Pat Buchanan's Notion that America Must Be White-skinned

I’m not a great fan of Pat Buchanan, the White House Communications Director for President Reagan who later launched his own campaigns to become president and failed - once as a Republican and once under a third party banner. Buchanan always seems to me to be too strident in his conservatism, almost “in your face” in his assertions that only the Right knows anything. He has just given an interview to Newsmax reporters Martin Gould and Ashley Martella in which he talks about the disintegration of America, which also happens to be the subject of a book he has recently published.

Buchanan told Newsmax that if someone like Mitt Romney is nominated by the GOP in 2012, he can see the emergence of a third party candidate supported by the Tea Party. He thinks the Tea Party will not support Romney because of his Johnny-come-lately conservatism, his MassachusettsCare, and his Mormon faith, which they do not see as Christian.

Now, third party candidates are notorious losers. None has ever won an American presidential election. Not one. But, Buchanan is right when he says that a third party candidate under Tea Party’s auspices could give the election to President Obama.

Especially if what Buchanan says becomes reality - that the Tea Party would turn to Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman. Paul consistently gets about 6-8% of poll votes these days and that could be enough to tip the scales to Obama.

However, Buchanan went on to say that Cain, Perry, Bachmann and Santorum share the conservative values of the Tea Party, but that none of them could beat Romney in the primaries - a rather startling comment this early in the campaign before we see how the critically important Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries play out.  Buchanan added, “The one that has the best chance is Rick Perry and he has sort of broken his pick awful badly in the earlier debates.”
But, then Buchanan switched topics. Buchanan believes that demographic changes in the United States will make it impossible for a conservative Republican to be elected to the presidency from about 2025. He cites California, where no Republican holds statewide office as the bellweather, with its non-Hispanic white minority and Hispanic/Asian-American majority who overwhelmingly vote Democratic. He feels Texas will also follow California, and with that, the possibility of a conservative Republican presidential victory will be gone forever.

Buchanan’s statistics, if accurate, are compelling, even if they could be characterized as racist.

He says, “Richard Nixon carried California in all five elections in which he was on a national ticket. Ronald Reagan carried it four straight times, twice as governor, twice for president. Nowadays a Republican can’t get elected in California. The reason is the demography has changed; the whites are now a minority in California and 90 percent of Republican votes in presidential elections are white folks. But the Hispanic votes and the Asian-Americans vote 60-70 percent Democratic. African-Americans vote 90-95 percent Democratic. So when the white folks become a minority, as they are a minority now in California and they are a minority now in Texas – eventually Texas is going to go the way of California and you’ll never elect another Republican president if he is running on anything like a conservative ticket. For the last 30-35 years the birth rate among white Americans has fallen below replacement levels, below zero population growth. By the time we reach 2020, there are going to be more white folks over 65 than under 17. So the white population is stagnating and will begin to die out. All of America in 2050 is going to look like California today.”
That is why Pat Buchanan thinks America is disintegrating, that its best days are past. And, that is why I do not often agree with Buchanan.
His premise is that America can survive as it was intended to be only if the population is white. I do not think this is accurate. America is an idea. It is not a set of demographic statistics. The Founders were trying to preserve democracy, not white skins. They put aside religious tests. Yes, they skirted the slavery issue, but their carefully drafted Constitution finally put slavery in its place, too.

Why would Buchanan believe that as minorities become majorities, rising into the middle and upper middle class and taking over the management of America’s governments, corporations and universities, that they would stay Democratic, that they would continue to behave as their ancestors did, ancestors who were poor, misused, uneducated and without political or economic power.

If demographics teaches us anything, it is that as individuals and groups become better educated and more affluent, they also become more conservative.

So, I for one, would not count America out just yet. She may have a different ethnic distribution in several decades, but her citizens will be just as eager to preserve her democratic institutions and her unique opportunity, available to anyone willing to work hard.