As the nation puzzles worriedly over what Monday’s Supreme Court judgment actually means and as George W. Bush zig-zags hopefully toward the White House, it is becoming clear just how bad the election result was for the Republicans.

On Election Day, Bush and his campaign team confidently expected to win by 3 percent to 4 percent of the popular vote. They had run a smoothly effective campaign; they sensed that their supporters were anxious to get out to vote, and polls were favorable.

Al Gore, however, won a popular majority of about 300,000 votes. Still worse, if Ralph Nader’s votes are added to the Democratic total, there was an ideological majority of left over right of about 3 percent of the popular vote. This is the best election result for the American left since 1964.

Republican attempts to explain this so far have focused on minority voting groups. Not only did minorities turn out in larger than usual numbers, but they also voted overwhelmingly for Gore. His single best result was to win 90 percent of the black vote. But he also won two-thirds of the Latino vote and 56 percent (to Bush’s 41 percent) of the Asian-American vote — which the GOP had been hoping would split their way. And if the present levels of immigration continue unchanged, minorities will grow as a percentage of the electorate and the GOP gradually will become a permanent minority party.

Bad news for Republicans — but not irreparable. If the white vote — still 82 percent of the electorate — had gone heavily for Bush this time, he could have won handily. What sank him was that he got only a modest majority of white voters — 54 percent in all.

What is noteworthy is that Bush underperformed with both whites and minorities after a consciously multicultural campaign in which he had spoken Spanish, called for more immigration, backed “bilingual education programs that work” and generally presented himself as a new kind of ethnic-friendly Republican. That might partly explain his low turnout among whites. But surely it should have boosted him with ethnic minorities. Unless, that is, the GOP’s natural supporters among both whites and minorities are skeptical about and alienated by party multiculturalism.

Most polls have not asked questions that would enable us to test this hypothesis. But there seems to be some evidence for it in a poll of 1,000 Hispanic voters in California conducted by Harris Interactive for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. When asked whether they would be more or less likely to vote for a candidate who wanted to reduce legal immigration, for instance, 45 percent said they would be less likely — but 35 percent said they would be more likely.

That is 7 percent more Hispanics than voted for Bush in California. And it is an interesting parallel to the Arizona ballot initiative to overturn bilingual education programs that was opposed by Bush as divisive but beat him by 12 percentage points.

Still more intriguingly, when likely Hispanic voters in the Harris poll were told that both Gore and Bush favored more immigration and asked if it would have any effect on their support, Gore gained 13 percent support but Bush lost 3 percent.

That looks less odd when we realize that the GOP is the majority/minority party — i.e., it combines the majority of the (white) majority with minorities of the (ethnic) minorities — and the Democrats are the minority/majority party, joining the minority of the majority with majorities of the minorities. Whether they like it or not, therefore — and Bush plainly doesn’t like it — the GOP is the Americanist party and the Democrats are the multicultural party.

So when the GOP pursues multiculturalism, it drives away its own base in ethnic minorities as well as among white Americans. It betrays those who sometimes have paid a heavy price for their fidelity to Republican principles. And it loses elections.

Still. it gives the GOP a motto: Hasta la vista, baby.



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