Texas "Swing"

In the July 19th post on the Burka Blog at Texas Monthly, Paul Burka writes about Obama's statement, made during a fundraising visit last week, that Texas will "soon" be a swing state. I agree with Burka's assessment on the subject- that it probably will become a swing state, we just don't know how "soon" that will be.

The Republican party has, for the last thirty or so years, been the white party, so what happens when Texas ceases to be a white-majority state? As Burka says, "The Republican base is aging. The average age of the party’s donors is 70. The average age of the 18,000 GOP state convention delegates was 58."

The demographics are changing and I think it will be really interesting to see what happens with a white minority in Texas. I have a hard time seeing how non-whites would possibly vote for a party actively working against them, but then, plenty of women and poor whites vote Republican so anything could happen. It's certainly not like the Democratic party has only common people's best interests at heart, either (though they do make less of a point to show outright disdain for them).

Burka makes two really good points concerning this.

1). For some reason, Hispanics don't turn out to vote in large numbers here in Texas.

2). Many traditional Hispanic values are in line with the conservatism of the Republican party. "Faith, family and patriotism" are particularly singled out.

I have noticed particularly this second phenomenon. Heck, one of my best friends is Mexican-American, and she views the Tea Party as a bunch of liberal wussies.

So, maybe if they play up their conservative values and Democrats' ties to big business and Wall Street, the Republicans could be the ones to "swing" back into favor with minority voters. If that happens, count on the Tea Partiers to swell the ranks of the Democrats and then we're back to where we started.