If Gov. Romney wins the 2012 presidential election, and I believe he will, he faces a challenge that goes beyond reviving the stalled U.S. economy and restoring America’s power, access and influence around the world. He must broaden the base of the Republican Party by winning over voters from Democratic constituencies that helped bring progressivism to the brink of fundamentally transforming (ruining) America.

Throughout the ongoing election campaign we’ve heard the facts: Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no federal income tax. Forty-nine million Americans use food stamps. More than one in three Americans lives in households that receive means-based government assistance. Seventy percent of black children are born to unwed mothers.

Ninety-five present of African Americans, nearly seventy-five percent of Hispanics—the fastest growing minority in the U.S.—and a disproportionate number of single women vote Democratic.

Democratic politicians pass laws that force state and local governments to collect union dues from public-sector employees. The unions contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to Democratic politicians that vote the unions more rights and privileges. Public-sector union employees keep helping electing Democratic politicians in a perpetual do loop.

Liberals overwhelmingly dominate academia and the mainstream; and they indoctrinate young Americans to adhere to political correctness and liberal ideology.

The federal and state judiciaries are riddled with liberal-progressive judges that legislate from the bench.

Unless these trends are altered, the Republican Party faces a dire future. Demographics have become its mortal enemy. So how do a Romney administration and Republicans go about altering them?

First and foremost, the Republican Party must stop doing what Democrats and Republicans have done since the New Deal. They must stop raiding the public treasury for the benefit of special interests, reform the tax code, and reduce the size of the federal government.

In doing this they can do what Americans will have elected a Republican president and Republican legislators to do—restore the U.S. economy to historic growth rates and prosperity. Only a prosperous and growing middle class can look beyond economic necessity and government assistance to make intelligent choices about the kind of government it needs and wants.

An expanding economy with low unemployment and policies that enforce welfare-to-work reforms will bring down the number of people on welfare, food stamps, and other government programs. Under these conditions, a President Romney can successfully transfer appropriate programs like Medicaid to the states where they can be more efficiently managed and executed, and he can set about accomplishing other tasks.

A growing middle class will help Republicans begin to break the Democratic Party’s iron grip on African Americans and make greater inroads into the Hispanic vote. Democrats have been successful at vilifying Republicans as inherently racist and out of touch with minorities concerns and forcing blacks to tow the Democratic Party line; but cracks in that solidarity already have begun to appear over abortion, gay marriage, and other issues.

As the older generation of African American leaders that grew out of the Civil Rights Movement fades into history, new generations of black pastors, politicians and community leaders are replacing them. They well understand how Democrats, in recent years, have exploited blacks while doing little to improve their lives beyond making them dependent on government; but voting for the new generation of populist Republicans remains a heresy in the black community.

Of course blacks voted overwhelmingly for the first African American president; but with Barack Obama out of office, defeated by his own overreach, missteps, and far-left ideology, many upwardly mobile blacks will be responsive to new ideas and new allegiances that address their needs and aspirations.

Comprehensive immigration reform, that need not embrace amnesty, will go a long way toward removing an obstacle to greater acceptance of the Republican Party in the Hispanic community—a diverse group that already consists of many conservative Republicans.

Democrats, with the exception of President Bill Clinton, have pushed big government and dependency on minorities for 50 years, and it hasn’t worked. In the more austere America the lays ahead, upward mobility for minorities depends not on government quotas and handouts but on initiative, entrepreneurship, and hard work. Republicans must advocate the kinds of private sector programs that will help minorities compete.

Republicans also must assail liberal/progressive dominance of academia and the media. This will be no easy task and will take time. Nevertheless, cracks in these fortresses also already have begun to appear. Conservative colleges and universities are on the rise. The Fox News channel is the single most dominant news network in the country. Liberal newspapers, radio, and TV news networks are on the decline. Still, discrimination in academia and the mainstream media against conservatives should be highlighted and aggressively challenged.

Finally, a Republican president and Republican governors must appoint conservative judges to the bench at every opportunity. Too often, Republican senators acquiesce to the appointment of liberal judges while Democrats do everything possible to prevent conservative judges from winning confirmation. This has led to an activist judiciary that needs corrected. A President Romney in particular must stand tough on judicial appointments.

Republicans need not compromise their conservative values to broaden their appeal, and it’s not just a “messaging problem.” Too often Republicans have abandoned the battle of ideas with traditional Democratic constituencies. If the Republican Party wants to survive and prosper in the years ahead, it must take the battle of ideas to the inner cities, the barrios, ivy league campuses, and the television studios of New York and Los Angeles. It must contest liberal/progressive ideology everywhere it exists.