Californians, here we go

IF BLUE-STATE Californians want to give the national Republican Party palpitations, here's some practical advice: Go east, young man (or woman).

Just not too far east.

In fact, you might try right next door. Any one of the eight red to purple states of the nation's interior West -- Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah or Wyoming -- would do just fine.

Although California's 55 electoral votes have proved impotent to thwart the rise of a big-government-loving, big-religion-thumping GOP, the California diaspora into some of our nation's least populous states is looking like it just might do the trick.

The GOP has tilted too far toward its Southern wing, preoccupied as it is with religion, tradition and morality, and away from its Western wing, which is more concerned with freedom, independence and privacy.

The result is a party that has all but abandoned socially liberal but fiscally conservative voters, leaving it increasingly vulnerable in states where libertarian-leaning voters are a presence. If you take the 2004 presidential election results in three of the Four Corners states (Colorado, where President Bush won by 5 percentage points; Nevada, where he won by 3; and New Mexico, by 1), a total of fewer than 70,000 votes would have swung 19 electoral votes and the election to John Kerry.

And it is former Californians who may end up being the force that brings the GOP's whole Mountain West advantage tumbling down.

Three demographic trends are converging to turn our red mountains purple. First, there's the growing Latino population throughout the West. True, Bush has done OK with these voters, getting about 40% nationwide in 2004. But the GOP is in the midst of an anti-immigrant conniption, and Latino voters still identify with the Democratic Party by a margin of roughly thee to one.

Second, the states of the interior West are generally less religious than those of the South. Evangelicals make up 29% to 34% of the populations in the eight Mountain West states (Utah, with its large Mormon population, is an exception). That compares with 73% in Mississippi, 51% in Texas and 44% in Kansas.

Third -- and related to the first two trends -- the interior West is filling up with migrants from the Golden State. Picture a bucket of blue paint on the coast overflowing and spilling east.