Sunset of the Republicans, redux

I wrote the day after 2012's presidential election, "The permanent sunset of the Republican party is begun." Despite the breathless commentary over the last several weeks that the Democrats are worried sick about this November, nothing leads me to change my mind. Thus November may bring a temporary setback to the Dems' march the permanent power, but frankly I doubt even that.

The reason is simple: demographics.

Forget the split of the votes cast Nov. 6: What the data really show is that a super-majority of the American people either do not care (non-voters) or want the government's free or subsidized goodies to continue (like these). Overall voter turnout was significantly less this year than in 2008, with tens of millions of eligible voters not voting, meaning that Romney's loss (Obama's vote plus non-voters) was absolutely crushing.

There is no way the Republican Party can reinvent itself to overcome this deficit. Facts are facts: The Republicans presently can count on exactly one voting bloc:

• White men

That's it. Any parsing you read about income brackets, education or anything else don't mean squat compared to the fact that the only reliable voting bloc for Republicans today is white men, and Romney got only 60 percent of them. And start sounding taps: White men are demographically the fastest-shrinking voting bloc of all.

On the other hand, the Democrats simply own the following voting blocs:

• Women
• Married, employed women broke for Romney, but single women of all ages broke for Obama, especially unmarried women with children.
• More women voted for Obama than men voted for Romney.
• The fastest-growing women's demographic is unmarried women and right behind them, unmarried women with children. This is a permanent demographic shift. Today, 40 percent of all childbirths are to unmarried women. At least half of single mothers live in poverty and they will never vote for Scrooge over Santa Claus.
• So: Years to come will see ever-fewer women's votes being cast for Republicans and because women voters outnumber male voters by several percentage points, the gap is larger than it seems.
• Blacks
• Hispanics
• Other minorities generally

Understand that the traditional Republican appeal to fiscal discipline, America's founding principles, self sufficiency, decreased corporate regulations and lower taxes will never turn any of the Democrat blocs toward the Republicans in any but trivial numbers. There will never be a future equivalent of Reagan Democrats.

Have you heard there is a libertarian-conservative movement sweeping the younger generations of Americans these days, especially millennials? Well, fuggidaboudit:

... on almost every issue Millennials are basically liberal in big numbers. ...

74 percent of millennials say government has a responsibility to guarantee every citizen has a place to sleep and enough to eat…

69 percent say it is government’s responsibility to guarantee everyone access to health care and 51 percent have a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act

68 percent say government should ensure everyone makes a living wage

66 percent say raising taxes on the wealthy would help the economy…

58 percent say the government should spend more on assistance to the poor even it means higher taxes

Think that bodes anything but ill for any possible Republican either this fall or in 2016? Forget the Tea Party, too, because the voters sure have, as this week's Republican primaries showed.