It wasn't that long ago that farsighted Republicans were talking about expanding their party under a big tent. Now, too often, the party has become more of a circus.

If the country's new minority party doesn't find what's broken and fix it, it might never again find itself in the majority. It needs younger leaders with fresh blood and new ideas, including perhaps a return to the fundamentals of conservatism or perhaps maybe something altogether different. But it also needs to be much more inclusive of demographic groups and voting groups who don't currently feel welcomed by the GOP — such as African-Americans, young people and Latinos.

Since Republican lawmakers won't be governing or passing much legislation, they will have some free time to think long and hard about their successful effort to alienate Latinos, America's largest minority. The Census Bureau reports that, by 2042, non-Hispanic whites will be in the minority in the United States, and a quarter of the U.S. population will be Latino.

The GOP picked the wrong century in which to alienate Latino voters. Yet, that's what happened. More than two-thirds of the estimated 10 million Latinos who voted in this election cast their ballots for Barack Obama. They helped defeat John McCain in four critical battleground states: Nevada, Colorado, Florida and New Mexico. They may have helped Obama carry Virginia, in fact. And now there are concerns that, if the GOP doesn't make peace with Hispanics, it might never again win another presidential election.

That would be bad news for Republicans. No one welcomes the prospect of spending years wandering in the political wilderness. A party that can't rack up even a few victories soon begins to question its principles and eventually winds up hopelessly afloat. At that point, it might as well be extinct.

But this situation would also harm Democrats by so hobbling the opposition that it effectively kills the idea of competition. Without that element, you can imagine just how complacent and mediocre the Democratic Party would become. Just look what happened in the California Legislature, when the state turned dependably blue and the quality of Democratic leaders arguably turned down.

Republicans simply can't afford to lose Latino voters for the long term. They have a message that appeals to that constituency — economic empowerment, individual initiative, personal responsibility, institutional accountability, military service. They have to spread that message near and far. And when they do, they will find converts, including some in the Latino community.

But first Republicans have to get rid of all the nativist malarkey about what "real" Americans look like and sound like. It's fine that many in the GOP feel passionately about combating illegal immigration, but they can't let that passion get away from them to the point where the debate becomes anti-Latino. Some Republicans must have believed at one point that there were votes in that strategy, but they were wrong. They're playing with fire, and now they've got the third-degree burns to prove it.

REPRINTED FROM THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE.

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