Not just industrialized state. With China’s restriction on the number of children, it’s going to be interesting there pretty soon.
Keep threatening social security, and your walkers are going to get glued to the floor. 
I don’t think so (except for the voting part 
) As a heading towards retirement Baby Boomer, I discovered that my fellow pot smoking, Hendrix listening, LSD dropping compatriots have turned into DARE supporting, cocktail swilling, terrorist fearing, capitalist worshiping, sanctimonious hypocritical buttheads.
You whippersnappers don’t fight fair, do ya? Next Dopefest I see you at, I’m gonna beat you with my cane! 
The difference was that the Nixon-era GOP wasn’t joined at the hip with the Trickster, the way today’s GOP is with Bush.
As I’ve said before, in the few notable instances where there’s daylight between Bush and the GOP, the party comes off even more conservative and more nativist than the President: immigration, the Harriet Miers nomination, the Dubai ports deal.
One thing that’s been a big help in balancing that out somewhat is, yep, Hispanic immigration.
If the wingnuts ever succeed in walling off our Southern border, we’re gonna get a lot grayer, a lot faster.
Beautifully put. I would love to be able to be a Republican again, because at heart I’m a fiscal/economic conservative–even though I’m as liberal, socially, as it gets.
Ew ew ew. Doubly so because when I see “insincere Democrat” my mental image is of Hilary Clinton. Ew.
I dunno - the Bush economy isn’t doing most Americans any favors, and they realize that. Here we are, nearly six full years into the Bush economic expansion (after a very brief recession), and median household income is going up only because there are more workers per household than there were last year; median wages of full-time, year-round workers decreased last year.
There is a strong future for a Republican conservative party that is softer on social issues. The anti-gay and pro-religion aspects of the current lot are the only things that turn off the relatively young Republicans and indies that I interact with.
If they maintain anti-immigration, anti-Islam, exploratory world-policing policies, I think they’ll be fine. Which is weird, because this latest revolution was started by a guy who ran on being compassionate and isolationist.
The anti-Islam meme is not weakening, despite the underwhelming returns from Iraq. There are votes to be had in spanking the Middle East and closing off the borders and lowering taxes. And where else are the Christians going to go? It will be an interesting few election cycles.
The Republicans bounced back after Nixon because of Reagan’s charisma. They lack a modern-day Reagan who can inspire their party. The demographics simply don’t look as favorable for them as they did in 1980. Anti-gay may have been a winner in 2004, but it will be a loser in 2014. Anti-abortion may have served them well in the past, it’s becoming a millstone. Religious fervor worked for a while, but each generation becomes less religious. Their perfect storm of special interests coming together under one banner is petering out. Personally, I think I’ve seen the last GOP speaker in my lifetime.
Another factor was that the problem with Nixon was Nixon. The true believers on the right weren’t that connected with his policies, and once he was gone, the taint wasn’t on the Republicans. We also had the example of Ford, a nice guy Pubbie if a nebbish.
This time the true believers had the power, and screwed things up royally. They still have enough power in the party to keep moderates out, but it seems that much of the rest of the country sees through them.
I don’t think anyone is pro-Islam, in the sense of pro-Islamic Law, so that’s not a position that is going to make much difference. Anti-immigration might be, but a growing number of voters in the Sun Belt, where the GOP has been strong, are immigrants or the children of immigrants. Lots of places in the Northeast 150 years ago went from anti-Irish political parties to Irish-dominated political parties.
Oh, how I wish this was true. I’m a fiscal conservative and a social liberal, maybe even a social anarchist. I usually have to hold my nose and vote for a fiscal conservative who is a social conservative, or do the same and vote for a fiscal liberal and social liberal. Since President Reagan’s second term, when, as one of his advisors put it “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter”, I have not been able to vote for a Republican, because all they run are fiscal liberals and social conservatives.
Sure, nothing lasts forever, and the Republican Party will recover the dabacle of the past two decades, but I won’t last forever either, and I doubt that they’ll recover in my lifetime. I figure I’ll only get to vote in four more presidential elections, maybe five.
I think this increase in numbers has everything to do with Baby Boomers going from the 35-54 group to the 55+ group in the last ten years. Their sheer numbers affect the demographics. Considering that a significant number of people start out Democrats and then become Republicans later in life, and that people naturally are considered more conservative as they get older, I don’t think these numbers tell me anything other than Baby Boomers are getting older.
Interesting take. There is a difference between “percentage of Republicans who are over 55” and “Percentage of the over-55 who are Republican”.
But if the theory of “older=Republican” holds, then the current apparent deadlock in the electorate is due mainly to an artificially inflated over-55 crowd. Even the Baby Boomers will die someday.
If this were true, Ronald Reagan could never have been elected.
So, RTFirefly, where are the rest of the numbers? You know, the ones that’ll either show that a. there’s a shift and more young people are not voting republican or b. that there’s also an increase in geriatric democrat voters too. If it’s b, then so what?
My guess is b is actually what would pan out. The population is aging and old people l*ove * to vote. More than 67% of them did in 2000.
Here’s my two-bit theory. Political movements in America run in roughly 40 year cycles. In their youth they’re flush with fresh ideas and energy, but as their core followers age they turn overweening and inflexible.
For example, the New Deal began in 1932. The Democrats dominated the political scene from then until they were crippled by the twin failures of the Great Society and the Viet Nam War in the late 1960’s. (And, of course, the defection of the southern Democrats.)
Nixon was the beginning of the modern conservative backlash, but his criminal behavior postponed its full flowering until Reagan was elected in 1980. (That’s why Jimmy Carter was so disliked. The appeal of his old-school liberalism was ebbing fast and the only reason he was elected was because of revulsion against Nixon personally.)
At the middle of each cycle the country takes a breather with a centrist from the other side. Eisenhower and Clinton fill those roles.
The last liberal wave lasted from 1932 to 1968. 36 years.
The current conservative wave began in 1968. Add 40 years and you get 2008.
The Republican Party is on the wrong side of a major demographic shift. Their base is aging and their ideology has remained static since the 1980’s while the world has changed around them. We’re due for another major realignment, one as significant as the New Deal or Morning in America.
OK I’ll buy that there was roughly a 40 year liberal wave and a 40 year conservative wave, plus or minus a few years. But were there any before that? I’m trying to think of the difference between say 1890-1930 and 1850-1890 and am coming up empty.
Well, the 1850-1890 cycle (if the 40 year thing maps true, which I don’t think it does) would be inexorably distorted by the aftermath of the Civil War leading toward the Gilded Age. In the 1850s the country, regardless of whatever else it faced, was obsessed with finding (or dodging) a solution to the slave state/non-slave state issues.
The the War happened. And following that reconstruction, carpetbagging, and a series of President’s and Congressional leaders who’d made their name during the war as tough guys. It was after most of these guys were off the stage that things got back to normal.
I realize you meant this for the Republican party. But it applies both ways. Look at the way moderate, pro-military, anti-gun control Democrats got such a starring role in the 2006 election. In the end, the American electorate tends toward the center. But candidates further right and left can get elected by vocal minorities on either side. This occurs because of low voter turnout and apathy.