Larry Sabato, the normally level-headed professor and political guru at the University of Virginia, says the future of the Republican Party is utterly dependent on what it does with the current dispute over illegal immigration.
It’s worth a few minutes to examine his reasoning and determine if this is truly the beginning of the end for the GOP.
In an interview Monday at the height of nationwide immigration protests, Sabato said that unless (a key word) the Republican Party finds a way to accommodate the increasing Hispanic population, it can say goodbye to any chance of winning another presidential election. “The political stakes” in the immigration dispute, he said, “couldn’t be higher.”
Sabato is not alone. Prominent Republicans and party strategists have argued that the party has no choice but to appease Hispanic voters – and the sooner it does so, the better. It is not entirely clear what that means in terms of specific policy choices, but at a minimum the party should avoid supporting harsh measures like greatly stepped-up border security and get on board with some sort of amnesty program dressed up to look like a guest-worker proposal.
Hispanics are already the largest U.S. ethnic minority. Current estimates are that by mid-century, non-Hispanic whites will become a minority in the U.S.
According to Sabato, even now a Republican presidential candidate must get 40 percent of the Hispanic vote to win national elections, and very soon that percentage will rise to 45 percent.
The professor’s clear implication is that numbers mean only one thing: Satisfy Hispanic voters or go out of business.
Several questions arise: What do Hispanic voters want? Must it be assumed that all Hispanics, for example, oppose better border security? Must it be assumed most Hispanics support a guest-worker program? Finally, must it be assumed that most of the millions of illegal immigrants already here will one day achieve citizenship and thus the right to vote?
In answering these questions, it is wise to remember that the demise of the Republican Party has been predicted before. When Barry Goldwater got hammered in the 1964 election, it was thought to be the end of the line for the GOP and the installation of the Democrats as a permanent majority party in America.
It didn’t happen because things changed. President Lyndon Johnson, bogged down in the Vietnam War, couldn’t run for re-election in 1968. Republicans went on to win seven of the next 10 presidential elections.
The reason for the change in fortunes: Elections are not just about numbers, they are also about ideas. So it would be a huge mistake to believe that the Democratic Party is about to inherit the earth just by automatically attracting Hispanic voters united around the idea of lax immigration enforcement.
Indeed, a good argument can be made that the greatest threat to the Republican Party comes not from a failure to satisfy Hispanic voters but rather from a failure to satisfy party members who believe the the nation has an obligation to set and enforce its own immigration policy.
Public opinion polls have repeatedly shown that most Americans are concerned about lax immigration enforcement and that concern is obviously shared by many current Hispanic-Americans.
Some of the marchers in Monday’s protests did do everyone a favor by reminding the nation what this conflict is about. Some wore T-shirts with the message “Illegal. So what?”
It’s a good question principally because it is addressed at the right audience: the American voter. It is not a question that can be answered by illegal immigrants, no matter how numerous or vocal they may be. It is a question that must be answered by Congress and the two major political parties.
In the view of Sabato and others, the only possible answer is to fashion a response that is part border security and part guest-worker program (or amnesty). Anything else signals doom for the Republican Party and prosperity and power for the Democrats.
There are many good reasons to believe that Sabato is wrong. Most Americans, one suspects, can see what years of lax immigration enforcement has already produced and will be rightly skeptical of any government scheme that simultaneously promises to be tough and gentle at the same time.
That kind of political snake oil has been on sale for a very long time.
Al Knight of Fairplay (alknight@mindspring.com) is a former member of The Post’s editorial-page staff. His column appears on Wednesdays.
