The Republican Party: The death of America’s angry white man

Rupert Cornwell
Sunday 11 November 2012They truly expected Mitt would win. Not just the right-wing talk-show hosts and the dedicated Republican pundits living in their parallel universe, but the top campaign brass, even the candidate himself, who had prepared only a victory speech. That incidentally may explain the brevity and grace of Romney’s concession in Boston on Tuesday night. In the event, nothing became him in defeat so much as the way he took it.

And it wasn’t just a defeat, it was a big one, whose dimensions were a surprise even to many Democrats: over 2 per cent in the popular vote and a crushing 332 votes to 206 in the electoral college, in what is supposed to be a 50/50 country. And this in a year when the struggling economy was the main issue, and Republicans were fielding a candidate whose selling point was his economic and business expertise. What went wrong?

The initial reaction, as with a patient who is told their illness is terminal, was denial. Nothing was wrong, some of the true believers said at first; after all the party had kept control of the House of Representatives. The problem had been the dastardly negative tactics of the opposition (“Obama succeeded by suppressing the vote,” blathered Karl Rove, one-time campaign guru of George W Bush). Others blamed the electorate: “We don’t need to change to appeal to voters,” insisted the conservative talk-show host Laura Ingraham. “We need voters and their mindsets to change.”

But this weekend, cold reality is sinking in. One sign is the fact that almost no one is blaming Romney himself for the defeat, or evoking other, better candidates who might have won. Normally the knives would already be out, and until the very last weeks, Romney indeed waged a poor campaign, passive and gaffe-prone. But if anyone is being made scapegoat, it is New Jersey’s Republican governor Chris Christie, guilty of actually praising President Barack Obama’s response to Hurricane Sandy. But the problems run far deeper than one or two individuals, or a storm that arrived at the worst possible moment.

The Republicans lost because America has changed, and the extreme conservatism they currently expound has indeed lost its appeal. As everyone points out, correctly, it is a matter of demographics. The archetypal Republican voter is older, white, male and non-urban, at a time when the country is more diversified and urban than ever, and when the votes of women and Hispanics – two constituencies whom the party this time seemed to go out of its way to alienate – have become crucial.

Continue reading at:  http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-republican-party-the-death-of-americas-angry-white-man-8303846.html

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