Republicans won’t reach out to the religiously unaffiliated? Too bad…for them

With all the talk of massive republican losses during this year’s election cycle among essentially all groups of voters except white, middle aged/senior white evangelical/conservative catholic Christians, there is a lot of talk about them starting to reach out to minorities. Whether this will happen (or even can happen) is questionable.

But there is one minority here that isn’t even mentioned: the “nones”. That is, us. As the graph shows, the ethno/religious composition of republican electorate closely matches senior citizens, and they have failed to keep up with diversification of the population. There has already been talk from republicans themselves that if they fail to adapt, they will go the way of the dinosaurs.

“In not too many years, Texas could switch from being all Republican to all Democrat,” he said. “If that happens, no Republican will ever again win the White House. New York and California are for the foreseeable future unalterably Democrat. If Texas turns bright blue, the Electoral College math is simple. We won’t be talking about Ohio, we won’t be talking about Florida or Virginia, because it won’t matter. If Texas is bright blue, you can’t get to two-seventy electoral votes. The Republican Party would cease to exist. We would become like the Whig Party. Our kids and grandkids would study how this used to be a national political party. ‘They had Conventions, they nominated Presidential candidates. They don’t exist anymore.’ ”

Of course the course will have twists and turns (like low turnout midterm elections) but the final outcome will not be different.

But all of this is about reaching out to ethnic minorities. In our case, given all the slurs (just look at one here, for instance) that we get from their base, it is unlikely that will ever try. And that will accelerate their decline.

Political parties come and go. But those questioning orthodox religion have existed since the days of Epicurus. We won’t be going anywhere and they have to deal with us.