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There’s been much talk of late on the failing fortunes of the Republican party.

For the past few months, political analysts and demographers have been poring over the results of the 2008 election and comparing them with presidential results from the past two decades. From whatever angle of their approach — age, race, economic status, geography — they have come to a remarkably similar conclusion. Almost all indicators are pressing the Republicans into minority status.

The indicators being…

Urbanization of America

The American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution convened a stellar cast on Friday to review what has been learned since November.

Increasingly, Republican strength outside the urban areas counts for less. “There’s just not enough rural folks and small-city people left in America in the key states that determine the electoral college to offset that difference,” Lang said. “You’re out of people.”

The South now accounts for a greater share of Republican strength than at virtually any time since the party’s founding. That base is too narrow, as even Republicans know.

Demographics

Demographically, the forces at work have chipped away at what was once a GOP-leaning majority in the country. The most important is minorities’ rising share of the vote. Whites accounted for 76 percent of the overall electorate last November, down from 85 percent in 1988.

In the last election, there were more than 2 million additional African American voters, about 2 million more Hispanic voters and about a million more Asian American voters. All are groups in which Obama increased the Democratic share of the vote over 2004.

Republicans can’t reverse the demographic trends; their only solution is to increase their share of the minority vote. Opposing Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, because of her pride in being a Latina won’t help solve that problem.

Shrinking working-class numbers

As the working-class vote shrinks, the college-educated vote increases, and Democrats are gaining a greater share of these voters. Democrats lost white college graduates by 20 percentage points in 1988 but by four points last November. That is another big reason they have gained strength in the suburbs.

Young people’s growing shift to the Dems

He [Obama] could have won in November without the votes of anyone younger than 30. But his margin was the biggest in several decades and that alone should worry Republicans.

Projections show young voters will become increasingly diverse. They are also less religious and more culturally liberal, two indicators of Democratic support.

All combined, there is much reason for Republicans to panic. Unable to change any of these trends, the only solution left is to alter their message to make it more appealing to the new demographic reality of an evolving America.  But how does the party do this when the few conservative voices which cry for a new GOP vision are denounced by the Limbaughs and Gingrichs who instead press on for reaffirming deep conservative principles – principles which have been rejected by a changing electorate.

Mike Murphy, a GOP strategist, has described the Republican dilemma as “a coming Republican ice age.”

Ice ages, I believe, last about 10,000 years.

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