Thursday, November 08, 2012
The end of the "great white nation"?
~Tweet from Goldie Taylor~
There has been a lot of "soul searching" in the republican party these days. They still can't figure out why the man who was supposed to save America from the Kenyan Socialist lost the election. It's as if they woke up on November 7th and found themselves living in a different country. (Sorry white America, this is not your grandfather's USA.)It got so bad that white folks took to the streets and rioted. (Hey, I thought the Negroes were supposed to do that if they lost.)
Elspeth Reeve wrote about the "GOP meltdown" in the Atlantic, and she touched on an interesting subject that I have been trying to tell my one (1) republican friend for years.
"If we want to know which way the Republican Party is headed after its big losses on Tuesday, it helps to look at how conservatives are explaining Mitt Romney's loss to themselves. "This should have been a slam dunk," Rush Limbaugh said on Wednesday. "But it wasn't. There are reasons why. We're gonna have to dig deep to find them and we're gonna have to be honest with ourselves when we find the answers to this." From Republican pollsters to talking heads to activists, the reactions are on a continuum from analytical to thoughtful to insane. Here's a guide to the diggingm deep and not-so-deep:
How can we make minorities like us?
Because most of the pre-Election Day poll denialism was focused on demographics -- that there was no way the portion of the 2012 electorate that was black and Latino would be as high as in 2008, much less higher -- much of the post-Election Day soul-searching was focused on why the Republican Party is so unpopular with those groups.
At The Daily Beast, David Frum, who was outsed from the conservative movement for saying Republicans should have negotiated with President Obama on Obamacare, says that just being pro-immigration won't help the party. "It's necessary of course to refrain from insulting Latinos, or, for that matter, anybody," Frum writes. "But the crying need in the GOP is for a more middle-class orientation to politics, one that addresses concerns like healthcare as well as debts and deficits."
However, many prominent conservatives still in good standing failed
to meet Frum's first requirement -- the no insults part -- even as they
were talking about their unpopularity among those groups. On election
night, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly said if Romney loses, it's because non-whites want free stuff.
"The demographics are changing. It's not a traditional America anymore. And 50 percent of the voting public who want stuff. They want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama. Whereby 20 years ago, President Obama would have been roundly defeated by an establishment candidate like Mitt Romney. The white establishment is now the minority."
Rush Limbaugh, too, was at a loss to explain why minorities don't like the GOP. After all, he can name some black and Latino Republicans:
He continued with this theme later in the show:Let me take you back to the Republican convention. We had Suzanne Martinez, female Hispanic governor, New Mexico. We had Condoleezza Rice, African-American, former secretary of state. Both of those people imminently qualified, terrifically achieved... We had Marco Rubio. We had a parade of minorities who have become successful Americans... Now, why didn't that work, folks?
The whole country has gone to seed, Ann Coulter says. "If Mitt Romney cannot be elected, we've reached the tipping point. We have more takers than makers," a forlorn Coulter told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham on Wednesday. America "no longer is interested in conservative ideas. It is interested in handouts." The Israeli paper owned by Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire who blew so much money on the election, ran the headline, "America Chose Socialism."It doesn't count with Obama voters about whom it is said that stuff matters most. It doesn't count. Why not? Why, putting it somewhat coarsely, why doesn't the Republican Party get credit for Condoleezza Rice?
Limbaugh hit on this theme too. "It's just very difficult to beat Santa Claus," he said. "People are not going to vote against Santa Claus,
especially if the alternative is being your own Santa Claus." He
continued that Obama supporters "think the Democrat Party's gonna punish
the people who have unfairly gotten stuff that they shouldn't have.
They got more stuff than other people have stuff and that stuff's gotta be redistributed."
It's not entirely about free stuff, says John Hayward at Human Events.
"It’s really a battle of irresponsibility vs. freedom." He writes that
conservatives must explain the true cost of free stuff, "A good portion
of the middle-class 'free stuff' crowd, including quite a few of the
working poor, would be much less receptive to Big Government if they
appreciated that its financing is not a painless skimming of loot from
bulging treasure vaults." [Source]
I suspect that republicans don't see the irony in all of this. They assume that blacks and other minorities just want "free stuff", yet they wonder why blacks and other minorities cannot embrace their party.
Republicans like to accuse liberals of being race conscious but it is the republican party and people on the right who have been obsessed with matters of race, lately. This notion that the election of Barack Obama means the end of white America is laughable and absurd. Trust me, white America will be just fine. Besides, the last time I checked Barack Obama had a white mama.
But some white folks just can't shake the browning of their country.
"White America died last night. Obama's reelection killed it. Our 200 plus year history as a Western nation is over. We're a Socialist Latin American country now. Venezuela without the oil.
"White America died last night. Obama's reelection killed it. Our 200 plus year history as a Western nation is over. We're a Socialist Latin American country now. Venezuela without the oil."
Stunned by his clear racism, Liddy tried to walk his guest back from the ledge:
"With what you just said right there...You seem to imply that white people are better than other people. That's not really what you're saying is it?"
"Of course that's what I'm saying," Buchanan replied "Isn't it obvious? Anything worth doing on this Earth was done first by white people."
"Who landed on the moon? White people. Who climbed Mount Everest? White people. Who invented the transistor? White people. Who invented paper? White people. Who discovered algebra? White people."
"And don't give me all this nonsense about Martin Luther King and civil rights and all that. Who do you think freed the slaves? Abraham Lincoln. A white guy!"
...."But we're not led by Lincoln anymore, we're led by an affirmative-action mulatto who can't physically understand how great America once was."
"I cried last night G. I cried for hours. It's over for all of us. The great White nation will never survive another 4 years of Obama's leadership"
Liddy tried to reason with Buchanan, reminding him that he shares similar positions with the President on Afghanistan, Iraq, and relations with Russia:
"Of course I agree with half of what he does," Buchanan answered, "He's half white! That's not the half I'm worried about." [Source]
I have to give it to old Pat, at least he is honest.
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