*

These days, it's conventional wisdom that the Republican Party needs to figure out a way to attract more minority voters if it is going to remain a viable major political party. The numbers speak for themselves. In the 2012 election, President Obama won 93 percent of the African-American vote, 71 percent of the Hispanic vote and a whopping 73 percent of the Asian vote.
In the more than three months since the November election, Republican after Republican has put forward ways to solve the GOP's "minority problem." Conservative pundits Sean Hannity and Charles Krauthammer proposed embracing immigration reform, where others have spoken of the need for Republicans to sponsor more black and Hispanic candidates. 
However, while immigration reform may serve as good public policy, I don't think Hispanic votes can be bought so easily. Likewise, as much as I would like to see a more diverse group of Republican office-seekers, tokenism won't cut it.
*
Several days ago, Avik Roy, a conservative health- care expert-of Indian descent- published an article on National Review Online, where he argues, I think correctly, that Republicans will win a bigger share of the minority vote when they stop trying to buy minorities off and begin to treat with them with respect as voters.
*
Roy writes, "The more Republicans make a genuine effort to respect minorities' languages, cultures, faiths, and values, the more likely it is that the GOP can find a broader audience for its core principles, and in turn build a truly durable conservative majority."
*
Roy's analysis of the issue is spot-on. If the past is any guide to the present, the serious outreach to those who stand outside "mainstream" American culture may prove particularly difficult for the Grand Old Party.
*
Our Republican and Democratic parties are some of the oldest political parties in the world. Since the Civil War era, they have dominated our political system. Of course, the particular policy positions each party has held has changed a great deal over the years. What has remained remarkably consistent, however, are the overall characters of both political parties. 
Since the days of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, the Democratic Party has been the party of the outsiders. As political analyst Michael Barone once put it, "The core constituency of the Democratic Party has been people who are seen by themselves and by others as something other than ordinary Americans or, to put it in less offensive terms, out groups." From slaveholders to Southern farmers, from Irish Catholics to European Jews, from Hispanic immigrant to the LGBTQ community, Democrats have always represented the "other."
*
In contrast, the Republican Party has traditionally represented "normal," "mainstream" Americans. In the 19th century, this group consisted mainly of Northern Protestants. Today, the average GOP voter is a married, middle-class, white, Christian male. 
The upshot of all this is that Republicans have always had a problem reaching out to minorities. This was true one hundred years ago as much as it is today. The Republicans were able to remain a viable political party, because, eventually immigrants assimilated and out-groups became in-groups. The rise of the Southern middle class facilitated the South's movement to the GOP as much as backlash against the Democrats' embrace of civil rights. The rise in Catholic votes for Republicans is undoubtedly linked to the mainstreaming of Catholics in American life along with the rise of the abortion issue.
*
So why can't Republicans just wait for that same transition to happen with today's out-groups and minorities? For example, why can't Republicans just wait for more Hispanic Americans to enter the middle class and start voting Republican?
*
This is because assimilation isn't what it used to be. Comparatively, it is much easier these days to become a successful member of mainstream American society while still retaining strong ties to one's fringe identity. 
*
Just look at our country's Asian population. What other immigrant group has had such great success in obtaining the American dream and becoming part of American society? Yet, many Asian-Americans remain non-Christians, part of a variety of religious minorities. Likewise, most of us know immigrant families who, rather than avoiding their mother-tongues as past generations of immigrants did, made an active effort to teach their native languages to their children.
*
Even as America's out-groups become in-groups, they retain a sort of outsider identity. For the GOP to appeal to these votes, it is going to have to shed its 160 year identity as the party of "normal" Americans. As Roy argues, it is going to have to embrace the "other" in a way it hasn't in the past.
*
This transition will be a challenge, but not an impossible one. As I mentioned before, our parties have changed over the years. If you had told Abraham Lincoln that in 150 years the South would be voting almost uniformly Republican, the Great Emancipator would have been shocked. That our first black president is a member of the party that once stood for slavery and Jim Crow is an epic historical irony.
*
The world is shrinking quickly, and identities are more fluid and complex than they used to be. If Republicans want to avoid shrinking as a party, they will need to meet the challenge of embracing this reality.