Schmaht as whips
by digby
Apparently a whole lot of Republicans are having a hard time grappling with reality because if they did they would not be having daily hissy fits about immigration or standing up and cheering the police when they shoot down unarmed black kids:
"The fundamental challenge for my side is the seemingly inexorable change in the composition of presidential electorates," Republican pollster Whit Ayres, whose clients include Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), said during a panel discussing the report. "And there's no reason to believe that that's going to stop magically."
The demographic change poses little problem for the GOP in midterm elections, when young and minority voters are far more likely than older, white voters to stay home. But in the run-up to 2016, the demographic trend has some Republicans citing a need for change.
In 2004, Republicans' most recent presidential victory, George W. Bush won 58 percent of the white vote, and 26 percent of the non-white vote -- numbers that would lose him the White House today, Ayres said.
'"That's the stunning part for me in running these numbers -- to realize that the last Republican to win a presidential election, who reached out very aggressively to minorities, and did better than any Republican nominee before or since among minorities, still didn't achieve enough of both of those groups in order to put together a winning percentage" for 2016, Ayres said.
That is stunning. George W. Bush went out of his way not to appear to be racist, a smart move considering how very wobbly so many liberals had been during the "law and order" Sistah Soljah years of the New Democrats. It worked for him too. He did better than any Republican could have hoped. And after 9/11 he went out of his way to ensure that there was as little Muslim bashing as possible. The GOP had spent years courting the American Muslim community and had deep ties there.
Now we have the GOP doing everything it can to antagonize racial minorities and Muslims even though they need to do much better with those communities than Bush did 15 years ago. It would appear they either don't believe the numbers or are gearing up for a long era of congressional dominance. I'm betting on the latter. They aren't that dumb.
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