The direction of the Republican Party if Romney loses

[Person Man]

Because demographics are against the Republican Party.  They seem to be actively attempting to purge everyone from the party that isn't a white christian, and with demographic trends being what they are, that is a recipe for disaster.  "Small town America" has been paved over by suburban housing developers and populated with emigrants from around the country.  The Atlantic coast is trending D, potentially leaving the Republicans with only the sparse electoral votes of Appalachia and the Plains states.

A lot of Democrats take the 'demographics will kill the GOP' line as an article of faith, but it's really not born out by the numbers. First off, Republicans only win slightly more than 60% of the white vote -- there's plenty of opportunity for expansion there. Second off, generally moderately well-off Hispanics are no less or more likely to vote Republican than their white counterparts (African-Americans vote more unanimously Democratic) -- the reason they seem to vote disproportionately Democratic is that many of them are urban poor, who obviously vote Democratic. Even now, Hispanics are underrated as a swing demographic; Bill Clinton in 1996 broke 70%, Obama was somewhere in the 60s with Hispanics, but Bush in 2004 lost  in the high single-digits -- and while it's still a loss, there's a big difference between more than 70% and high single-digits.

The difference between Hispanics in 2004 and Hispanics in 2008 was that Dubya seduced them politically with easy credit for buying real estate, if at ruinous terms for all involved and that in 2008 John McCain could not dare offer that because the "Ownership Society" of Dubya became a catastrophic failure. Mexican-Americans buy into housing at lower levels of income than almost any other ethnic group, and when they bought into the corrupt boom they got burned as no other ethnic group got burned.

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100,000 net immigrants in an identifiable group of 40 million people has a bigger significance than 100,000 net immigrants into a population of 4 million people. One group has more rapid growth in proportion to its numbers than the other despite the same number of people joining it. Birth rates are falling for Hispanics as they achieve middle-income occupations, a pattern consistent almost worldwide. Such also slows population growth.

Bob Dole won a majority of Asians in 1996 -- when political attitudes among Asian-Americans were different. Notably, anti-communism was commonplace among Chinese-Americans, Vietnamese-Americans, and Korean-Americans who had cause for disdain among such ethnic groups. (Such was rare among Japanese-Americans who rarely saw a country to which they had attachments under threat from or under rule of Communists). Anti-communism was long an appeal of the Republican Party. The People's Republic of China and to a lesser extent Vietnam have simply become huge trading partners while abandoning all calls for Socialist Revolution anywhere. Although Korean-Americans still have cause to hold anti-Communist views such are directed at the insane and virulent regime of the Kim dynasty which is now a pariah to just about everyone, including liberals.          

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It's not so much a demographic miracle for Democrats as a failure of Republicans to offer an alternative to the Democratic Party. Had they shown themselves for the advocates for superstition, plutocracy, and militarism that they are instead of people concerned only about budget deficits and spending gone too far they would have lost. In 2012 they had net losses in the Senate and lost a majority of the House vote (although holding onto the House of representatives through gerrymandering in state legislatures). They hid their sharp-right turn and their Machiavellian practices until they got into office, and then they obeyed the economic elites who bankrolled them into power.

Many also said that 2012 would give an intensification of Republican gains with plenty of Senate seats held by incumbent Democrats with few incumbent Republicans at risk -- and an unpopular President who had no chance of being re-elected.

Two contradictory realities will apply in 2014. First, as a midterm election, 2014 offers as a rule a smaller electorate than the typical electorate of a Presidential year. Older voters are more likely to vote, and the older voters are now much more likely to be 'conservatives' (Republicans) than liberals or moderates (Democrats). The other is that Americans will have four years experience with Republicans of the Tea Party era and may not like those pols so much. Many are going to win or lose on their records, and politicians who serve out-of-district interests at the expense of their constituents can still face opposition.

Gerrymandering in 2011 has left such states as Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania with a preponderance of R+4 districts (which ordinarily fits slightly-conservative pols)  with representatives who fit roughly an R+40 agenda (a Gilded-Age agenda or even clericofascism); moderate Democrats could knock some more of those pols off.

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Anti-intellectualism loses middle-class blacks, Asians, and Hispanics and nearly half of middle-class whites who attribute their economic successes largely to formal education. The difference between the non-white and non-Anglo groups with whites is that although poor blacks, Asians, and Hispanics respect the middle classes of their groups, poor whites do not. Poor whites find the anti-intellectualism of the GOP comforting, and they generally know that they have little to gain from liberalism and believe that they have little to lose from the super-rich squeezing the middle class into oblivion. Poor whites are much more likely to be religious fundamentalists who accept Pie-in-the-Sky-When-You-Die as a huge reward for putting up with poverty and brutal management in This World. At least for now.  The Mountain and Deep South which have the "Lil' Abner" and Tobacco Road types have alternated between anti-capitalist, Big Government populism and racist conservatism. If they ever vote with poor blacks who share much the same hardships then the South would become a disaster for the Hard Right.

I cannot predict when that will happen, but in 1980 Jimmy Carter barely lost Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Kentucky and won Georgia and West Virginia.  He got crushed in some current swing states (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Virginia). Go figure.          

Bankrolled them(the Tea Party Politicians) into power? Don't Obama and the Dems obey the Unions, Environmentalists, Leaders in the Black Community, and the academics? I would not imply that the Dems hands are clean in terms of interests groups either. Far from it just look at Chrysler bondholders getting screwed, Solyndra, and Big Pharma having a big influence in the Health Care Bill which only 1 Republican voted for(Joseph Cao R-LA.)

Yes the GOP Tea Party Types hid their extremism on stuff like taxes, and abortion. I agree with you there.

George W. Bushall by himself eased credit for more Hispanics to get a house? Jimmy Carter and especially Bill Clinton had some to do with that. Remember the repeal of Glass Stegall in 1999? Maxine Waters and Barney Frank had their hands in the housing crisis too. Was W. to blame? I would say about 50% but I blame the Dems for the other 50%.

On a side note though. I heard about what Carter and Clinton did about the Mortgage Industry but was it really their fault? Perhaps it wasn't their first choice in policy and that they were basically trying to give people with modest livings  a chance at owning their own home but in the only way the needed Republican and Dixiecrat votes  would agree to?