'The demographics are changing: It’s not a traditional America anymore,' said Bill O'Reilly. Media: GOP must expand base

With Mitt Romney’s loss to President Barack Obama, the Republican Party has been forced to come to terms with an inconvenient truth: they can no longer rely on a white majority.

That reality, long acknowledged by forward-thinking GOP strategists but downplayed by many conservative media outlets, finally became a central topic of discussion on the channel most famous for championing conservative causes: Fox News.


(PHOTOS: Election Day 2012)

“The white establishment is now the minority,” Bill O’Reilly, one of the network’s most famous personalities, said earlier this evening. “The demographics are changing: It’s not a traditional America anymore.”

Minutes later, former Gov. Mike Huckabee would slam his own party for failing to reach out to non-white voters.

“I think Republicans have done a pathetic job of reaching out to people of color,” Huckabee said during an appearance on Fox. “That’s something we’ve got to work on. It’s a group of people that frankly should be with us based on the real policy of conservatism.”

The need to expand its base beyond white voters is hardly news to forward-thinking GOP strategists. The share of white voters has shrunk in every election: from 87 percent in 1992 to 83 percent in 1996 to 80 percent in 2000 to 77 percent in 2004 to 74 percent in 2008.

But in addressing — and lamenting — the issue head-on tonight, Fox News put that reality front and center before the nation’s conservatives. Now, in the wake of the election, the Republican party, Fox News, and the nation look set for a long conversation about the party’s relationship with non-white voters.

The GOP’s struggle to court the Latino demographic was also a topic across television networks tonight.

The “story of this election is demographics,” NBC’s Chuck Todd said. The Obama campaign “built a campaign for 21st century America. The Republican Party has some serious soul searching to do.”

“They are getting clobbered among non-white voters,” he said.

“I think what’s happened is the Republicans have bet on winning elections on a dwindling share of the population, which is white males, and Democrats have put a bet on the fastest increasing center of population, which is Latino voters,” ABC News contributor Matthew Dowd said.

Conservative columnist George Will, also an ABC News contributor, acknowledged the party’s shortcoming as well.

“[Romney] came out against the DREAM Act, promising to veto it, and a few months after that he was using the language of ‘self-deportation,’ that is making life difficult enough for the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country that they would deport themselves,” he said. “It’s awfully hard to unring that bell.”

Huckabee was confident that Republicans could get more Latino votes if they made a greater effort.

“Republicans have acted as if they can’t get the vote, so they don’t try. And the result is, they don’t get the vote,” he said. “[But] I absolutely reject the notion that white people are voting for Mitt Romney, black people are voting for Barack Obama. I think conservatives are voting for Mitt Romney and liberals are voting for Barack Obama. This country is still a divided country ideologically, more than it is racially.”

But O’Reilly voiced a more dire future for the Grand Old Party.

“The voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama’s way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?” he said.

Twenty years ago, an establishment candidate like Mitt Romney would have trounced Obama, O’Reilly said.

In the 10 o’clock hour, liberal contributor Kristen Powers would note that “we are becoming a more brown country,” and that Republicans have failed to court Latino voters.

“The Latino vote is extremely important, though if you look at these exit polls there is no difference really between 2008 and Obama basically held them and they are roughly the same percentage off maybe one-point from 2008,” Powers said. “But moving forward for the Republican Party, this is probably the last election where they even could have contested an election with this type of position that they have because of the changing demographics, because we are becoming a more brown country and because I do think it alienates Latinos.”

More generally, Fox News host Brit Hume came to terms with the fact that the party itself may no longer represent the majority of the country.

“Many of us have believed, and I still basically do, that this is a center-right country. A lot of conservatives have taken the view that liberals are really on the wane,” Brit Hume said. But, he continued, “If you look at tonight’s exit polling, those who self-identify as liberals are about 24%, conservatives, 35%, moderates: 40%. Now, this apparent outcome tells you one thing about those moderates: that there are in that category an awful lot of them that are actually liberals.”

“Now, liberal became kind of a dirty word that’s when the word progressive came into use, widely — when they started referring to themselves as progressives,” he said. “There are in that category an awful lot of them that are actually liberals…. [the country is] more liberal than many may have thought. So you know that a lot of these people are basically not center-right people.”

“If this turns out the way it may, there’s going to be an awful lot of recrimination among conservatives — should Romney have done this, should he have done that,” Hume said. “The question you have to ask is: Would that have brought in more moderates?”

But as Bret Baier asked Hume, “If there was a candidate to pull it off, wasn’t Romney the one to do it?”

It is a question that party will have to wrestle with for the next four years.