PHOENIX (By Jon Garrido, The Jon Garrido News Network) November 7, 2008 — Intermingled with the cries of anguish in GOP circles this week — as well as a few choice words aimed at the McCain campaign — there is a common mantra: What do we do now? The Republican Party in conversations across America has reached the conclusion restructuring is required to re-gain political strength brought about by eight years of failure of George Bush and his devastating policies.

While there is truth George Bush will go down as the worst United States President in American history, this in only a minor factor in the demise of the Republican Party.

The primary reason for the demise of the Republican Party is the significant change in America's demographics. It is this alone that is at the core for the coming extinction of the Republican Party.

One look across the vastness of America over the last 100 years centers on the values of the heartland of Middle America. From the conservative white inhabitants of this area, outward migration over the past 50 years, seniors have migrated primarily to states with milder climates such as Arizona, New Mexico and Texas bringing values long etched in brains and bred in the hearts of white conservative Republican families.

In Arizona, bastilles of retired seniors from Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Michigan have taken refuge fortifying themselves in Sun City, Sun City West, and Surprise while Minnesota seniors have flocked to Rio Verde and Fountain Hills (This is where Arpaio lives).

It is these white conservative Republican seniors who dominate Maricopa County elections as evident from the unprecedented 5th term election of Joe Arpaio. Ask any white senior what they think of Joe Arpaio and you will be told they support what Arpaio is doing arresting "illegals" who are destroying America.

Another problem caused by white conservative seniors from the mid-west is they tend to have children indoctrinated with the same core values they have received from their parents. These children are found everywhere in the Phoenix area.

This is the membership of the white conservative Republican Party increasingly becoming less grand than old — and outdated. As reflected in Tuesday’s results and exit polls, it’s a party overwhelmingly white, rural and aged in a country that is rapidly becoming racially mixed and suburban.

Conservative Republicans are in denial

It is obvious math is not taught in middle America. Conservative Republicans fail to see the importance of doing the math to see the demographic evolution of America to a Hispanic America.

We will not get there today. We may get there tomorrow but the day is coming when Arizona and Texas will be in play with the growth of Hispanic Americans and the earliest date is 2012 when Arizona and Texas will vote Democratic.

As for Republican Party restructuring, nothing can be done with a new direction on the issues because at the heart of all white conservative Republicans is a fundamental difference in the way they perceive Hispanics and blacks.

Yesterday, a Hispanic American married to a white woman from the mid-West shared with me his in-laws, still back in the mid-West, believe Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Most ominous for Republicans, the GOP is in dire straits as evident in consecutive election cycles the Republican Party now finds itself in its worst straits since the rise of the conservative coalition — a minority party without the White House, fewer seats in the House and Senate, only 21 governors and full control of just 14 state legislatures.

All the king's men can strategize on how to prevent the dinosaurs from traveling down the road to oblivion but nothing can put Humpty Dumpty back together again from his fall.

Beyond demography the party is now, thanks to the outgoing president and some members of Congress, perceived by many voters as either incompetent, corrupt or just not standing for much.

In an election focused on the economy like none since 1992, Democrats had the advantage on which party would best address the current financial crisis, limit spending, reduce the deficit and cut taxes for middle-class voters, according to a pre-election survey taken across four battleground states — Virginia, Florida, Ohio and Colorado — by the American Issues Project, a conservative third-party group. Not coincidentally, each of those states — red in 2004 — flipped to the Democrats on Tuesday.

While recapturing the advantage on issues is important, Republicans are frank about the urgent need to also become a party that looks like the nation America is quickly becoming but it will never happen because Republicans are fundamentally racist as heard daily on conservative talk radio hostile to Hispanics.

Obama won over Hispanics — the country’s largest minority group and a target of ardent outreach by President Bush — by sizable margins, gains in the party attribute to the perception fueled during the immigration debate Republicans are hostile to Hispanics.

“We’re not relevant to people of my generation,” admitted Rep. Paul Ryan, a 38-year-old Wisconsin conservative seen as a rising star on the right.

Ryan said the party had become ossified, emblematic of a despised status quo. “No more old bulls, no more old boys network, no more just bringing home the bacon to get reelected,” he said.

“Demographically, culturally, technologically and economically, the country is changing,” he noted, while the GOP is “stuck in a 30-year-old feel in tone and image.”

“But you can’t be a majority governing party getting almost no support from Hispanics and African-Americans, with a major gap with women, and decreasing support from modest-income Americans.”

Next man in White House could well be a Hispanic

If it took 143 years after the Congress abolished slavery for Barack Obama to reach the White House, the journey from here on for another non-white aspirant to high office may happen a lot sooner as a demographic upheaval transforms the American landscape.

The emerging race map of US is clearly indicating a decline in the dominance of the white vote and though it would stretch things to say whites will cease to matter politically, America is turning distinctly less white than it has been. This is slowly giving rise to voting blocks that are proving increasingly decisive in tilting poll results.

The Obama win can overstate the case as blacks and Hispanics voted in droves for the Democrat nominee. This underlined the clout of the non-white vote even though the overall split in white preferences revealed by exit polls shows how Obama trounced the race divide.

The Democratic challenger expectedly mopped up 95% of the black vote and also walked away with 66% of the Hispanic ballot. He also got 63% of the Asian vote. Though much less in number, Asian support only worked to seal an advantage Obama derived from capturing a decisive chunk of the Hispanic vote. And if US census projections are anything to go by, political campaigns will be paying a lot of attention to these groups.

The expanding Hispanic population may well make US parties wary of issues like tough immigration laws. And with illegal migrants, with Mexico contributing the most, estimated at 11.6 million as of January 2006, their numbers are climbing. By 2042, non-Hispanic whites could be 50% of the US populace.

The US census bureau revised estimates show "white alone" population at 66.71% by 2050. And in 2045 itself, the figure will be 48.52%. All Hispanics will be 30.25% of the population, while Asians will jump from 3.8% in 2000 to 9.24%, black numbers will go up from 12.7% to 14.97%.

By 2023, half of America's children will form "minorities." By 2050, the minority population, except non-Hispanic and single race whites, will stand at 235.7 million of a total of 439 million. The white population will, at 203.3 million, be only slightly larger than what it is in 2008 at 199.8 million. This startling fact points to loss of population in 2030s and 2040s as whites decline from 66% in 2008 to 46% in 2050.

With the Hispanic population likely to triple from 46.7 million to 132.8 million, while Asians reach 40-odd million, it may not be long before the US has a Hispanic president.

Hispanic voters shifted in huge numbers away from the Republicans to vote for Senator Barack Obama in the presidential election, exit polls show, providing the votes that gave him unexpectedly large margins of victory in three battleground states: Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada.

Mr. Obama’s pull on Hispanic voters also extended to Florida, where a majority of them voted for a Democratic presidential nominee for the first time since at least 1988, when exit polls were first conducted in the state.

In a year when turnout among many groups surged nationwide, the number of Hispanics who went to the polls increased by nearly 25 percent over 2004, with sharp rises among naturalized immigrants and young, first-time voters, according to a study by the National Association of Hispanic Elected and Appointed Officials. Hispanic support for the Democratic nominee increased by 14 points over all compared with 2004, the biggest shift toward the Democrats by any voter group.

For the first time, Hispanic voters emerged as a mobilized Democratic voting bloc in states across the country.

Nationwide, Hispanics voted 67 percent for Mr. Obama and 31 percent for Senator John McCain, according to Edison/Mitofsky exit polls. In 2004, Senator John Kerry won 53 percent, while 44 percent of Hispanics voted for President Bush, a record for Hispanic support for a Republican presidential nominee.

The approximately 10 million Hispanics who went to the polls this year were 9 percent of the total of voters, up one percentage point from 2004. Their share of the electorate did not increase more substantially because turnout was high across most voting groups.

A striking increase was in Colorado, where Hispanics went from 8 percent of those who voted in 2004 to 13 percent this year, according to Edison/Mitofsky. Mr. Obama carried the Hispanic vote in Colorado by 61 percent to 38 percent, Edison/Mitofsky found.

While Mr. McCain campaigned hard in Colorado and polls showed a tight race there, in the end Mr. Obama won the state by 7.7 percentage points.

Hispanics were also crucial to Mr. Obama’s landslide in New Mexico, which, like Colorado, went for President Bush in 2004. Hispanics increased their share of New Mexico’s voters to 41 percent, from 32 percent in 2004, and 69 percent of them voted for Mr. Obama, who carried the state by more than 14 points.

In Nevada, where Hispanics were 15 percent of voters, 76 percent of them backed Mr. Obama. He carried the state by more than 12 points.

In Florida, Hispanics joined many other groups in shifting away from the Republicans toward Mr. Obama, contributing to his 2.4-point victory there. One factor was a growing group of Puerto Rican voters in Central Florida, who tended to vote Democratic while South Florida’s large Cuban-American population remained dependably Republican, said Mark Hugo Lopez, a researcher for the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.