November 27, 2010

The GOP and Race

By Ron Lipsman
An op-ed piece in the November 10 issue of the Wall Street Journal entitled "The GOP‘s Racial Challenge" has been troubling me since I read it. The author, Zolton Hajnal, a faculty member at the University of California, San Diego, makes a veiled charge that the Republican Party's strategy for winning elections is inherently racist. But let's allow Professor Hajnal to speak for himself.Lost in the GOP's euphoria over its landslide midterm victory is the fact that the Republican Party has almost become a whites-only party. Its strategy may win seats now, but it will lose over the long run.Republicans won big in 2010 primarily because they won big among white voters ...The problem for Republicans is two-fold. First, whites may currently be the majority but they are a declining demographic. The proportion of all voters who are white has already declined to 75% today from 94% in 1960. By 2050, whites are no longer expected to be a majority of the U.S. population.Second,...(Read Full Article)