Pat Buchanan has a plan to win more white voters for the GOP.
In an article published by the website World Net Daily last week, Buchanan describes increased black voter turnout and Latino demographic growth as a “crisis for the Grand Old Party.” To combat it, the conservative pundit implies that the Republican Party should adopt a new version of the “Southern Strategy” revolving around immigration.
The Southern Strategy, first adopted by Richard Nixon, aimed to cultivate the support of Southern voters in part by appealing to racial tensions while avoiding overt racism. The strategy played a key role in alienating African-American voters from the GOP.
But Buchanan thinks it’s gotten a bad rap. It did, after all, play well in the electoral college:
After Richard Nixon cobbled together his New Majority, the GOP carried 49 states in 1972 and 1984, 44 states in 1980 and 40 in 1988. In four elections – 1972, 1984, 1988 and 2004 – the Republican Party swept all 11 states of FDR’s “Solid South.”
Such were the fruits of that evil Southern Strategy.
Though he doesn’t come out and say that the GOP should revisit such a strategy, Buchanan points out that the bipartisan proposal for immigration reform under consideration in Congress would increase the pool of nonwhite voters. Perhaps, Buchanan implies, the GOP should focus its attentions on hyping up concerns about the border instead.
While the total Hispanic vote rose by 1.4 million between 2008 and 2012, some 12 million eligible Hispanics did not bother to vote. And when one considers that Romney lost Hispanics 71-27, any Democratic effort to get out the Hispanic vote is going to be problematic for the GOP…
From these Census figures, white folks are losing interest in politics and voting. Yet, whites still constitute three-fourths of the electorate and nine in 10 Republican votes.
Query: Is the way to increase the enthusiasm and turnout among this three-fourths of the electorate for the GOP to embrace amnesty and a path to citizenship for 12 million illegal foreign aliens?
Or is it to demand the sealing of America’s borders against any and all intruders?
The idea isn’t new. GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney tried a variation of this strategy last year, adopting strident positions on illegal immigration, saying he’d roll back the decision to exempt most people brought here as children from deportation, and calling for the undocumented to “self-deport.”
Romney’s strategy flopped and Obama was reelected, as Buchanan noted above.
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