Asian culture is much more collectivist minded than "American" (U.S.) culture. That doesn't play very well with individualistic minded, every-man-for-himself, Ayn Rand republicans.

However, the republicans could play it to their advantage if they work it correctly. Somehow translate the feelings that the 'group is more important than the leader' into a sort of nationalistic comraderie or something.

The hilarious thing is that conservatives look at numbers such as these and think it's some kind of problem with minorities and not with the party itself. Like, "Why are these minorities always looking for a handout?" and not "Why is the Republican party driving away anyone who's not a suburban white male?"

*morning news
It's just the GOPhers who have anything to mourn, really.

Herman Cain is calling for a third party. Rats leaving a sinking ship.

It has been interesting to watch the reaction from the GOP/Fox News establishment. There was some discussion about how a choice of, say, Marco Rubio would have "signaled" something significant to the Latino vote (this completely misses the reality that the "Cuban" vote is not monolithic with the "Latino" vote, but whatever), as if having someone with a hispanic-sounding name would be good enough. There was no talk about actually addressing the issues that are important to minority communities, it was all about the optics.

They seem to be focused on the relatively thin margin in the popular vote and think that they're *this close*, and thus think that they need only to tweak a few things here and there. And they'll continue to be wrong.

Charles, did you learn nothing 2 & 4 years ago? You idiots were spewing the same bullshit when Obama was first elected. "The Republican party is doomed" "We're looking at a permanent Democratic rule" "The Republican party is going to split!"

Then what happened? Lazy ass Democrats did what Lazy ass Democrats do. They skipped the next election and the teabaggers took over. This election wasn't nearly as strong against them as Obama's first run.

The Republican party isn't doomed and they're probably not going to split. In 2 years they're going to come back with a vengeance and all of their old racist supporters who have nothing better to do will vote. They always vote. If Democrats get complacent, again, and skip the election, again, then the teabaggers (or whichever group of old racist fuckers takes their place) are going to take over, again.

The only way to keep the Republicans a minority party is if Liberals get out and vote EVERY FUCKING TIME. Even then, it will only work if Democratic politicians don't also get complacent or corrupt. So, FUCKING VOTE. VOTE EVERY FUCKING TIME YOU LAZY LIBERAL MOTHERFUCKERS OR YOU DESERVE TO HAVE REPUBLICANS TAKE AWAY YOUR RIGHTS.

@6 Voting is crucial for every election. You are correct. Old white bigots always vote. Always.

I'm going to bet the farm that the R ticket has a Latino name on it in 2016. They saw a little bit of disappointment in Dem ranks in 2008 when Hillary was beaten in the primary, so the thought they'd capitalize on that by picking Palin. It worked so well for them, they're going to do it all over again next time, but with an Hispanic to mop up that vote bleed.

I also think the Latino guy won't even be the main name, he'll be the VP pick. Otherwise, they risk losing the elderly white male vote, which is all they have.

If by "race problem" you're referring to the fact that they're a party of sadistic, hate-crazed, neo-fascist, white trash bigots who want to exterminate every other race, then yes, the RepubliKKKan Party has a race problem.

Why are we allowing Repubs to define themselves as the party that places enormous emphasis on family? Are we to assume that Dems don't place enormous emphasis on family? Really?

Dems have families too.

I've got to side with Root @6 here. The GOP still has enough demographic juice to do in 2014 what it did in 2010 without broadening its coalition. And while the GOP eventually does have to get past its ethnic problem, almost by definition it will get past its ethnic problem (however wrenching that transition will be), and once it does--well, there will always be a place in America for an anti-government, anti-tax party.

Frank Rich captured this reality with a terrific piece a few weeks ago in New York Magazine, The Tea Party Will Win in the End.

This is the third party scenario that has been the only one to succeed in America. The Whigs self-destructed in the 1850s and were succeeded by the Republicans, who were formed precisely because the Whigs wouldn't face reality. How funny that the same people are fucking up 160-odd years later.

@6 is right. gop is dead, blah blah. dems are dead, blah blah. you sound like a pundit charles, and full of your own shit (uh). anyway, it is true that national demographics are changing tipping points in the early 2ks, but nothing indicates the 2 party system can't absorb this.

i would say at some point the large amount of cultural conservatives in the latino and asian populations have a very good chance of moving to the gop once this latest old generation of good 'ol boy 65+ dies out or retires.

@6,
Don't forget the democrats who DO vote, but vote for a third party candidate out of protest that the democrat candidate isn't their perfect model of liberal perfection.

They vote for a sure loser, then strut about, telling others how holier-than-thou they are that THEY didn't compromise their beliefs by voting for the imperfect candidate.

Meanwhile, the republicans hold their nose and vote in their imperfect candidates, and those idealistic, models-of-perfection, third party "democrat" voters appear stunned as the republicans completely dismantle everything they care about.

Not that anyone would notice... because hey, did everyone here see all the news about how the third party candidates didn't get elected but sure got their points across and everyone is now wiser and more informed?
Yeah, I didn't see any of that either.

So much for idealistic, third party votes.

According to exit polls, President Barack Obama won the Hispanic vote by a whopping margin of 71 percent to 27 percent. That's larger than Obama's margin against McCain in 2008. Having doubled their share of the total vote since 1996, Hispanics constituted 10 percent of the electorate in 2012. In the next presidential race in 2016, more than three million additional Hispanic citizens will be eligible to vote.

Anyone else notice what is so incredibly annoying about this paragraph?

The essential message that Fox news is putting out right now is that there is nothing wrong with the GOP, but the problem lies with over half the country being welfare bums voting for a president who will just give them handouts.

And for some reason, some of them are still saying that Romney won the poular vote, which is weird, unless they are referring to another math conspiracy I do not know about.

So basically, the republicans still have the winning message, it is just that most of the country are losers.

God, I hope they actully believe it.

The Whig Party is not in trouble.

@16

I just mean the way it switches from percentages of the electorate to absolute numbers, wihtout telling you what the relationship is between the two. Is 3 million more a large or small fraction of the 10 percent in the previous sentence?

If readers are assumed to carry around in in their heads the total number of voters in 2012 and an estimate for how many there will be in 2016, and what the percentage is of each demographic -- if the reader has to already know these statistics to make sense of the article -- then they have no need to read an article like this. Francis can quit his job writing and go mow lawns or something.

And he must have had the numbers in front of him when he wrote it. But he didn't bother to include the one key data point that would have made sense of it.

(By the way, I figure the answer is that the 3 million additional Hispanic voters would be a 25% increase in their 10% share of the vote, which was about 11 million this year. Or their 10% share of the electorate would rise to about 12.5%.)

@12 I don't always agree with you, but the history nerd in me is a little bit in love with you now.

There will be no third party. Third parties wither away within minutes in the US, because there's no way for them to get or hold power.

What's more likely to happen is a rump GOP (in more ways than one) that becomes more and more explicitly of the Deep South, while other Republicans try to find alliances with them they can stomach, or wither away when they can't. Look at that map again: the only state outside of the South (counting MO and IN as "the south", which they have virtually become) that has any people in it is AZ. AZ is going to be blue in 2016 or 2020 at the latest; and so is NC, and FL, and others besides (TX by 2020 or 2024). So the "new GOP" is going to be permanently stuck below 200 Electoral votes, maybe below 150.

This won't bother the Deep South any at all, because they're used to being the outcasts, since the 1850s. And thanks to the peculiarities of the American system and Southern legislative intransigence and longevity, they will always control the Senate and frequently the House as well. It's Republicans in other states who will suffer, being part of a losing coalition.

But they won't be able to kick the Southern racists out, because there aren't enough of them; and so they will continue to sink deeper into malaise and cling ever-tighter to their Christianist identity politics. Rational Republicans will continue to run away, and the ones who remain will thus get kookier and kookier.

One thing's for certain: the GOP nominee in 2016 is going to be the craziest yet. I'm thinking Huckabee or Ryan or some previously-unknown Palinite or Bachmannite. He or she is going to get slaughtered. I can't wait.

As a liberal, these numbers scare me. They say that there are millions of people who are ideologically conservative, but are voting Democratic, because the Republicans talk shit about them.

The minute the Republicans get over their hangups about race, they'll have a majority easily. All this talk about how the election shows how liberal the country is, is completely wrong. It shows how liberal the country is plus how many conservatives will vote for the party that doesn't hate them.

Power and ideology are powerful. I fear that the Republicans will get over their racial hangups sooner than people think. But I hope they don't. I hope it takes them many, many years.

...while other Republicans try to find alliances with them they can stomach, or wither away when they can't

What does "wither away" entail? Dying? Never voting again? Or throwing their support behind a third party with no way to hold power?

Charles wrote: "What this fact reveals is that the GOP has a race problem that, under its current form, cannot be surmounted. It is stuck in race. It is stuck in the past. It is stuck in the South."

The Republican party are stuck in the American monoculture. They are stuck in an anachronistic, mythical, small town America of 1955 where everyone in the community shares the same heritage, values, faith, and social norms (not to mention DNA).

They are not political conservatives - I question whether they have any political perspective at all - they are social conservatives in which the conservative end of the spectrum is identified with the American monoculture and the progressive end is identified with a multi-cultural society.

We West Coast urbanites think of the US as a multi-cultural society and we are damn pleased that it is, but in the wide space between the coasts and along the rural South, the US is a monoculture just as xenophobic as any other monoculture in the world.

The demographics changing and the monoculture is shrinking, which must contribute to their desperation.

Even if the numbers weren't changing I have to wonder how much longer Sarah Palin's "Real America" can keep its Truman Show going when the kids have the internet. How are you going to keep them down on the farm after they have seen Gangnam Style?

How are you going to keep them down on the farm after they have seen Gangnam Style?

That's part of the problem. Those kids who have even the slightest amount of get up and go have left the building. They leave their podunk town, and possibly their state, to go to school elsewhere, and then they settle down in a blue city or state. The old, decrepit racists are left behind and keep bringing those Congressional and Senate seats and electoral votes to the Republicans.

And now I feel like I've finally figured out the real endgame for the conservative opposition to birth control, abortion, and fact-based sex education: they want their kids to get knocked up at an early age, they revel in their high teen pregnancy rates, because that means the kids can't leave.

@ 20, aw shucks.

@ 21, a third party can happen if it's rooted in the leadership of one of the major parties, and if there is a deep divide splitting that party. With the Whigs, the issue was slavery (compounded by a lack of leadership - they had no one to inherit the mantle of Webster and Clay, who both died around the same time).

What's forgotten is that there was another party formed from the ashes of the Whigs, the southern American Party. They ended up just becoming Democrats.

Anyway, I think the GOP is going to come to a reckoning. Money is still the real power in that party, and the teabaggers don't have any. They were artificially propped up by the Koch brothers, but they're going to find that that well is now dry. The question is, Has their decades-long strategy of appealing to the old lunatics, the people stuck in the past, too stupid to keep their racist and sexist rhetoric to themselves, finally painted them into a corner? Can they afford to jettison these people and begin appealing to the more moderate voters?

@15: I thought there was a math mistake you were complaining about, so I went and picked out the numbers and then ran into exactly what you were actually upset by. I couldn't make head or tail of it.
http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/1993…