Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is warning Republicans that the strategy of relying on angry white guys is eventually going to doom his party. This week, the Republican Party, which is reportedly 92 percent white, has struggled to find minority speakers to take the stage at their convention. While former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, former Democratic Rep. Arthur Davis and Utah congressional candidate Mia Love all performed well, they were speaking to a crowd of overwhelmingly white faces. In fact, only 2 percent of Republican delegates are black.
Graham told the The Washington Post that its just a matter of time before changing demographics catch up with his party.
The demographics race were losing badly [sic], the senior senator from South Carolina explained. Were not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.
Republican strategist Karl Rove admitted earlier this week that part of Mitt Romneys plan to win the White House has to include getting white Democrats not to vote for President Barack Obama.
And pundits like MSNBCs Chris Matthews see a strategy by Republicans to capture those votes by dividing the country with racial politics.
On Monday, Matthews blasted Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus for playing the race card with birther jokes and falsehoods about ending work requirements for welfare.
That cheap shot about I dont have a problem with my birth certificate was awful, Matthews said of GOP hopeful Mitt Romneys Friday embrace of the birther notion that President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. It is an embarrassment to your party to play that card.
This stuff about getting rid of the work requirement for welfare is dishonest, everyone has pointed out that its dishonest, he continued. And you are playing that little ethnic card there. You can play your games and giggle about it, but the fact is, your side is playing that card. You start talking about work requirements, you know what game youre playing, everybody knows what game youre playing. Its a race card.
But CNNs Fareed Zakaria noted earlier this year that the Republican strategy was unworkable going forward.
[I]f you lose blacks, women, Latinos (and Republicans have probably already lost Arab and Muslim Americans), what are you left with? Zakaria wondered. You cant win a general election with the angry, white, male vote. Thats clearly a core vote for the Republican Party but its not going to be enough.
Part of the reason for this is that the party is increasingly a Southern party reflecting the regions concerns and passions, he added. So maybe this is an unstoppable phenomenon, but when you look at long-term demographics, its tough to see how you construct a majority adopting this policy.