Lindsey Graham buries the Republican “rebrand”: The GOP officially gives up on expanding its demographic appeal

Lindsey Graham buries the Republican “rebrand”: The GOP officially gives up on expanding its demographic appeal

"Lindsey Graham’s endorsement of Ted Cruz for the presidency represents a new low point for Republicans who dreamed of rebranding the party following the 2012 elections. As you probably recall, the drubbing Mitt Romney received in 2012 was powered in no small part by Latino voters, who rejected Romney’s “self-deportation” stance and sent him packing with a paltry 27 percent of the Latino vote. In the aftermath of Mitt’s defeat, the Republican establishment came to the sudden, sobering realization that an increasingly diverse electorate posed massive demographic problems for the party at the national level, and it whipped together a plan to expand the GOP’s appeal beyond older, white voters. At the center of that plan was the recommendation that the party pursue comprehensive immigration reform as a policy."