04-01-2013, 08:36 PM
IOW, the old Republican coalition is dying (figuratively and literally - literally since a huge part of the Republican coalition are elderly whites), so they have to build a new coalition and that coalition has to have more women, brown people and young people.
It seems obvious... except that the old coalition is still powerful enough to elect a majority to the House of Representatives and probably will again in 2014 even if they don't change their positions very much. They also have a good shot at taking over the Senate in spite of not changing their their positions very much. I say not changing their positions "very much" because in low turnout midterm elections, old white people make up the electorate way disproportionately (that is the fault of the people who don't vote, not the people who do) and thus to keep the House and win the Senate in the next election the Republicans only have to tweak their positions a bit (e.g., compromise on immigration) to pick up just a bit more support from the demographics that went more heavily with Democrats in the last election. The ideological rigidity of the Republican old white base keeps them from being able to shift too rapidly to attract more of those demographic groups, but they only need to shift a bit to be successful in the next election without facing the prospect of losing big chunks from their coalition.*
*Of course, that is a hunch on my part. I hope I am wrong and there is either a high turn-out for a mid-term election or people are more turned off by Republican positions in general than I think they will be.
It seems obvious... except that the old coalition is still powerful enough to elect a majority to the House of Representatives and probably will again in 2014 even if they don't change their positions very much. They also have a good shot at taking over the Senate in spite of not changing their their positions very much. I say not changing their positions "very much" because in low turnout midterm elections, old white people make up the electorate way disproportionately (that is the fault of the people who don't vote, not the people who do) and thus to keep the House and win the Senate in the next election the Republicans only have to tweak their positions a bit (e.g., compromise on immigration) to pick up just a bit more support from the demographics that went more heavily with Democrats in the last election. The ideological rigidity of the Republican old white base keeps them from being able to shift too rapidly to attract more of those demographic groups, but they only need to shift a bit to be successful in the next election without facing the prospect of losing big chunks from their coalition.*
*Of course, that is a hunch on my part. I hope I am wrong and there is either a high turn-out for a mid-term election or people are more turned off by Republican positions in general than I think they will be.