David Brooks, "A Second G.O.P.": Republicans Cannot Win Without Reaching Out to Minorities

American demographics are changing. According to the last US census in 2010 (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html), "black persons" or "Afro-Americans" totaled 13.1% of the population (compared with 12.3% in 2000 and 10% in 1990), and "persons of Hispanic or Latino origin" totaled 16.7% of the population (compared with 12.5% in 2000 and 9% in 1990). In the 2012 presidential election, Obama received 93% of the votes of blacks and 71% of the vote of Hispanics.

Bottom line: Unless the Republican Party is able to reach out to blacks and Hispanics and garner more of their votes, it is never going to win another presidential election.

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "A Second G.O.P." (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/opinion/brooks-a-second-g-o-p.html?_r=0), David Brooks discusses the need of the Republican Party to reinvent itself. Brooks writes:

"Change is hard because people don’t only think on the surface level. Deep down people have mental maps of reality — embedded sets of assumptions, narratives and terms that organize thinking. Since Barry Goldwater, the central Republican narrative has been what you might call the Encroachment Story: the core problem of American life is that voracious government has been steadily encroaching upon individuals and local communities. The core American conflict, in this view, is between Big Government and Personal Freedom."

This "narrative," however, no longer resonates with a majority of Americans. Even with the US economy shattered and all "Hope" abandoned by the Democrats, the Republicans still couldn't win, nor will they in the future without meaningful "Change."

Brooks states in his opinion piece, "In this reinvention process, Republicans seem to have spent no time talking to people who didn’t already vote for them." Indeed, it's time for the Republican Party to start talking with minorities and accounting for their needs and opinions, otherwise future generations of Americans will be talking about it in the same breath as the Whigs and the Know Nothing Party.