ROSS DOUTHAT of the New York Timesmakes the case that the recent Supreme Court ruling striking down a portion of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) will be a boon to Democrats. The majority decision, penned by John Roberts, the chief justice, allows former Jim Crow states to implement changes to voting procedures, such as requiring voter-identification documents, without having to get "pre-clearance" from the feds. Critics of the decision would have us think that we are about to see a new era of race-based voter suppression. However, Mr Douthat sensibly points out that, by providing an apt occasion for flipping out about racist voter-suppression, Mr Roberts's decision may well help Democrats at the polls. He writes:

[V]oter ID laws don’t take effect in a vacuum: as they’re debated, passed and contested in court, they shape voter preferences and influence voter enthusiasm in ways that might well outstrip their direct influence on turnout. They inspire registration drives and education efforts; they help activists fund-raise and organize; they raise the specter of past injustices; they reinforce a narrative that their architects are indifferent or hostile to minorities. This, I suspect, is part of the story of why African-American turnout didn’t fall off as expected between 2008 and 2012. By trying to restrict the franchise on the margins, Republican state legislators handed Democrats a powerful tool for mobilization and persuasion, and motivated voters who might otherwise have lost some of their enthusiasm after the euphoria of “Yes We Can” gave way to the reality of a stagnant, high-unemployment economy.

I find this quite plausible. Mr Douthat goes on to observe, citing Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics, that Republicans would not so urgently need to attract Hispanic voters if the GOP could return to its pre-Obama level perfomance among blacks; that's just a measly 10%. But the combination of the VRA decision and the haste of conservative Southern states to pass voter-ID laws only consolidates the GOP's reputation as the racist party. One implication, which Mr Douthat does not draw, is that Mr Roberts has, by depriving Republicans of wiggle room with blacks, made the passage of immigration reform more urgently necessary for the future viability of the GOP.

However, as I've noted before, the electoral interests of individual Republican congressmen can easily diverge from the long-term electoral interests of the Republican Party. Janet Hook of the Wall Street Journalpoints out that "only 38 of the House’s 234 Republicans, or 16%, represent districts in which Latinos account for 20% or more of the population." Moreover, "only 28 Republican-held districts are considered even remotely at risk of being contested by a Democratic challenger...”. Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas comment, "So for about 200 of the House’s Republicans, a primary challenge by conservatives angry over 'amnesty' is probably a more realistic threat than defeat at the hands of angry Hispanic voters, or even angry Democrats." My gut still says Republicans will find a way to pass immigration reform, but I won't be too surprised if I'm wrong.

In any case, suppose that immigration reform is vanquished by self-interested House Republicans, and Hispanic voters in future elections stay away from Republicans in droves. The GOP is by no means therefore doomed. Given plausible projections of population growth, under what Mr Trende has called the "racial-polarisation scenario", "the GOP does quite well ... until 2048, when Texas finally goes blue and the bottom drops out". "Democrats liked to mock the GOP as the 'Party of White People' after the 2012 elections", Mr Trende continues. "But from a purely electoral perspective, that’s not a terrible thing to be."

Mr Roberts's decision on the Voting Rights Act may not actually lead to a successful resurgence of racist electoral tactics, but the not-unreasonable worry that it might, together with the very-possible failure of comprehensive immigration reform, may galvanise non-white voters against Republicans in a way that narrows the GOP's options—that makes becoming more thoroughly "the party of white people", the GOP's best hope.

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