Death of the Republican Party?

Writing in The Week he says:

MITT ROMNEY, the Mormon millionaire, reeled in vital victories in Republican primaries in Michigan and Arizona on Tuesday , beating back a forceful challenge by Roman Catholic zealot and former US senator Rick Santorum. 

A week ago Santorum looked as though he might give Romney a thrashing in Michigan, which would have unleashed a wave of grim assessments of the Mormon's prospects, his failure to lock up the race for the nomination, his inability to connect with the common man or woman, the looming possibility of a brokered convention.

He's put such a fate behind him, at least till the next time he falters, perhaps in caucuses in Washington state in the Pacific northwest this coming Saturday or in any of the ten states holding primaries or caucuses on Super Tuesday, a week away.

So Romney's a survivor. He recovered from a thrashing by Newt Gingrich in South Carolina in time to win Florida; he routed Santorum last night. But each comeback has come with a huge price tag. Not just the millions Romney had to pour into negative ads against Santorum in Michigan, but in the whole character of his battle with Santorum.

What nearly sank Romney in Michigan was his refusal to concede that he was totally wrong four years ago in opposing bailouts for General Motors and Chrysler. Both companies were thrown lifebelts of government loans and are now doing well, giving jobs to thousands of auto workers and suppliers in Michigan and Ohio.

At the convention of the United Auto Workers last week, Obama, in top form, had rare sport with Romney on this issue, eliciting howls of merriment and derision for Romney from his blue collar audience. They could easily pull both Michigan and Ohio into the Democratic column next November. No Republican has ever won the White House without prevailing in Ohio.

If Romney is to have a decent chance of defeating Barack Obama in the fall he has to make a strong showing among Hispanics, and women and middle-of-the-roaders generally.

The growing Hispanic vote in states like California and Texas is one of the core truths of politics in the coming era. In the early 1990s, Governor Pete Wilson effectively destroyed the Republican Party in California by backing legislation targeting illegal Hispanic immigrants. Hispanics are naturally conservative. They oppose abortion. But they don't forget politicians who race-bait and try to deny immigrants access to schools and social services.

But in the final debate in Arizona – yet another state with a hefty Hispanic population – Romney applauded the state's vicious crackdown on illegal immigrants, repudiated by the Obama administration as unconstitutional, as "a model". For good measure, Romney launched an attack on Sonia Sotomayor, the first Puerto Rican member of the US Supreme Court. In terms of political strategy, it's like watching a man put a rope around his neck and kick away the chair.

Republicans win by stressing their superior ability in standing tall, defending the United States against its enemies, steering the ship of state in the right direction. They don't win campaigns on social issues, like abortion. There's just been a tussle here about contraception, and whether employers should be paying for birth control in their health plans. Romney condemned the Obama administration for requiring church-affiliated organizations

to do so.

For a couple of weeks Americans have been listening with some incredulity to Santorum denouncing the separation of church and state, and saying he "threw up" when he read a speech by President John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, endorsing just such a separation in his campaign in 1960. So does Santorum want America to become some sort of snooping theocracy, with no bedroom free from its intrusions?  Santorum seems quite blithe at the prospect. And over in the other corner is a Mormon, active in his faith and secret rites. Is this a recipe for victory in modern America?

What we could be witnessing is the death of the Republican Party as one capable of winning a national election, since its active base are right-wing nuts of the sort Romney has been groveling to across the past months. Because seats for the US congress are now all gerrymandered and very rarely change hands, Republicans can still command majorities in the House of Representatives, but their hopes of capturing the US Senate are now receding.

Romney is a clumsy candidate. He's stuck his foot in his mouth many times, most recently when he laconically cited his wife's ownership of two Cadillacs. On his present course, assuming he survives the contests of the next week, he faces doom in November.