‘Deathtrap': Suicidal refuge for the GOP

Later this week, "Deathtrap" opens at the Flat Rock Playhouse, the State Theatre of North Carolina. The Shadow and I will be there, and so should all Republicans.

Written by Ira Levin, "Deathtrap" opened at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway in 1978. It still holds the record for the longest running comedy-thriller on Broadway and was nominated for a Tony Award for best play. The preface to the script describes "Deathtrap" as "something so evil that it infects all who touch it."

Thus, it contains a lesson that the GOP needs desperately to learn. Whether it can learn that lesson is as unclear as the twisting and tantalizing plot of "Deathtrap."

The fundamental question is whether the GOP can avert suicide. Astonishingly, the answer appears to be no, and the Grand Old Party is rapidly running out of time and maneuvering room. Just a month or so ago, Bob Dole said the GOP ought to hang a "Closed For Repairs" sign on the party's headquarters. Dole spoke the truth. Let's take a look.

In the 1940s and '50s, as America's "Arsenal of Democracy" flexed its industrial might, blacks streamed out of the states of the Old Confederacy to find jobs in the cities of the North and East. The Democrats welcomed them, while the Republicans ignored them. The result was inevitable. The descendants of slaves, freed by the nation's first Republican president, became a monolithic voting bloc for the Democratic Party. Now that voting behavior is in their DNA.

It comes at a terribly high price for the GOP. In the 2012 presidential election, the GOP lost the crucial battleground state of Ohio because of massive African-American turnout in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), something the Republicans never saw coming. No Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio, and 2012 was no exception.

But the African-American vote pales in significance contrasted to what's at play now — the Hispanic vote. Can the GOP double down in self-destructive stupidity? Sure looks like it!

Let's start with the big picture. In the 1980 presidential election, whites made up 88 percent of those who voted. That percentage has been dropping steadily ever since. In 2012, it was down to 72 percent, and in 2016 it's projected to be 70 percent. The face of America is changing, literally and rapidly.

Hispanics accounted for more than half (56 percent) of the nation's growth in the past decade. In fact, racial and ethnic minorities accounted for 92 percent of all of the nation's population growth in the most recent census. In 2012, for the first time, more whites died than were born. In 2012, the median age for whites was 42. But for African-Americans it was 32, and it was 28 for Hispanics.

In 1900, the nation's population was 80 million. Today it's approaching 320 million. Do you know how much of that 240 million person growth was the result of immigration? The answer is fully half — 120 million. We are and will remain a nation of immigrants. Attempting to deny the relevance and political power of those forces takes stupidity, ignorance and racial prejudice to suicidal proportions.

In 2012, President Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney among Hispanics by a margin of 71 percent to 27 percent. Given the explosive growth of the Hispanic population, margins like that foretell the death of the Republican Party.

Steve Schmidt, John McCain's capable campaign manager in 2008, recently told The New York Times concerning the battle in Congress over immigration reform, "(House Republicans) are totally insulated from public opinion on this because of redistricting." The respected Cook Political Report currently rates only nine of the House's 435 districts as pure tossups. Only 40 of the House's 232 Republicans represent districts that are more than 20 percent Hispanic.

Thus the reality is that the vast majority of House Republicans have no vested interest in reaching out to Hispanic voters. That's a message not lost on Hispanics, and it's a message the Democrats and their allies in the media exploit every day.

To make matters worse, a recent Pew Research poll shows that by a 54 percent to 40 percent margin, Republicans want their party leaders to be more conservative. At the same time, another Pew poll shows a majority of Americans think the GOP is too extreme. And a third such poll of Republicans showed that their first-place vote for leader of the Republican Party was "nobody."

A chilling example of how the GOP is consuming itself can be found right here in North Carolina. Freshman House Republican Robert Pittenger, an evangelical conservative who has repeatedly denounced Obamacare, is under assault from tea party constituents in his Charlotte suburban district. Why? Because he won't agree to shut down the government over the futile effort to repeal Obamacare.

Doctrinal zealotry like this can be summed up in a single word — madness.

Over in the Senate, the newest darling of the tea party, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has called his more moderate GOP critics the "surrender caucus." In another generation Ted Cruz will be gone. Texas will be blue. Try amassing a majority of presidential electoral votes for a Republican without Texas! You can't.

When a political party willingly thrusts its head into an orifice devoid of oxygen and light, coherent thought ceases and vision fades to black. Think of it as a self-inflicted deathtrap, one the GOP will have marched into the old-fashioned way — by earning it.

The Shadow's back stage at the Flat Rock Playhouse, but Goldman can be reached at:  EmailMe