Posted on May 22, 2012

Has Bell Begun to Toll for the GOP?

Pat Buchanan, Tampa Bay Online, May 22, 2012

Among the more controversial chapters in “Suicide of a Superpower,” my book published last fall, was the one titled, “The End of White America.”

It dealt with the demographic decline of the white majority and what it portends for education, the U.S. economy, politics and national unity.

That book and chapter proved the proximate cause of my departure from MSNBC, where the network president declared that subjects such as these are inappropriate for “the national dialogue.”

Apparently, the mainstream media are reassessing that.

For, in rare unanimity, The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today all led with the same story one day last week.

“Whites Account for Under Half of Births in U.S.,” blared the Times headline. “Minority Babies Majority in U.S.,” echoed the Post. “Minorities Are Now a Majority of Births,” proclaimed USA Today.

The USA Today story continued, “The nation’s growing diversity has huge implications for education, economics and politics.”

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Not only are whites declining as a share of the population, they are declining in real terms. Between 2010 and 2011, the number of births to white women fell 10 percent. The median age of white Americans, now 43 and rising, means that half of all white women have moved past the age that they are ever likely to bear more children.

White America is a dying tribe.

What do these statistics mean politically? Almost surely the end of the Republican Party as a national governing institution.

Republicans now depend on the vanishing majority for fully 90 percent of their votes in presidential elections, while the Democratic Party wins 60 to 70 percent of the Asian and Hispanic vote and 90 to 95 percent of the black vote.

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When Texas — where whites are a minority and a declining share of the population — tips, how does the GOP put together an electoral majority?

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Fifty-three percent of all Hispanic children are born out of wedlock, with no father in the home and many of the moms themselves high school dropouts. Most Hispanic kids thus start school far behind.

In tests of fourth-, eighth- and 12th-graders, their scores are closer to those of African-American kids than whites and Asians. Their dropout rate matches that of black kids. Absent affirmative action, not only America’s colleges but her professions are going to look far more Asian and white than the national population.

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Not only do we seem not to know how to close it [the racial gap in test scores] after four decades of plunging trillions into public schools, the country is tapped out. And why should Hispanics vote Republican?

The majority of Hispanics are among that half of the population that pays no income tax. Why should they vote for a party whose major plank is that it will cut income taxes?

Hispanics benefit disproportionately from government programs.

Government puts their kids in Head Start before public school and provides them with Pell grants and student loans after public school.

From kindergarten through 12th grade, government educates their kids for free. Government provides them with free or subsidized health care through Medicaid and clinics. Government provides their families with public housing and rent supplements. Government provides the food stamps that feed the family. Government provides them with an annual earned-income tax credit, a check just for working.

Government provides all these things, and what are Republicans going to do? They promise to cut government.

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Establishment Republicans say the party should support amnesty for illegal aliens. Yet this would make millions more eligible for federal programs in a country sinking in debt and mean millions more Hispanics going to the polls, and millions more coming to America in anticipation of the next amnesty.

How would that help the GOP?

By endlessly expanding Great Society programs, by lopping taxpayers off tax rolls, by supporting open borders and endless immigration from the Third World, the Republican Party, out of sheer nobility of character, has probably ensured its impending departure from history.