In a piece that begins by quoting Romney's harsh position on aid to students (the headline is Pay For Your Own Damn College!), Jonathan Chiat at New York Magazine concludes: "Republicans are defending the shared cultural prerogatives of a certain group of people. That is why I am arguing that the shifting demographic tides will require the GOP to undertake a major reorientation in order to maintain its competitiveness. There’s simply no way to transpose their sense of what is and what is not a legitimate government function onto a progressively younger, browner electorate. (Latino voters overwhelmingly support Obama’s health care reform.) Their conception of us versus them can work for a while – it worked quite well with the anomalously old, white 2010 off-year electorate – but the them is rapidly outnumbering the us."
Specifically with the fastest growing population group, Latinos, GOPers are persistently and even doggedly digging themselves a black hole into which their electoral fortunes are already falling. When asked which party supports their chance to achieve the American Dream, only 10% chose the GOWP. President Obama beats any GOWP opponent by a factor of 6 to 1. Said a GOP strategist in this Monitor piece that outlines the problem, "If we don’t do better among Latinos, we are not going to be talking about how to get back Florida in the presidential race, we are going to be talking about how not to lose Texas.”
Meanwhile Josh Marshall at TPM offers the most cogent explanation for the mindset of Mitt Romney: as a businessman, his core values are bloodless business values which he freely expresses as let Detroit go bankrupt, let the housing market hit bottom, pay for your own damn college, etc. But on other issues that don't touch this business mindset, he'll say whatever works on the principle of market testing: there's no sense trying to sell a product that your market testing tells you won't sell to the people you see as your market. Hence his "flip-flops" on everything else.
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