My new VDARE.com column outlines a simple rule for electoral success: Places that white Americans move to vote Republican in the future, while places that immigrants move to vote Democratic down the road: even Dallas and Houston.
In 1980, I met on a train through Italy a couple of English soccer hooligans who were headed for a post-match riot in Turin. When they asked where I was from, I replied, “Houston”, where I had just graduated from college. They had never heard of Houston, so I suggested “Dallas” as a reasonable approximation.
“Who shot J.R.?” the yobs exclaimed in happy unison.
Although Southfork Ranch, the fictional abode of Television Texan J.R. Ewing, was set in Dallas, Houston was even more the capital of capitalist exuberance during the 1970s oil boom.
By 1980, Houston’s Harris County was the third most populous in America, and the downtown business district had sprouted the most outlandish skyline west of the Mississippi (although Dallas wasn’t far behind).
Unsurprisingly, except apparently to the banks, oil prices eventually came down and the Texas bubble popped. Yet the modern Republican Party’s state electorate was forged in the 1970s. In contrast to the housing boom of the last decade in California, in Texas back then construction wasn’t considered “a job Americans just wouldn’t [or shouldn’t] do.” Nor was it yet universally assumed by the Establishment that high wages for American workers were an evil to be fought at all cost.
Back in the 1970s, strong demand bid up workers’ wages in Texas. That lured in large numbers of American workers to Texas from the declining cities of the Rust Belt. Although American newcomers to Texas in the 1970s typically came from places where the Democrats had ruled at least since FDR, they joined with native Texans in trending Republican.
After voting for Carter in 1976, Texas went for Reagan in 1980 and hasn’t wavered since. Texas kept the GOP viable at the national level when California, which voted for nine out of ten Republican Presidential candidates from 1952-1988, flipped Democratic.
Read the rest there and comment upon it here.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
The kind of blue collar white people who were moving to Texas in the 70's would have started voting Republican even if they had stayed in the Rust Belt, I'm betting, although the Deomcratic hold on Pennsylvania seems to be strong to this day.
ReplyDelete"Republicans can bluster that they don’t need big counties and urban elites. But when driven out of urban areas by immigration, the GOP becomes less urbane. It loses role models. To be successful, a conservative party needs to appeal to people with the most to conserve."
ReplyDeleteI agree. That is also why the GOP should not use moose hunting ability as one of the criteria for selecting the next presidential candidate. In the recent elections in MA, NJ and VA the successful candidates did not invite the pit bull to campaign with them.
Your analysis is correct, but the key to controlling immigration is still JOBS. As long as the Texas economy is based on cheap Mexican labor, you can't expect they're all going to commute back home when its convenient for the gringos.
ReplyDeleteThe Republican economic program of a steep income disparity curve can only be pushed so far. And remember that the pro-union, job-security economy of the 50s promoted family values as evidenced by the record marriage rate and baby boom. A free agent economy (among Americans) encourages free agent communities.
I think urban areas as a rule are becoming more Democratic due to SWPL voters as well. They're more prone to cluster downtown even in red states. Salt Lake County, for example, voted for Obama and Reagan won it with punishing margins.
ReplyDeleteSWPLs are also in less competition with immigrants. They just want the nannies.
I hadn't read the earlier "Sailermandering" article, that is linked to in this piece, before.
ReplyDeleteIt's a good idea, but from a partisan perspective wouldn't California be a much better state to split up than Texas? Turn the Bay Area and LA County into their own states then maybe split the remainder into three states (Inland Empire, Central Valley and San Diego-Orange County).
This would create three competitive states and two rock solid Democratic ones instead of one strongly Democratic state.
Plus both California and Texas are much too big to be governed without some kind of subdivision larger than a county.
Moving people around is a zero-sum game.
ReplyDeleteGoogle 'Yitta Schwartz' if you want to understand growth.
The Republican economic program of a steep income disparity curve can only be pushed so far.
ReplyDeleteThat's the Democratic economic principle. Manhattan has the same degree of income disparity as Nambia, and other cities (bastions of left-wing politics) are in the same boat.
State breakup movements are not new. Had Pearl Harbor not intervened, the top of California and a snip of Oregon were in the process of forming a new state, to have been called Jefferson.
ReplyDeleteMany people advocate state disconsolidation, as many states have conflicting regions and interests. Those people are all liberals, who think the expansion of the Senate means increased democritazition and reduced influence from rural hicks who oppose gun control, legal abortion, socialized medicine and so forth.
Are we sure that's what we want?
When DC Statehood was an issue, I used to say to advocates, "Sure-as long as we relocate the seat of government to Kansas City."
The advantages of that would be immense. Equidistant to New York and LA and inconvenient to both, unpleasantly cold in winter, unpleasantly hot in summer....all the attributes a seat of government ought to have.
Patriot immigration reform is not going to happen anytime soon. There just isn't a strong push for it, even among the Tea Party types.
ReplyDeleteThe only good thing is that because of "The Great Recession," illegal immigration has slowed greatly.
Hell, to some extent it has reversed with Mexican nationals (aka illegals) returning to Mexico to ride out the recession.
Hopefully, patriotic immigration reform can be passed before the economy bounces back and illegal immigration ramps back up.
Don't Brits pronounce Houston "Hooston"? That's the problem, maybe...
ReplyDeleteWhile Steve strategizes in his internet world, the real world GOP power players advocate a completely different idea: total surrender to a Trojan Horse of "latino conservatives", who are actually just the moderate wing of La Raza.
ReplyDeleteGOP's Demographic Wager: Wooing Latino Candidates
"Some high-profile Republicans are adopting a softer vocabulary on immigration and trying to recruit more Hispanic candidates, a response to the party's soul-searching about tactics that many strategists believe have alienated the country's fastest-growing voter bloc."
"In Texas, George P. Bush, the half Mexican-American son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, has founded Hispanic Republicans of Texas, a political action committee to promote Hispanics running for state and local offices."
"In California, GOP gubernatorial front-runner Meg Whitman, the former eBay Inc. chief executive officer, tells Hispanics she would have voted against a Republican-backed 1994 measure barring illegal immigrants from receiving social services."
"And Rep. Tom Price (R., Ga.), chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee and an opponent of past efforts to create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, has been meeting with Hispanic leaders to find a new tone on that and other points of contention between Hispanic groups and conservatives."
"Former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, who is coordinating some of the party's internal discussions, called the tandem effect of rising Hispanic population and dwindling Republican support an "untenable delta.""
"The Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, a group set up by Princeton University Professor Robert George, a leading intellectual voice among Christian conservatives, plans to spend at least $500,000 spread over a handful of races to help pro-immigration Republican candidates, according to Alfonso Aguilar, a former Bush administration immigration official who runs the group. A key position for the group, said Mr. Aguilar, is legalizing illegal workers."
"Another GOP-affiliated group, the Hispanic Leadership Fund, plans to target about three races this year, supporting conservative Hispanic candidates and promoting other Republicans who back more liberal immigration laws."
"The new GOP language on immigration was evident in a recent appearance by Sarah Palin on Fox News. The former Alaska governor said that conservatives needed to be "welcoming and inviting to immigrants" and recognize that "immigrants built this great country.""
>Hopefully, patriotic immigration reform can be passed before the economy bounces back
ReplyDeletethe 'economy' is not going to bounce back dude......california has morphed into argentina and there is no fixing it.......texas is being dramatically californicated as is illinois new york florida and arizona.......except for texas these are all failed states if considered on their own state government finances and they would all implode if they were apart from the american infrastructure........and the underlying demographic transformation prevents a long term recovery.......the long term prognosis is exactly the opposite of recovery........
what has transpired is a massive latinization and mestizoization of the united states.......people just don't get the horrifying ramifications........it means we can never go back to a 'strong economy' and stable coherent effective government because latinized nations are incapable of such things..........
now we enter the 'italian phase' of our decline where the bronze skin dark haired regions of the nation (the southwest plus most major cities) relentlessly drain the light skin light haired regions of earned wealth..........that is the harsh reality of places like italy.........
also prepare for a new massive flood of civil war refugee mexican nationals to pour over the border now matter how bad our economy gets..........outright civil war is coming to mexico and it will be mostly ignored by our so called media.........besides the drug war spiral there is this ominous endgame south of the border: mexico is running out oil and the oil receipts are the only way to pay their military...........
The problem, Mr. Sailer, is that you apparently fail to recognize the logical result of your own beliefs. The demographic shift is certainly going to doom conservatives, electorally speaking, though conservative strength may sustain itself longer than you think, as more and more whites shift to the GOP.
ReplyDeleteThe real problem for the Republicans who'd prefer to ignore illegal/mass immigration will occur long before that - within the next 3-7 years, in fact - as the economy continues to stumble along with no real growth and no reduction in unemployment, with a continued decline in quality of life, and with unavoidable budget deficits as far as the eye can see.
In order for the economy to start growing again and for the United States to balance its budget, the GOP is going to have to grow a spine on issues related to race, by clamping down on immigration and by eliminating failed programs - Head Start, food stamps, etc - that pass large sums of money to non-productive, and disproportionately minority populations.
Until and unless the GOP arrives at that conclusion, the economy and budget won't recover, and once the baton gets handed off to them, in 2010 (Congress) and 2012 (the White House) it'll become their problem to be blamed for.
For the GOP, the demographic shift isn't even on the radar yet.
Steve, is there some point at which you think the penny is going to drop with the GOP establishment and they're going to introduce the Sailer Strategy?
ReplyDeleteDream on. The only way it could possibly succeed is a) a third party, which has very large impediments to success, or b) one or more states taking up states' rights in the truest sense and becoming almost entirely independent of the federal government, as the constitution foresaw.
Such a state could implement the logical goal of the Sailer Strategy (rather than the political strategy itself), which is government of, by and for the demographic that existed in the country prior to mass immigration.
But expecting the GOP to run on it, let alone implement it, is utter fantasy. Remember when the GOP had the White House, the Congress and conservative hegemony on the SCOTUS? What did they do about immigration then?
<a href=" http://www.transitmiami.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/houston.jpg”>Outlandish</a> is one way to describe Houston’s 1980s skyline.
ReplyDeleteThere’s not much to look at in Texas, so there’s no real reason for wealth to be concentrated in one place. No hard feelings are lost when someone relocates from one mcmansion to another.
If anything, the necessity of moving continually forces middle-class Texans to support pro-growth policies that encourage affordable housing. As opposed to self-interested wealthy California whites who advocate for environmentalism and grandfathered-in property tax exemptions as a way of inflating their own property values.
While there is at least a recognizable movement nationally to reduce illegal immigration why is there no concomitant effort to repeal the part of Amendment 14 to the Constitution that allows anybody who is born in the US to automatically become a citizen regardless of the citizenship status of the parents?
ReplyDelete"Captain Jack Aubrey said...
ReplyDeleteIn order for the economy to start growing again and for the United States to balance its budget, the GOP is going to have to grow a spine on issues related to race, by clamping down on immigration and by eliminating failed programs - Head Start, food stamps, etc - that pass large sums of money to non-productive, and disproportionately minority populations."
That would be good, but they need to do more than than. They need to abandon their free-trade dogma that says that Walmart is a boon to the nation, rather than a curse, and that it doesn't matter if everything we buy is made in China. In a word, they need to exercise a little protectionism - in order to win the votes of blue-collar whites who have relentlessly been chased down the economic ladder, and - more importantly - to actually serve those peeople's interests.
The GOP is more concerned about preventing another Buchananite-style revolt (see CPAC), selling its base out in its vain pursuit of Hispanic votes, and maintaining the death grip of septuagenarians like McCain on their little fiefdoms. They've knowingly chosen electoral suicide now too many times to count, and there is no reason to believe that they would change course now.
ReplyDeleteSteve, suburban Houston is home to a vast number of immigrants from China, India and a number of Muslim countries.
ReplyDeleteParts of Fort Bend County, for example, have few Latinos. But many of the schools are majority Asian/Indian, with white students comprising only 30-40 percent.
Steve, one way in which Republicans can compete is through overthrow of ObamaCare, which looks like it will be rammed through (or Rahmed through) by reconciliation.
ReplyDeleteArgue specifically that the purpose of ObamaCare is to take money and health care away from the White Middle Class and give it to illegal aliens (everyone knows the Supremes will rule that as with education, the Feds MUST extend ObamaCare to illegals).
Offer a "cheaper/free Health Care" by explicitly arguing that deporting every single last Illegal Alien will allow 15-20 million poor people to be removed, and eliminate welfare by moving poor Blacks into Illegal Alien jobs.
This has been the strategy that the BNP has used to good effect on White female middle class voters worried about declining NHS spending most of the money on Muslim immigrants.
Note, the trojan horse of socialism is that the money goes further the less it is cut ... meaning kicking Illegal aliens out and pushing Welfare receivers into working ... so the White middle class has free breast cancer exams bi-yearly, and other things like that.
All politics is spoils politics, and the cut going further the less it is split is understood by EVERYONE. Even SWPL.
Look, the real issue is this:How will millions of White Americans react to the loss of several major states to non-white foreigners and their offspring. Or to be more specific how will millons of White Americans react to a colonization-just a nice way of saying invasion-of US territory?
ReplyDeleteAnybody got any thoughts on this?
Second question:what are the likely environmental consequence of this loss of territory to a bunch of nonwhite foreigners.
A leftist and writer named Ketcham is calling for the dissolution of the US along bioregional lines. Leftist Kirkpatrick Sale=late wife Thomas Pynchon's editor- has been calling for this for at least two decades. You might want to have a look at Ketchams esay in the Atlantic monthly about the minute men.
Why would it be so terrible if the Republican party was put out to pasture? Think about.
Look, the real issue is this:How will millions of White Americans react to the loss of several major states to non-white foreigners and their offspring.
ReplyDeleteThey can't react to it if the media doesn't talk about it, and they won't have much time to react to it as states will fall within years of each other, their demographic destiny baked in the cake. If we measured state demographics only by the percentage of their youth population perhaps people would be far more alarmed, or perhaps they'd turn back to American Idol and masturabate to Ellen Degeneres.
If we lose Southern California to Mexico we can easily regain it without firing a shot - most of their water comes from the Rocky Mountains. The Rocky Mountain states are already pretty pissed that California gets so much of their runoff. They'd be happy to keep it all.
ReplyDeleteWhiskey
ReplyDeleteThis has been the strategy that the BNP has used to good effect on White female middle class voters worried about declining NHS spending most of the money on Muslim immigrants.
I've noticed this. Don't hear
women complain particularly about immigrant crime, social oppression, or job taking but they get visceral when they use the NHS. They even bring up the subject themselves... and my first thought is always, yeah, that's important, but is that really the thing that gets you most worked up about illegal immigration?
Poll: More than half of Hispanics identify as conservative
ReplyDelete...
Differing definitions
The poll found that only 18 percent of Texas Hispanics say they're liberal or progressive, while 54 percent say they're conservative, moderate conservative or religiously conservative.
But Camarillo said many Hispanics who identify themselves as conservative aren't talking about "less taxes, less government," the way white conservatives would.
"When a Latino says that he or she is conservative, they're thinking about how they are raising the kids and ... the family," she said. "It's more about work ethic, and that when you give your word, you give your word. Those kinds of things are what they're thinking of. It's a different frame of mind, and pollsters have yet to define it." ...
When a Latino says that he or she is conservative
ReplyDeleteGenerally speaking, people's estimations of their own place on the ideological spectrum aren't worth crap. People tend to rate themselves conservative or liberal or moderate relative to the people around them. It's better simply to ask people how they vote.
When a Latino says that he or she is conservative
ReplyDeleteGenerally speaking, people's estimations of their own place on the ideological spectrum aren't worth crap. People tend to rate themselves conservative or liberal or moderate relative to the people around them. It's better simply to ask people how they vote.