| Republicans Are Crazy, But That's Pretty Normal. Ten years ago John Judis and Ruy Teixeira wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority, which argued that a variety of demographic trends spelled doom for the Republican Party. Unfortunately for Judis and Teixeira, Republicans ignored their demographic doom and won a convincing victory in 2004. But hey, that was due to 9/11 and Iraq and the war on terror, and who could have predicted that? Then Democrats chalked up big wins in 2006 and 2008 (whew!), but in 2010 Republicans came roaring back. But hey, that was because of an epic recession, and who could have predicted that? Any day now, those demographics are going to kick in and Republicans will be doomed once and for all. Honest. I am, obviously, being a smart-ass about this. In fact, as Jon Chait writes today in "2012 or Never," the demographic trends that Judis and Teixeira wrote about really are continuing apace. Smart Republicans are well aware of this, and they're especially well aware that one of the biggest demographic trends working against them is the growth of the Latino population. So a few years ago, as a way of peeling off some Latino votes from the Democrats, they took a stab at passing a moderate immigration bill. Unfortunately, their base went into a full-bore revolt and began demanding a harsher anti-immigrant policy instead of a more moderate one. As Jon says, this was about like publicly announcing an electoral suicide pact on national TV. And it gets worse ... |
