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11/13/2012 9:13:00 AM
What now, conservatives? Relax, we’re winning the war

Richard Moore
Investigative Reporter

Not too long ago I wrote a column about how dynamic and vigorous the conservative movement in this country was and how quickly it was morphing into the most potent American political force of the young century.

The conservative wave of the future, I called it.

At first blush, looking at last Tuesday’s election results, it looks as if my prognosis was just a hair off, having missed the mark by about a century. On Wednesday, the conservative movement lay seemingly battered on the shore, looking less like a tidal wave than a wrecked ship run aground by a tsunami.

That’s exactly what the mainstream media called it in the wake of President Obama’s re-election. The president’s expansive electoral army of 2008, they intoned, was not a one-time deal after all but a durable coalition capable of dominating American politics for a generation or more.

To hear the tale, the Republican Party has lost everyone in the country except old, white men. Minorities, women, the young, environmentalists, urban liberals – this is the alliance of victory and of the future.

I beg to differ. The election results notwithstanding, this analysis is deeply blinkered. Indeed, a close look at the returns indicates big trouble looming for the Democratic Party, not for the GOP.

No, I am not out in Colorado smoking newly legal weed. Consider this: Mr. Obama’s durable coalition was considerably weaker this time around. As of Nov. 8, for example, the president had received about nine-million fewer votes than he did in 2008. Not all the ballots had been counted, and that number will shrink, but he clearly will receive substantially fewer votes than his remarkable 2008 total.

On the other side of the coin, the Democrats have their own growing racial problem – their inability to attract white voters. Winning only 39 percent of 72 percent of the electorate gives the opposition 42 percent of the total vote from the get-go. That should give Democratic Party leaders pause because, given population trend lines, the proportion of white voters is likely to remain above 60 percent for at least the next 20 years.

None of this is to say the GOP doesn’t have a minority conundrum. Any time you get less than 25 percent of the nonwhite vote, it’s a problem, and a growing one if the GOP can’t make inroads into those constituencies.

So both parties have voting-bloc impediments beyond their respective foundations, but this begs the question, which is more likely to hold and enlarge its base?

That quite clearly would be the Republican Party. Let’s take a look at why the mainstream media consensus is biased.

First, the voting blocs are mischaracterized. The Republican base is defined as a mass of old, white voters, while the Democratic Party is depicted as a broad and sweeping coalition. On Election night, for example, after exit polls were reviewed, ABC News blared out: “Obama’s winning coalition of women and nonwhites.”

Look again, though, and there is no ‘and’ in the mix. Mr. Obama’s base is nonwhite voters and, as a practical matter, nonwhite voters only. Sure, radical white feminists, white urban liberals, young white college students and white environmentalists are there, but those activist pods represent a miniscule share of the voting population.

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