President Obama won the 2012 presidential election by accumulating some of the most one-sided electoral constituencies in modern political history . Looking at a breakdown of the 2012 election exit polling , Obama won the 18- to 29-year-old vote 60 % to 37 % , in spite of the fact that half of all recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed . He won women by 11 points and unmarried women by an incredible 36 points . The marriage gap was far greater than the gender gap . Obama won African-Americans with 93 % of the vote , virtually unchanged from the 95 % he won in 2008 . Latinos , one of the fastest growing demographics , went 71 % to 27 % in favor of Obama . And he won with Asians by a similarly enormous margin . Among those who make less than $ 50,000 a year , Obama won 60 % to 38 % . Jindal : 'Stop being the stupid party ' Mitt Romney , on the other hand , won white voters 59 % to 39 % and those making over $ 50,000 a year by 53 % to 45 % . This was the drumbeat of the Obama campaign . To women they said : Republicans are waging a `` war on women , '' trying to outlaw abortion and contraception and would take them back to their rights in the 1950s . To minorities they said : Republicans are anti-government services , cold-blooded individualists , and can not represent minority communities . To middle and low income Americans they said : Republicans are the party of the rich , who will slash taxes for only the richest Americans and cut social safety nets for the poor . Rather than offer a broad sweeping vision for the country , Democrats played identity politics . Republicans were the culprits , and women , young adults , black , Latinos , etc ... were the victims . And voters believed it . Why ? For the same reason this litany -- gender , race , ethnicity , class -- sound so familiar . Opinion : Democrats , do n't get too cocky . Voters believed it , not because it was something new or groundbreaking , but because this has been the template of many of our character-building institutions -- our public schools , our colleges , and public universities -- for the past 50 years . Go to any major university in America and this is the mindset that is taught , preached , and ingested . It also gets an assist from television drama , from the movies , and from much of the mainstream media . For decades liberals have succeeded in defining the national discourse , the terms of discussion , and , therefore , the election , in these terms . They have successfully set the parameters and focus of the national and political dialogue as predominantly about gender , race , ethnicity , and class . This is the paradigm , the template through which many Americans , probably a majority , more or less view the world , our country , and the election . It is a divisive strategy and Democrats have targeted and exploited those divides . Poll : Fiscal cliff headache for middle class . How else can we explain that more young people now favor socialism to capitalism ? According to a Pew Research poll taken last year , 49 % of Americans age 18-29 have a positive view of socialism while just 46 % have a positive view of capitalism . Such a view has roots . So while we Republicans opine about election strategies and changing demographics , and appropriately so as that is our immediate order of business , in the long run we must address the problem at its source : the culture . Politics are downstream from the culture . Plato summarized the two most important questions in a society : Who teaches the young and what do we teach them ? For the past 50 years liberals have had majority control of the character-forming institutions . If the national dialogue stays on their terms -- gender , race , ethnicity , class -- Republicans will continue to lose . Opinion : Failure to attract millennials is sinking the GOP . We must counter the discourse and speak and educate in terms of family , faith , freedom , principle , values , work , country , community , improvement , growth , and equality of opportunity . No longer can the Republican Party be solely the party of business . Who controls the terms of discussion , dialogue , and education controls the country and , therefore , the election . It 's time for Republicans to take it back . This will require much work and time , but there is no more important business .
William Bennett : Democrats played identity politics in the presidential race . Comment: Voters believed it because they have been preached at for the past 50 years . He says liberals succeeded in focusing national discourse on gender , race , etc . Bennett : It 's time for Republicans to begin framing political and cultural discussions .