How bad is it? GOP consultant on Romney “We should be pressing the panic button”

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Friday August 31, 2012 · 8:50 AM PDT

2012/08/31 · 08:50

No, I'm not talking about the chair or InvisibleObama, I'm talking about the invisible GOP effort to win over the fastest growing demographic in America, Latino voters. When Republican consultant Ana Navarro says of Romney that “Where his numbers are right now, we should be pressing the panic button,”, well, things like that tend to catch my attention.

Basically, Mitt Romney needs to win a higher percentage of white people than Ronald Reagan did. Good luck with that. Say what you will about Reagan, but I think we can all agree that Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan.

So what happens when you place all your eggs in the shrinking demographic of "Angry White Guys" while entirely ignoring and alienating the quickly growing Latino demographic? You end up with statements coming out of GOP pollster's that sound like this . . .

. . . if Republicans do not do better among Latinos, the party won’t just be worrying about holding on to Florida, he said. “We’re going to be talking about how not to lose Texas.”

Here is the heart of what I'm talking about.

TAMPA, Fla. -- The GOP risks being “relegated to being a minority party” for years if it fails to “find a way to make that connection” with Latino voters, former Republican national chairman Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida warned Wednesday.
Speaking along with Martinez at a forum on Republicans and Latinos, sponsored by ABC News, Univision and the National Journal, Republican consultant Ana Navarro offered an even blunter assessment of the party’s current standing.

“Where his numbers are right now, we should be pressing the panic button,” she said, referring to Mitt Romney’s level of Latino support.

LATimes.com

Bold text added by the diarist

Not just a little better, the GOP needs to do a "Great Deal" better with Latino voters, and that just ain't gonna happen, not with the likes of Jan Brewer, Tom Tancredo, Joe Arapio and the rest of the xenophobic teabaggers who rule their world.

The reality, as Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina recently put it, is that the Republican party isn't "generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

The only thing worse than having to hit the panic button is hitting it to late . . .

More below the fold . . .

The mathematics of the issue are stark, said GOP pollster Whit Ayres. “There’s a critical need for Republican candidates to do a great deal better” among Latinos than they currently are, he said.
~snip~

In future elections, Republicans will not be able to count on a Democratic nominee who generates a level of racial polarization like Obama, he said. As a result, if Republicans do not do better among Latinos, the party won’t just be worrying about holding on to Florida, he said. “We’re going to be talking about how not to lose Texas.”

LATimes.com

Emphasis added by the diarist

Despite a few pretty speeches at the Republican Convention this week, the GOP has a growing disaster on their hands. Beating Democrats on the pure racial resentment of minorities that some white people have is never going to get easier than it is right now with a black president, but by going this route the GOP has totally ignored again the growing latino demographic that they must do better with if they are going to hold on to Texas, let alone Florida. So far the GOP plan to deal with these shifting demographics is to make it harder for Latinos to vote while doubling down on the angry white guy strategy, as evidenced in their dishonest "Obama gutted welfare reform" attack line, but making it harder for Latinos to vote is NOT a real plan, just the other day in Texas the Department of Justice threw out the new Texas Voter ID law as discriminatory against minorities AND ruled that the new Texas redistricting map should be scrapped and started over again without the attempts to marginalize minority voters. This is happening elsewhere all over America. By embracing their "Angry White Guy" strategy against Obama the GOP is putting thems4elves into a position where they MUST outscore Ronald Reagan among white men because they are doing so badly with everyone else. In 1980 that strategy worked, but demographically in 2012 and the future America will NOT resemble America in 1980 despite Republican demands on reality.

So we laugh at Clint Eastwood and Invisible Obama as Mitt Romney and the GOP fail again to do anything for Latino voters except give them a few speeches from people who look kinda like them, and in doing so they run the risk more than ever of being a permanent minority party that can't win outside of the South and South West, which is fine if you only want to filibuster everything in Congress and gridlock the whole place to death or win a few Governor's Mansions, but as far as winning the Presidency this is a losing strategy. Here is where it gets really messy for Republicans, if they try to win Latino's they will lose their ability to rile up angry white guys and the GOP will lose in the short term, but if they don't start doing better with Latino's fast they will lose a ton of elections in the long run it.

Either way this is a lose/lose for the GOP, and they deserve it, because that is what you get for painting yourself in a corner after 30 years of Southern Strategy appeals to white racial resentment. You didn't think that would last forever, did you? It won't, and part of the reason why Mitt Romney should be pressing the panic button right now is because of it. Every Republican should be reaching for that panic button, if they were smart. But they are not smart, they watch Fox News and listen to Rush Limbaugh, so there will be no GOP plan to appeal to Latino voters, there will be no moderation of anti-immigrant sentiment on the right, and they will lose the Latino vote and lose badly for a long time to come. That makes me glad. I can't wait until Texas is a blue state and the modern GOP is relegated to the dustbin of history, along with the Whigs, the Tories and the Know-Nothings from whence they came.

Rant off

Oh, and just for good measure . . .

eastwooding, amercia, the stupid it burns, fail

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