Premise A: All societies have an elite class. This can be hereditary or meritocratic, or a combination of both.
Premise B: The US is a society.
Premise C: Therefore, the US has an elite class.
Premise D: All human individuals are mortal, and will die. All groups consist of many individuals, all of whom will die. Groups with long-running continuity can be divided into generations, each of which dies when all of its member individuals die.
Premise E: The US elite class is a group of human individuals.
Premise F: Therefore, the current generation of US elites will die out, upon which, to continue existing, they'll have to find replacement members.
I think everything I've stated above is pretty uncontroversial. You'll likely agree with all of it. But what I'd like to focus on here is the "replacement" bit.
US elites have a lower than average birth rate, because per Statista families that make over $200,000 have the lowest birth rate of any demographic cohort.
This is likely an understatement, since people with extremely successful careers are less likely to prioritize the life goal of having a family. For example, musicians and actors, journalists and political pundits, heads of government departments, etc.
Furthermore, white liberals have the lowest birth rate in the US of any demographic. This is the group from which most elites hail.
The recipe for future elites is threefold: [1]. Access to networks of existing power, influence, and expertise; [2]. A fair amount of personal discipline, from which talent can be cultivated and damning mistakes can be avoided. Yes, that's two things, but one has to be divided into two qualifiers. You need geographic proximity to these networks AND your personality must mesh well with theirs.
[1]. excludes right-wingers from a small Alabama town who'll never move to the big city in search of better job prospects. Excluded also are most blacks, who have similar politics but usually inherit major behavioral problems from their disfavorable cultural backgrounds. Likewise, your average black man is disinterested in frequenting cafes or, say, attending bohemian poetry events; thus, while he makes a suitable political ally to white liberals, he's unlikely to join their inner circles.
So what's the point of all this? Well...
White liberals have poor birth rates, and the process of becoming an elite is sufficiently competitive that merely being a number on a census won't cut it. They can fill some, but not all the elite slots by themselves. For the rest they must look outwards. But to where?
Conservative Christian households. There are, of course, a lot of poor white people who have pro-NRA bumper stickers and vote Republican, but they're not what I mean by "conservative Christian". I mean middle class whites, typically from red states, who gave their children a Christian upbringing. There's a somewhat weaker correlation in their case between income and fertility, as I can attest from personal experience.
Of the three elite factors I mentioned, the conservative Christian demographic leans toward one: a fair amount of personal discipline. However, they're hampered by staying in their low-opportunity local areas and not meshing with white liberals.
But, there is an exception: those raised in conservative Christian households who reject the values of their upbringing in favor of liberal irreligion, or at least liberalism with religious apathy. They will tend to move to big blue cities, bringing with them the hardcore zeal of a convert to liberalism. This, combined with the discipline their upbringings instilled, give them good prospects of breaking into the elite class.
Paradoxically, then, in the future Republican families will increasingly supply America's elites without those elites being Republican.
