"There's another reality Mr. Bush is facing up to and it's called the Hispanic vote. Paleocons and nativists may think the key GOP demographic is uneducated whites. But it's hard to imagine a majority Republican future without at least being competitive among Hispanics. In this sense, the guest-worker proposal isn't just an exercise in economic sanity but also in long-term party building on a par with FDR's capture of the black vote.""Uneducated whites." Thanks a lot, guys. I suppose they mean uneducated by comparison with the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal. But really, what kind of a thing is that to say?
There's a simple arithmetical point here: the WSJ-level "educated" are, let us say, the top 2% of the population. They?re outnumbered when it comes to voting, by the other 98%. If the Republican Party doesn't appeal to the "uneducated" it will be about as big as the Green Party.
Perhaps the uneducated stereotype they're talking about is the one that Sam Francis wrote about in 2000: "Revolt of the 300-Pound Beefy Guys"
"Buchanan crowds don't look like Republican crowds," [David] Brooks sneered. "There are none of those Chamber of Commerce officers in golf shirts and tasselled loafers. Instead, Buchanan draws the beefy, 300-pound guys with tattoos up their arms and sleeveless T-shirts. He draws the guys with shaggy biker beards and the Teamsters who park their rigs in the lot and get hoarse shouting, 'Go, Pat, go!' It may be hard to classify exactly which political category these people belong to, but they are certainly not Republicans." ["Buchanan Feeds Class War in the Information Age" David Brooks, LA Times, Oct 31, 1999] Actually, it's not so hard to classify which political category such people belong to. They're called 'Democrats,' and the contempt for them that our Mr. Brooks exudes helps explain why they never show up in the crowds around other Republican candidates.
