Lindsey Graham Says The GOP Will Lose Without Minority Voters

Putative GOP 2016 hopeful/South Carolina closet queen Lindsey Graham told USAToday's "Capital Download" that his party will lose the 2016 presidential election because of their agenda towards minorities. “We’ll lose... I mean, we’ve got a big hole we’ve dug with Hispanics. We’ve gone from 44 percent of the Hispanic vote [in the 2004 presidential election] to 27 percent [in 2012]. You’ll never convince me ... it’s not because of the immigration debate... If I were the president of the United States, I would veto any bill that did not have a pathway to citizenship. You would have a long, hard path to citizenship... but I want to create that path because I don’t like the idea of millions of people living in America for the rest of their lives being the hired help. That’s not who we are."

Not much about African-American voters, though. The Republican Party seems to have given up on the millions of black voters in every state of the union. In fact, South Carolina, 5.2% of whose inhabitants are Hispanic, have 5 times as many blacks-- 27.9%.

Graham's own South Carolina Republican Party has figured out how to marginalize black voters quite effectively. SC-06 was carefully drawn not so much to give Jim Clyburn easy rides to reelection-- he won with 72.8% in 2014-- as to herd as many black voters as feasible into one district, keeping them from having any impact on neighboring districts, particularly SC-01 and SC-07, where a more equitable drawing of the lines would turn both neighboring CDs into swing districts, jeopardizing reelection for Mark Sanford and Tom Rice.

In 2012 Obama took 865,941 (44%) against Romney, who won 1,071,645 (55%). In the very gerrymandered 6th District-- the one with 56.9% African-Americans-- it was a very different outcome. Obama won 206,857 votes (73%) against Romney's 73,588 votes (26%). Here are the 2012 results for all 7 districts:

• SC-01- 174,391 (58%), Obama 119,833 (40%)
• SC-02- Romney 171,829 (62%), Obama 101,354 (37%)
• SC-03- Romney 170,084 (65%), Obama 89,439 (34%)
• SC-04- Romney 170,623 (62%), Obama 99,359 (36%)
• SC-05- Romney 158,537 (55%), Obama 124,561 (43%)
• SC-06- Obama 206,857 (73%), Romney 73,588 (26%)
• SC-07- Romney 152,577 (55%), Obama 124,601 (45%)

Even if you write off the die-hard Confederate districts-- Joe Wilson's SC-02, Jeff Duncan's SC-03, Trey Gowdy's SC-04, and Mick Mulvaney's SC-05-- fair districting would give Democrats an even chance to beat Sanford (SC-01) and Rice (SC-07). In 2012 Democrat Gloria Bromell Tunubu took 122,389 votes (44%) against Republican Tom Rice's 153,068 (56%)-- a margin of just over 30,000 votes, a number Clyburn could easily spare without missing a beat.

Does Graham think for a minute that African-American voters are unaware their districts are being drawn by his party to minimize their impact? If so, he would be severely mistaken. Fair redistricting would replace the GOP's 6-to-1 seat advantage with a GOP advantage of 4-3, much more in line with the demographics of the state.