This is the transcript of a radio monologue from my morning show. You can listen live weekdays from nine to noon here or catch the podcast here.
I referenced this story in the New York Times when I talked to Lila Rose from Live Action this morning on my radio program.
“The front door of the Hidalgo County Republican Party’s office is covered with photographs of high-profile politicians in the party: Gov. Greg Abbott, Senator John Cornyn and former President Donald J. Trump. Nearly all of them are white men.
Step inside, and you’ll see a bulletin board with pictures of local Republican leaders: Adrienne Pena-Garza, Hilda Garza DeShazo, Mayra Flores. Nearly all of them are Hispanic women.
Hispanic Republicans, especially women, have become something of political rock stars in South Texas after voters in the Rio Grande Valley shocked leaders in both parties in November by swinging sharply toward the G.O.P. Here in McAllen, one of the region’s largest cities, Mr. Trump received nearly double the number of votes he did four years earlier; in the Rio Grande Valley over all, President Biden won by just 15 percentage points, a steep slide from Hillary Clinton’s 39-point margin in 2016.
That conservative surge — and the liberal decline — has buoyed the Republican Party’s hopes about its ability to draw Hispanic voters into what has long been an overwhelmingly white political coalition and to challenge Democrats in heavily Latino regions across the country. Now party officials, including Mr. Abbott, the governor, have flocked to the Rio Grande Valley in a kind of pilgrimage, eager to meet the people who helped Republicans rapidly gain ground in a longtime Democratic stronghold.
One of those people, Ms. Pena-Garza, the chair of the Hidalgo County Republican Party, grew up the daughter of a Democratic state legislator. As was common for most Hispanic families in the area, she said, voting for Democrats was a given. But after her father switched parties in 2010, Ms. Pena-Garza soon followed, arguing that Democrats had veered too far to the left, particularly on issues like abortion and gun control.
One of the lingering questions of the 2020 election is just what drove this region — and other heavily Hispanic areas of the country — toward Republicans. The shift appeared to be particularly acute among women who call themselves conservative, according to a post-mortem analysis by Equis Labs, a Democratic-aligned research firm that studies Latino voters.”
Culture Matters
Culture is shaping voters. We hear the mainstream media and establishment types on the left and the right claim Republicans are too busy fighting over Dr. Seuss to pick a fight on the budget. This is partially true. Republicans don't have the will to pick a fight on the budget because they lost all of their credibility on fiscal responsibility, and frankly, there is a growing movement within the Republican Party to be less small government-oriented and less fiscally restrained. This movement within the Republican Party aims to be socially conservative and fiscally liberal. Frankly, that's the sweet spot in American politics. People in the beltway don't seem to understand.
A third party in this country could arise tomorrow and become the dominant party in America if it was socially conservative and fiscally liberal. This won’t happen because the Republican Party is already morphing into this. It's shifting away from fiscally conservatism and towards a proactive form of government that remains socially conservative. This makes no sense to those in the media.
A story was done recently that made this point with non-Cuban Hispanic voters in Florida. Cuban voters in Florida tend to always vote Republican, but non-Cuban Hispanic voters were presumed to cause the state to shift to the Democrats. This never happened. In fact, they've caused the state to shift to the Republicans. Why? Hispanic moms want their kids to be safe and find good, middle-class jobs. They perceive the Democrats are hostile to all of those things.
There's something bigger the data suggests and I think the New York Times is unable to recognize it. The cultural issues of the GOP (pro-life, pro-police, and anti-Black Lives Matters among others) are persuading Hispanic voters to move to the GOP. This phrase in the New York Times is fascinating: "Republicans have portrayed national Democrats as hostile toward the police," The reality is Republicans don't have to portray the Democrats as that because the Democrats portray themselves as that. The Republicans don't have to suggest that Democrats want to defund the police when Democrats will tell you they want to defund the police.
For years we’ve just accepted that the nation is socially moving to the left. It turns out that's not the case. In Hollywood and other major cities, this may be happening but not everywhere else. Hispanic voters are one of the fastest-growing demographics and continue to be one of the most conservative groups in the country. This can be said about black voters as well. While the data is not there to show major trend lines for black voters moving to the GOP, I think it is only a matter of time before they do. As the Democratic Party gets richer, whiter, more secular, and woke, culturally conservative voters will leave them.
James Carville went on the Sunday shows talking about woke-ism and how the faculty lounges of America are causing Democrats to lose. Here's what he had to say.
Bernie did not agree.
Woke-ism is not selling people on the Democratic Party. It's moving Hispanic voters and some black men to the Republican Party. Moms would like to know their children are safe. Moms would like to sleep well at night, knowing the bad man is not going to break in and get their kids.
In growing parts of our society, people are walking away. Just take unemployment right now. You can make $31,000 to $32,000 a year on unemployment in this country which is roughly the starting salary of a police officer. Why would you want to go be a police officer in Atlanta, Chicago, or DC, when you could sit at home and collect unemployment without putting a target on your back? Why not? Why wouldn’t you do that?
I don't think that Democrats fundamentally are capable of processing this. They've got a vested stakeholder interest now in going woke. Secular white people have left the Republican party, and in so doing, have shifted the Democratic Party further to the left culturally than it already was before. Increasingly it's signaling that the Democratic Party is hostile to the views of anyone who's culturally conservative. So you've got Hispanic voters, in Texas, Florida, and southern Colorado shifting to the GOP.
The Republican parties made inroads in New Mexico in the Hispanic community while the white hippies voted Democrat. In Arizona, there's ample data suggesting a lot of voters in the Hispanic community are shifting to the right over the cultural issues. They like Democratic fiscal policy, but they're getting more and more of that from the Republicans. It's the social, cultural values where the Democratic party is out to lunch and these voters realize it.
Here's the bottom line: For decades we've heard that demography is destiny and the Republican Party is in decline because Hispanic voters and black voters are always going to vote for Democrats. Increasingly, that's not the case. Demography was only destiny if we wanted it to be, and these voters have decided they don't want it to be because the Democratic Party is shifting towards a secular, rich, white elite class who have nothing in common with these people. Hispanics have more in common with the white working-class that is more and more at home with the Republican Party than they do the faculty lounges of every university that have moved into the Democratic Party.
This, my friends, is going to be a huge shakeup politically in this country if these trends continue.
The Hispanic Rise of the GOP