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Point of View »Mark Shields: The Republican Party Is Dead

Mark Shields: The Republican Party Is Dead

By Mark Shields | Posted on 11/09/2008

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Obama's ascendancy accelerates the GOP's dwindling appeal.

The cheap shots being aimed almost hourly at Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, from anonymous staffers of Sen. John McCain prove once again that too many losing campaigns sooner or later resemble a civil war in the leper colony.

Mark Shields
Mark Shields
It is true that when asked on Election Day if “Sarah Palin is qualified to be president if necessary,” three out of five voters answered no and that of the half of the electorate who believed that, if elected, “McCain would continue President Bush’s policies,” a full 90 percent of them voted for President-elect Barack Obama. But the problems of the Republican Party are deeper and more serious than disenchantment with the 2008 nominees or even with the lame-duck Bush.

Republicans are an aging party. While President Ronald Reagan attracted a generation of young voters to the Grand Old Party, eight years of Republican White House rule — along with six on Capitol Hill — has resulted in the alienation of the nation’s youngest voters.

In 2000, voters between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for Democrat Al Gore over Bush by the thin margin of 48 percent to 46 percent. Four years later, Democrat Sen. John Kerry won the under-30 vote by 54 percent to Bush’s 45 percent. This time, Democrat Obama and his running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, won 66 percent of voters between 18 and 29, while McCain and Palin received just 32 percent. As a reflection of the Democrats’ growing appeal to all younger voters, while in 2000 and 2004 voters between the ages of 30 and 44 had twice voted Republican, in 2008, they voted Democratic by the decisive margin of 54 percent to 44 percent.

Actually, the only age cohort of voters who supported the Republican presidential ticket in 2008 was the 16 percent of voters who are over the age of 65. If demography is destiny, the Republican outlook is as bleak as the Democrats’ is rosy. While the younger generation is voting more and more Democratic, the Republicans most loyal supporters are aging fast.

To put it bluntly: Democrats are moving from a room of their own to an apartment of their own on the way to a home of their own; Republican voters, by contrast, are moving from their own home to the retirement home to the nursing home and the funeral home.

Add to this the growing changes in the face of the American electorate. In 2000, presidential voters were 81 percent white. In 2004, the white share of the total was down to 77 percent. In 2008, just 74 percent of all voters were white. Since 2000, Latino voters have grown to 9 percent from 7 percent of the whole. But more disturbingly for Republicans, their party’s support from that growing constituency fell to just 31 percent in 2008 from 44 percent in 2004. So as Latinos matter more and more, they vote Republican less and less.

Finally, exit polls in the last three presidential elections all have asked voters whether government should do more or do less. In 2000, by a 53 percent to 43 percent score, voters wanted government to do less not more. Voters have done a complete turnaround to the Democrats’ direction in eight years, with a 51 percent majority today in favor of a more activist federal government and 43 percent opposed. This means that even before the October financial crisis, voters had moved beyond the era of deregulation toward support of a more aggressive federal role to prevent rip-offs of citizens and corporate abuses.

Bush, who, as has been observed, came into office as a social conservative and is leaving office as a conservative socialist, will soon be vacating the Oval Office. But he will not be taking his party’s problems with him. Because in the changing composition of the American electorate as well as in voters’ changing attitudes and priorities, the Republicans are now on the losing side.

Mark Shields is one of the most widely recognized political commentators in the United States. The former Washington Post editorial columnist appears regularly on CNN, on public television and on radio. Click here to contact him.

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» mark b wrote on 11/09/08 @ 10:01 AM

Let’s hear it for Generation O!

These things go in cycles, but let’s hope this one hangs on for a while - long enough to get a decent energy policy that isn’t run by oil industry lobbyists, a decent health care system that isn’t run by bankrupt insurance companies, and a New Deal-style “workfare” system to help deal with poverty and rebuild our urban infrastructure.  While we’ve been spending most of our money to blow apart and rebuild the Middle East, our own cities, roads and bridges are falling apart from neglect.

» Dave wrote on 11/09/08 @ 11:12 AM

While it’s understandable that the Obamedia would be even more over the top with their euphoria after Tuesday, Mr. Shields might want to temper his declarations. Yes, his man was elected comfortably and, yes, voters expanded the Democrat majorities of a Congress with the WORST approval ratings in history (far lower than President Bush’s, I might add), but the American people may just have buyer’s remorse before the 2012 election. I’m old enough to recall — and by the looks of him so is Mr. Shields — that President Clinton did something that not even President Reagan could do: Elect a Republican Congress. That happened just two years into Mr. Clinton’s first term.

President-elect Obama, Democrats in Congress and their servants in the media suffer from an overinflated opinion of themselves. They’ve raised expectations sky high and voters are almost certain to be disappointed, many of them will be angry about being misled, and some may feel they’ve been lied to. Voters have a way of punishing hubris (See Clinton in 1994, see Bush in 2006). That voting demographic, Mr. Shields, does NOT change.

» Robert C. Meltzer wrote on 11/09/08 @ 11:40 AM

This might be the time to review the words and position of John Adams and eliminate the two party system.  Then, instead of pigeonholing and making broad assumptions based on party labels, the electorate could focus on individuals and positions.

» Socialism will kill America wrote on 11/09/08 @ 01:15 PM

I hope the GOP comes back quickly-Lower taxes and smaller government-- thats what made us a great country.

» sbnative wrote on 11/09/08 @ 01:51 PM

Here’s a sweet irony for you. After all, aren’t Republicans supposed to be “The Ones” who engender all this? Methinks the Obamamasses are in for a nasty surprise… Then we can say WE TOLD YOU SO!

“Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous,unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart.

Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?”

Ralph Nadar - http://www.votenader.org/blog/2008/11/08/in-public-interest-between-hope-and-reality/

» NadEr wrote on 11/09/08 @ 04:44 PM

Hey SBNative, if you’re going to inundate us with Ralp Nader spam, at least spell his name correctly.

» AN50 wrote on 11/09/08 @ 06:10 PM

Yes Mr. Shields the mass majority of Obama lemmings were the young and idealistic or should I say idol-istic. It is true that the older generations have done a fine job turning their youth into the same kind of self absorbed, self centered, narcissistic, entitlement junkies the democrat party loves to incubate into the image of the European socialist. It is also true that the idiots running the GOP have eyes only for their pre Reagan past as the country club oligarch party, leaving most of us conservatives with out a home. But I kid you not Mark, just because old dying infants like you continue to pine away for your youth and live vicariously through the young and naïve doesn’t mean all youth are that stupid and unversed in history. At some point enough youth in the demographic still engaged in life enough to breed will outpace the dying liberal demographic too hedonistic and infantile to be bothered with procreation. These new young are being home schooled outside of the academic-less halls of the public education indoctrination centers. They are not being converted to the liberal ideology as the DNC would like. And they will out populate the brain dead, brainwashed of the liberal re-education camps.
Meanwhile we conservatives, who know that traditional values are the values that survive the test of time and progressive values, are those that were already tried and failed millennia ago, are not new but regurgitated failure of the kind people too intellectually narcissistic to be bothered by mere history are doomed to repeat. We will find a new party if the RNC cannot be purged of its loser class. We will rebuild and re-conquer and do our best to pull America back from the socialist falls. You Mark, and your sycophant European socialist worshippers may go and follow the people you drone after as they march softly over the cliff.

» sbnative wrote on 11/09/08 @ 06:20 PM

Hey Nader:

Thanks for catching the typo. Did you catch the DRIFT???

» Steve H. wrote on 11/10/08 @ 07:23 AM

AN50
If that is the standard of writing of people home schooled then God help us all.

» Packeryman wrote on 11/10/08 @ 08:42 PM

The death of the Republican party took place in the weeks following 9-11. After the World Trade Center Bush could have closed the all borders and given 30 days for employers to get rid of illegals or face very large fines, cut off all social programs and got rid of the anchor baby program. They would have self deported. Built the fence in record time and deployed troops to border. Then we could have set up a work program to let in workers as needed. He would have had no Latino opposition because we were united. He did not do this because he owed his soul to corporate America. He even floated two trial balloons for amnesty that went nowhere, this was before the two failed bills at comperhensive immigration(amnesty bills). He did not use the moment in time he had to change the course of American history. The Republican party will go the way of the Whigs. The Latinos are the fastest growing group in America. Amnesty will be given soon to 15 to 30 million illegals and they will be able to vote. The same Latino groups that put 500,000 in the streets of LA will organize them for the Democrats. Eighty five to ninety percent will vot Democrat. They will reign until the Latino’s take over the Democratic or pullout with a Latino party. The ignorant far right conservatives will wander in the political wildernes for many years and wonder what happened to them and their 20th century ideas. They will slowly fade away and the realization of the change, has not settled in with the mass of the party. Even as I speak they are meeting to purge their party of moderates and non believers, they are not aware that such a course will take them to defeats that make 1964 Goldwater defeat look small. Those who can adapt to change will survive.

» Yes to socialism wrote on 11/10/08 @ 10:53 PM

I want higher taxes and less freedom, yes to big wasteful government. Kill the small businessman, I want a piece of what he earned. Its only right..


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