gutted.
And, because of that, the Republican Party's very success has put it at risk. Though its rebirth as a Southern-based conservative party allowed it to capture the White House and Congress, it also hindered it from building a stable national political majority."
Judis might be a bit biased since he co-wrote a book called, The Emerging Democratic Majority. However, I think he is right. America is not Texas writ large and while many Americans don't want European-style bigh government, they also don't want laws that discriminate against gays or unsafe drinking water. I think the current dominance of the GOP is not going to last. Just as America is becoming more tolerant of gays, it is also becoming more diverse, with people of different races and ethnicities. We are fast becoming a nation where people of European ancestry will be in the minority.
The changing demographics of the United States spell doom for the Republicans unless they change course. This could present an opening to moderates and Sun Belt conservatives, but then they might also become so disgusted they will allow the GOP to hang on its own pitard.
Posted by Dennis at August 29, 2004 09:20 PM