Demographics; Not Barone's strong suit.

Here on the ole' Opinion Journal page find Michael Barone's argument that the coasts are losing native born Americans to the fast growing cities of the south and west (DFW, Atlanta, Phoenix) and how this will create a GOP realignment.

Barone starts with facts that cannot be argued: these cities, along with Las Vegas, Houston and other hot sweaty places, are growing fast. And the "hip cities" as he calls them (NY, Chicago, LA, SF, etc) depend on immigrants for their growth as they lose "native born Americans" (meaning white upwardly mobile Americans).

OK, fine. But from there it gets a little dicey...

Barone seems to argue that because these fast growing metros have been hotbeds of GOP politics, then they must remain that way as they grow.

But that relies on a number of assumptions about the future, and many of them are dubious at best.

1) The folks who are leaving the "coastal cities' will move to Dallas or Phoenix and become Republicans. Well...not necessarily. In fact, it would appear that slowly but surely, Arizona, Nevada and Virginia are losing their bright red and heading toward purple status, perhaps on their way to blue status.

2) These fast growth cities will continue to grow and grow on into the future. Well, not quite. Remember: Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit and PIttsburgh were the Atlantas of 100 years ago. They were undone by the weather (cold) and the changing nature of the economy (manufacturing no more). The fast-growing metros of today face traffic, pollution and, in some cases, water problems. And these problems aren't likely to get better anytime soon. And as these metros deal with these problems, their costs will rise. In 2050, it could be that Cleveland and Pittsburgh will look pretty good with their well developed infrastructure (highways built for growth that never came) and low costs. And, assuming that climate change is real (I know...I know, the Opinion Journal is one of the three or four places where one can still find people who swear it's not gonna happen), but anyway, Phoenix, Houston and Dallas might not be so attractive in a few decades. Remember: 40 years ago, Los Angeles was an economic boomtown with a very good highway infrastructure (yeah they had traffic jams, but nothin' compared to Atlanta today), and the weather that you couldn't beat. It was also affordable back then. It was the city of the future. Now, Atlanta is the city every other city wants to be when it grows up, except that the air there is toxic; the traffic is unbearable; the governments down there are pretty lost when it comes ot solving those problems.

3). Demographics are a great way to see where we've come to, less so to tell us where we're going. Back in 1965, people probably figured that tiny Phoenix would grow to be a large major metro, but the collapse of the Rust Belt wasn't apparent at that time. The metro area of Cleveland was still growing back then. Detroit still looked like a very strong metro. The old cities didn't look so good, but the suburbs were growing by leaps and bounds.

So Mr Barone may wish that demographics will help the GOP create a nationwide majority, but it ain't necessarily so. And let's face it: right now, the Iraq War is their albatross, and all the moving vans in the world aint gonna remove it from their tightly squeezed necks.