Why Republicans Can’t Stop Pissing Off Hispanics, Women, and Young People
What are the three demographic groups whose electoral impact is growing fastest? Hispanics, women, and young people. Who are Republicans pissing off the most? Latinos, women, and young people.
It’s almost as if the GOP can’t help itself.
Start with Hispanic voters, whose electoral heft keeps growing as they comprise an ever-larger portion of the electorate. Hispanics now favor President Obama over Romney by more than two to one, according to a recent Pew poll.
The movement of Hispanics into the Democratic camp has been going on for decades. What are Republicans doing to woo them back? Replicating California Republican Governor Pete Wilson’s disastrous support almost twenty years ago for Proposition 187 – which would have screened out undocumented immigrants from public schools, health care, and other social services, and required law-enforcement officials to report any “suspected” illegals. (Wilson, you may remember, lost that year’s election, and California’s Republican Party has never recovered.)
The Arizona law now before the Supreme Court – sponsored by Republicans in the state and copied by Republican legislators and governors in several others – would authorize police to stop anyone looking Hispanic and demand proof of citizenship. It’s nativism disguised as law enforcement.
Romney is trying to distance himself from that law, but it’s not working. That may be because he dubbed it a “model law” during February’s Republican primary debate in Arizona, and because its author (former state senator Russell Pearce, who was ousted in a special election last November largely by angry Hispanic voters) says he’s working closely with Romney advisers.
Hispanics are also reacting to Romney’s attack just a few months ago on GOP rival Texas Governor Rick Perry for supporting in-state tuition at the University of Texas for children of undocumented immigrants. And to Romney’s advocacy of what he calls “self-deportation” – making life so difficult for undocumented immigrants and their families that they choose to leave.
As if all this weren’t enough, the GOP has been pushing voter ID laws all over America, whose obvious aim is to intimidate Hispanic voters so they won’t come to the polls. But they may have the opposite effect – emboldening the vast majority of ethnic Hispanics, who are American citizens, to vote in even greater numbers and lend even more support to Obama and other Democrats.
Or consider women – whose political and economic impact in America continues to grow (women are fast becoming better educated than men and the major breadwinners in American homes). The political gender gap is huge. According to recent polls, women prefer Obama to Romney by over 20 percent.
So what is the GOP doing to woo women back? Attacking them. Last February, House Republicans voted to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. Last May, they unanimously passed the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” banning the District of Columbia from funding abortions for low-income women. (The original version removed all exceptions – rape, incest, and endangerment to a mother’s life – except “forcible” rape.)
Earlier this year Republican legislators in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Idaho, and Alabama pushed bills requiring women seeking abortions to undergo invasive vaginal ultrasound tests (Pennsylvania Republicans even wanted proof such had viewed the images).
Republican legislators in Georgia and Arizona passed bills banning most abortions after twenty weeks of pregnancy. The Georgia bill would also require that any abortion after 20 weeks be done in a way to bring the fetus out alive. Republican legislators in Texas have voted to eliminate funding for any women’s healthcare clinic with an affiliation to an abortion provider – even if the affiliation is merely a shared name, employee, or board member.
All told, over 400 Republican bills are pending in state legislatures, attacking womens’ reproductive rights.
But even this doesn’t seem enough for the GOP. Republicans in Wisconsin just repealed a law designed to prevent employers from discriminating against women.
Or, finally, consider students – a significant and growing electoral force, who voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008. What are Republicans doing to woo them back? Attack them, of course.
Republican Budget Chair Paul Ryan’s budget plan – approved by almost every House Republican and enthusiastically endorsed by Mitt Romney – allows rates on student loans to double on July 1 – from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. That will add an average of $1,000 a year to student debt loads, which already exceed credit-card debt.
House Republicans say America can’t afford the $6 billion a year it would require to keep student loan rates down to where they are now. But that same Republican plan gives wealthy Americans trillions of dollars in tax cuts over the next decade. (Under mounting political pressure, House Republicans have come up with just enough money to keep the loan program going for another year – safely past Election Day – by raiding a fund established for preventive care in the new health-care act.)
Here again, Romney is trying to tiptoe away from the GOP position. He now says he supports keeping student loans where they were. Yet only a few months ago he argued that subsidized student loans were bad because they encouraged colleges to raise their tuition.
How can a political party be so dumb as to piss off Hispanics, women, and young people? Because the core of its base is middle-aged white men – and it doesn’t seem to know how to satisfy its base without at the same time turning off everyone who’s not white, male, and middle-aged.
Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written eleven books, including The Work of Nations, which has been translated into 22 languages; the best-sellers The Future of Success and Locked in the Cabinet, and his most recent book, Supercapitalism. His articles have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Mr. Reich is co-founding editor of The American Prospect magazine. His weekly commentaries on public radio’s "Marketplace" are heard by nearly five million people.
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I can tell anyone that the Republican party was seized by a faction of extremists several years ago. I was warned by a loyal midwestern moderate GOP member several years ago. He was afraid of the future outlook for that party back in 2006. I would not have known that the loyal, moderate, typical GOP member in 2006 was already aware of the dangers of extremism and who these extremists actually were. I don’t think this disastrous and destructive move toward extremism can be laid at the feet of one operative like a Karl Rove. He has been destructive and contemptuous of the GOP himself and has made comments about the candidates which show open contempt for them. I have heard comments from loyal, longtime, GOP members who were unhappy with their own candidates a while ago. I had thought that the GOP had satisfied its own members and was surprised about their honesty about their dissatisfaction with their own party. If the GOP has listened to its moderates, they would still be a viable party for their longtime members. That party sold out its own longtime members a long time before the rest of us even knew. Perhaps this exclusion of moderates is due to the Neocon element which was extreme in business behaviors and in contempt for moderates in any party. Exactly how the extremist faction took over that party and ruined it, I am still not completely sure. Most voters are moderates. The modern Tea Party/GOP in no way resembles the average GOP member of even a decade or more ago. That party got rid of the respectable moderates and it shows. Now, that party represents almost no one, especially informed small business owners. The only possible explanation I can come up with as to any remaining members is that they are simply still uninformed or in denial re what has happened to their own party. The party of a Gerald Ford is not represented by the current band of extremists. I hesitate to call these few candidates “Republicans”. They do not even represent the white males who always voted for them. That is a betrayal for those voters as well. A kickback in face of a betrayal from their own party is natural. Those loyal members have been shoved out to a limbo at a time when they are also dealing with a loss of place in business and in economics. A defensive reaction would be expected at this time. Finding out that you have been lied after supporting a political group for decades is not a good experience. I may not be a GOP member but I would feel disowned if I had been lied to and sold out by my own party. Unreturned loyalty has a way fo discouraging participation in self-governance. A blanket dismissal of participation in our elections is not what anyone wants. However, it is the voters responsibility to get informed by reliable sources of information and to reconcile that with the message from any political party. If facts don’t match rhetoric, it is likely that the voters will change parties or not vote at all. I hope that from this experience, voters will seek out accurate information and decide votes on the basis of facts rather than fear and misinformation. If voters can’t determine fact from fiction, this country will not survive. I think education and genuine information is that important. I also think the average American can read and decide for himself as long as the information he has is complete and accurate. Media has to report responsibly and fully. In an age of corporate media, the voter is assaulted with trivia and misinformation about every issue. A voter with limited time will not seek out accurate information on his own. Voters simply don’t have time to seek facts from various sources while working, taking care of children and dealing with life events. At a time of economic challenges and nonstop work schedules, how many voters have the time or energy to find accurate sources of information? Media has become a source of celebrity gossip and is often misused by the corps that own and heavily edit any reporting. That has to be reformed in order for voters to find reliable information in the first place. This is not a simple situation and demonizing parties and people doesn’t help understand what has happened. Extremists gain power by a population which listens to lies and wants them to be regarded as facts. The question about parties and politics leads to questions about what we have become, as people. For ex, regarding buying health insurance as a “threat” indicates a great deal about the voter himself. That alone tells me a great deal about where this country went re the value of life and the behest of special interest funding of our own elections. When looking at that bizarre and irrational response to a need to buy coverage, it is obvious that the misinformation machine somehow persuaded some Americans that taxpayers should die for lack of health care. How does this country, having public education, contain citizens who feel that others lives should be extinguished at the whim of their political party? That is a dangerous sign that for some of us, lives don’t matter at all. That is downright scary to observe. Who would ever imagine that in this country we would see such an irrational belief? That is not just about politics. This need to encourage fear is far worse than party politics.