Jay Cost is saying much the same thing, with historical context added:

https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-republican-challenge

As I've said often enough before, these strategies to "woo" non-white voters are perfectly OK so long as they 1) don't compromise conservative principles, and 2) don't compromise the legitimate interests of "white" voters (however construed).

Also, I dislike how such thinking leads to fatalism about demographic fate. What demographer in 1950 would have foreseen what we see today? Immigration policy and trends in native fertility can change the picture radically, although it takes at least a generation. Being overly concerned about appealing to minorities plays into the leftist meme that white folks are aging rapidly and being pushed aside as a result. There are many ways to commit political suicide. One is to ignore demographic realities, but another is to reify them.

Race, thanks. I love me some National Affairs (uh..the quarterly journal of public policy.)

Redwald, on point 1) yes of course, but Yuval Levin and Ron Paul might disagree on what those are and how to carry them out (and that is only one potential axis of disagreement) and 2) well our politics should seek to avoid compromising the legitimate interests of "white", "black" etc. voters. Now what those "legitimate" interests are and how to prioritize different issues is another matter.

I don't understand your point to giving in to demographic fate. Given cohort replacement and other factors, the percentage of nowhite voters will rise in the coming decades even if immigration stopped right this second. Those are (or soon will be in many cases - even if there is no amnesty) your fellow citizens. Seeking to win them over based on shared principles and policy preferences is the opposite of fatalism.

Are those soccer fans who recently booed the American team and cheered the Mexican team in the Rose Bowl also my "fellow citizens?" You are sadly naive about racial identity, Pete, and ought not to be passing out advice on racial politics. I don't know where you were infected with multiculturalism (probably public school), but you have a touch of the disease, which is why your posts on this issue always drive me up the wall.

Our real hope for the future is to play the British game. Some groups in the new pluralist America are wooable (e.g., Asians, Cubans, black Christians) and others never will be. Arguments using the inexorable logic of demographics imply that these non-white groups are monoliths, but only a fool believes that (although some are mighty "chunky" like poor black Americans and liberal Jews), Non-racial appeals to common sense or welfare simply won't get the job done because racial/ethnic identity is more akin to religion than to reasoned self-interest. Politics taps our survival instincts, and the overriding imperative in human survival instincts is to circle the wagons.

As for cohorts and the like, yes, minority voters will increase as a proportion of the electorate, but this is not an excuse for complacency. Immigration laws must be reformed while we still have the electoral strength to do so (and that power is slipping by the day), and other laws which discourage marriage and childbearing also need to change (e.g., welfare, divorce law, tax law). More importantly, our culture needs changing -- it needs to be OK (again) to be white and fruitful (like the Mormons!).

Yea, yea, I know -- I'm a white nationalist/bigot/neoconfederate/nazi brownshirt son of a bitch. But, before you call me any of those names, would you say the same about a minority person who has expressed concerns about his/her peoples' future? As I see it, this is defensive racial identification rather than racism, and there are millions and millions of people who feel exactly the same way (not haters at all, but realists). When the day comes that the American soccer team can play in LA and be CHEERED by Mexican-Americans, I'll gladly lower my guard and embrace sunny pluralism. Not before.

"Are those soccer fans who recently booed the American team and cheered the Mexican team in the Rose Bowl also my "fellow citizens?" " Some of them probably, some of them not and some of them not yet. To the extent that you make an implied argument against trying to win larger margins among non-Cuban-American Latinos that is absurd.

"Arguments using the inexorable logic of demographics imply that these non-white groups are monoliths" It implies no such thing. IF the Republicans continue losing among nonwhite by (depending on the group) anywhere from 9 to 1 to 2 to 1) they are going to have trouble winning elections. It is the precise opposite of seeing these groups as monoliths to try to increase the Republican share of the votes from those groups (even if they do not get an outright majority of that group's vote.)

"Immigration laws must be reformed while we still have the electoral strength to do so" We agree, though I would prefer something more like the strategy outlined by Ramesh Ponnuru in National Review a year or so back. I'm too lazy to look it up. You and I have been over this.

"Non-racial appeals to common sense or welfare simply won't get the job done because racial/ethnic identity is more akin to religion than to reasoned self-interest. Politics taps our survival instincts, and the overriding imperative in human survival instincts is to circle the wagons." So you are saying that you find yourself supporting nonsense policies that injure the general (and your personal) welfare out of racialist instinct? I think you are being rather hard on yourself.

"would you say the same about a minority person who has expressed concerns about his/her peoples' future?" I honestly have no idea what you are talking about. My best guess is that you are referring to the above paragraph's section on reproduction. Well I'm okay with marriage and childbearing by all racial and ethnic groups. Also intermarriage and such. Hope that clears things up.

"When the day comes that the American soccer team can play in LA and be CHEERED by Mexican-Americans, I'll gladly lower my guard and embrace sunny pluralism. Not before." You might perhaps be wiser not to try to construct tests by which members of the Mexican-American (or any other) community who share your principles and policy preferences are disqualified (or held up for ridicule) based on the actions of their coethnics. Such expressions of generalized resentment and contempt for a community for the actions of some of its members is mostly useful as personal therapy. If that is the "guard" that you are keeping up then you are welcome to it. You might also spare a moment for the Mexican-Americans serving in our armed forces.

A column by this fellow Olsen on the development of (caucasian) wage-earners as a constituency for the Republican Party and on how the interests and outlook of this social stratum differ from the core Republican constituency is a point of departure for Pete to do his usual shtick.

You might be grateful that I didn't mention Mitch Daniels or health care policy. Small favors and all that.

Pete, our disagreements have always been over 1) whether or not non-racial appeals will actually sway voting blocs that have been animated by racial identity, 2) if not, how much outright pandering might be necessary to do so, and 3) how large a chunk of the GOP's normal constituency will be off-put by these attempts. You can persist in believing that broad-based appeals rooted in individual and family welfare will do the trick, but I seriously doubt it (I think you misconstrue the essence of politics). Crypto-racialist political appeals have always worked better, and that will almost certainly be the case in the future (until we are all one brown homogenous group, and then we will use something new to in-group/out-group ourselves).

There is one related thing that might work -- get people to vote against their own best interests to prove that they AREN'T racists. Jews and white liberals come to mind. So, maybe in some alternate dimension you could convince blacks or Hispanics that they MUST vote for the GOP to prove that they are not bigoted (a kind of reverse multicultural brainwashing). Good luck, Pete.

Do you find yourself being moved primarily by crypto-racialist appeals? Whatever our disagreements, I'd like to think you don't. As to our disagreements, my answers would be:

1. Some. Treating groups like they are fated to overwhelmingly be the clients of the other party based on such appeals is a bad idea.

2. Don't know what you mean by "pandering" in the context of this discussion.

3. I just don't know where you get the idea that white Republican-leaning voters would vote for the other party or stay home if Republican candidates worked harder to communicate the same policies (especially on health care and tax policy) to Latino and African-American voters. You're selling everybody involved very short.

I admire your optimism, Pete. I'm not sure I share it, though. You certainly make the best arguments for how conservatives can make the best of a bad situation (the 2010 elections notwithstanding).

I wonder - how do you factor into your prognosis for a possible governing future for conservatives the unfortunate reality that (unless I'm greatly mistaken) virtually the entire educational system - K-12, community colleges, undergrad and graduate academia, the works - have been brainwashing students (all regions, races, ethnicities, socioeconomic classes, and religions) with the leftist ideology and the Howard Zinn/Noam Chomsky view of America for the last 30 years or so?

How are GOP politicians and their operatives supposed to overcome that handicap?

I don't think that the biggest problem is left-wing brainwashing by any academic establishment. My (possibly unrepresentative) impression is that younger people who are not conservative are often open to some or many right-leaning policies but they have trouble reaching them in any sustained way. I'd guess that is because those younger (and many nonwhite) folks:

1. Are not part of the audience for the populist right-leaning media,

2. They are not parts of families in which what you might call the conservative narrative of the recent past is transmitted to them.

It isn't so much that right-leaning messages are being crowded out by Zinn etc., it is that conservative messages are hardly ever getting to them in language that is comprehensible.

I have some ideas on how to mitigate these problems, but I wouldn't call them answers. I think it might be more of a problem for right-leaning foundations and 504s and such to redirect some of their money away from campaign ads in election years to making sustained arguments between elections in order to make some converts earlier and shape the terms of the debate.