By any honest assessment of where we are as a party, without a major course correction, we are simply on the way out. The demographic picture of America is rapidly changing, and we have to change with it. George W. Bush got 56 percent of the white vote, and won. Mitt Romney got 59 percent of the white vote, and lost. Every four years in this country, the electorate gets about two percentage points less white; as an increasingly old and increasingly white party, we are skidding with each passing election toward irrelevance in terms of appealing to a broad electorate. We hold out our hand, expecting our share of nonwhite votes, and yet we give these Americans too few reasons to come our way. Instead, we demonize them, marginalize them, and blame them for our country's problems. We all knew of this before the last election, but we quickly set it aside for the sugar high of populism, nativism, and demagoguery. The crash from this sugar high will be particularly unpleasant. (Jeff Flake)

By any honest assessment of where we are as a party, without a major course correction, we are simply on the way out. The demographic picture of America is rapidly changing, and we have to change with it. George W. Bush got 56 percent of the white vote, and won. Mitt Romney got 59 percent of the white vote, and lost. Every four years in this country, the electorate gets about two percentage points less white; as an increasingly old and increasingly white party, we are skidding with each passing election toward irrelevance in terms of appealing to a broad electorate. We hold out our hand, expecting our share of nonwhite votes, and yet we give these Americans too few reasons to come our way. Instead, we demonize them, marginalize them, and blame them for our country's problems. We all knew of this before the last election, but we quickly set it aside for the sugar high of populism, nativism, and demagoguery. The crash from this sugar high will be particularly unpleasant.

Jeff Flake

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