… The electoral calculus for Republicans elected from safe, highly-gerrymandered House districts, and solidly red and often predominantly white states, is fundamentally different from the calculus of the party’s eventual 2016 presidential nominee, who will need to recapture states like Colorado, Florida, New Mexico and Nevada to win the White House. It’s perfectly rational for Iowa Rep. Steve King and other House Republicans to issue incendiary statements about immigration, because their electoral fortunes rise when they do; after all, 95 percent of GOP-held U.S. House districts are majority-white, and a whopping two-thirds of them are more than 70 percent white.
But when Ben Carson, Rick Santorum or Scott Walker rush to Des Moines, as they did last month to curry favor with King and his followers, their presidential fortunes suffer, whether they realize it or not. CONT.
Thomas Schaller, Latino Decisions