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The Republican Party is Like a Dry Drunk, Yet Only Two Days Sober
In Virginia, Colorado, Nevada and probably Florida (waiting for data) based on the Obama campaign’s successful new voter registration drive and get out the vote operation, a combination of minorities, women and younger adults powered Obama to victory over Mitt Romney.
The takeaway from this? Everyone is talking about how the demographics are going in the wrong direction for the GOP. And so some resigned Republican strategists are saying, yes, they will have to address this. They must stop appearing to hate brown people. The solution?
a) To come up with some kind of immigration reform policy other than self-deport, electric fences, and papers please. b) To run a Latino in 2016.
Haven’t we been here before? When the GOP thought they would get the female vote by running Sarah Palin as a feminist in 2008, women were insulted because Palin’s policy beliefs restricted their freedoms.
Similarly, listening to Republicans talk about tricking Latinos into voting for them by hobbling together immigration reform that doesn’t sound so brown-shirty and getting someone dark skinned to carry the mantle for their anti-freedom message is most likely not going to work.
Here’s what would have to happen for that to work.
Minorities would have to forget that it was the hatred of the Republican Party that championed Papers Please, trained angry white people to challenge the votes of brown skinned people around the country, thinks of brown skinned people as lazy, entitled welfare cheats, and so much more.
I highly doubt the majority of minorities are going to forget the last two years, let alone the last 40 years of Southern Strategy on behalf of Republicans, who vilified minorities for the sole purpose of getting out the angry white person vote. But more importantly, the data coming out is showing that the Latino vote growth came from the youth. That’s potentially an entire generation the GOP alienated over the past several years.
Romney lost 99% of the African American vote in some areas. He worked hard to generate that kind of hatred, using the African American community as the bad guy in his plot to generate some enthusiasm among the GOP base. He used them as the foil, setting them up over and over again as the lazy destroyers of America.
Now, the Republicans accuse those same voters of being racists for not voting for the guy who not only held them in contempt, but used them as target practice in a desperate attempt to hold on to the Republican base.
Running a Latino is not going to change that.
Coming up with some kind of immigration policy that isn’t full of intimidation and hate isn’t going to change that either, because guess what, the Democrats already have an immigration reform policy that is not based on race baiting and hate.
Let’s see. Do we think people would vote for the folks who have shown them nothing but hatred and disdain but suddenly came up with a policy that is NOT full of hate, or the folks who stood by them when times were tough?
Here’s one of many things the Republican Party can’t seem to get. They lost a portion of working whites in swing states in 2012. How did this happen? Well, the working class people in the Midwest have this thing they call the BS detector. You can be a Democrat or Republican, but if you are selling BS and you think they aren’t going to know it, you have another thing coming. And so the Jeep lie crushed Mitt Romney among people who were already looking sideways at him after Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.
The BS detector is strong among those who know they are not the elite and have no desire to be the elite. They just want to work hard and earn a decent paycheck. Whereas, in the Romney circles, the more you BS the more you are approved of for being a “winner”, in the Midwest, the more you BS, the less you are trusted.
Republicans think they can just rebrand their crap policies, stick a Latino on the cover and presto, we will all fall in line.
What about the women? What about the young people?
After the Republican Party started attacking unions and the working class and used religion to do it, my grandfather swore to never vote Republican again. He spent every single family dinner warning us all to never trust a Republican if they were using God to get us to vote against the working class.
I suspect that conversation is going on in households across this nation, after we witnessed the obscene, deliberate, unforgiveable attempts of Republicans to steal the liberty represented by a vote from minorities.
No, that won’t be forgotten.
The Republican Party needs to clean up its act, but it won’t be done with a shiny new immigration policy and a Latino on the poster.
What is required of them is not new wrapping or new ways to deceive people, but rather real soul searching. Unless it starts with an admission that their policies under Bush were big government for their buddies’ corporations and fiscal recklessness, they are not to be trusted.
The Republican Party is like a dry drunk, yet only two days sober, who is not in any kind of recovery program. They are just looking for a new way to escape reality.
The truth is, until they apologize and own the past, not a word they say in the future can be trusted. They can’t come for the liberties and freedoms of American citizens, setting neighbors upon neighbors and turning the working class against itself for political gain, destroy the trust in government and send women to jail for having a miscarriage all so they could get the next drink and think that we will all forget the wake of destruction they left behind.
Run a Latino? For real? They couldn’t be more race obsessed if they tried. It’s not about the SKIN COLOR, it’s about the policies. Until they face that fact, and are even willing to consider that maybe minorities know what’s best for them, maybe they voted for Obama because his policies showed them a modicum of respect as human beings, until then – the Republican Party is a noxious, toxic brew of desperation, grasping at straws and willing to destroy the foundation of this country all so they can get their next drink.
Every time a republican suggests that minorities vote for Obama because he’s black, they lose another block of people. They can’t see that only the race obsessed would suggest that, and that the suggestion itself is insulting and racially biased. What they are really saying is that they can’t imagine any reason why you would vote for a black man, other than the fact that he is black.
And yet, it is the Republican Party that has shown itself to be obsessed with race, as they clearly can’t see this president as he is. They never get past the skin color to see that he is not the radical Marxist they think he is. I hear this even from brilliant, otherwise decent Republicans, and it troubles me.
They ran against a fictional black man and they lost big time. Now they want to fix that by running a Latino, suggesting that they think that Latinos will prove more gullible than women were in 2008.
I doubt that will end any better for the GOP.
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Johnee
Nov. 8th, 2012 at 8:21 pm
Ha! Sarah, great article. Grandpa sounds like one sharp cookie. Hell, those BS detectors sound great; I wonder if I can get one on e-bay to give to my in-laws.
Diane K.
Nov. 8th, 2012 at 8:30 pm
I like your style, Sarah. The GOP’s strategy has become more about using people as tokens to manipulate for power, instead of caring about the changing demographics in the U.S. and the evidence that for 200+ years, diversity IS America.
Sugapea
Nov. 8th, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Sarah, If Hillary Clinton runs…no Latino could possibly trick enough of the American public from wanting to see such a well-educated, well-experienced & brilliant Woman as Hillary Clinton become our First Woman President of The United States!
Johnee
Nov. 8th, 2012 at 10:10 pm
You forgot tough! I would match her against any opponent in the geo-political landscape.
Thomas Bishop
Nov. 8th, 2012 at 9:15 pm
Republicans on a dry drunk? How apt. I agree. If anything, this election has been about Americans not buying the obstructionism, lies and egregious policies that the GOP has been selling. And fear mongering, pandering to an immoral base to gin up turnout doesn’t work.
This election proves you have to live in the reality based world outside the reach of Fox News and the right wing’s echo chambers. Let’s see if the American people can encourage Republicans to do a little more soul searching, to conduct an honest, fearless moral inventory of their conduct as an aid to a more progressive recovery.
Herb Picotte
Nov. 9th, 2012 at 5:30 am
Well, we elected the President, congratulated ourselves on a job well done and went back to posting kitten pictures on Facebook. Congressional gridlock remains… I have the President’s back, I will be calling, emailing, and basically being a pain in the ass of OUR elected congressional representatives, until these S.O.B.’s DO THEIR JOB!!
These guys work for US, NOT BIG BUSINESS!!! and it’s time we started treating them LIKE THE EMPLOYEES THEY ARE!!
If you see what I see and you feel as I do, then it’s time to get PISSED OFF AMERICAN STYLE on them…
Get your elected officials contact information, and every time you hear of an issue, TELL THEM HOW WE EXPECT THEM TO VOTE!!!
Here is a sample of the email I just sent to the Republican reps for my district and it would be great if you could send them a note, too…
“Dear Sir, In regards to the Fiscal Cliff, I realize the President has nothing to lose, and I expect you to work in good faith with the president to hammer out workable deal on this matter. If we, the working class suffer because of your partisan politics, we will not re-elect you. Thanks for your time…”
KatzKids
Nov. 9th, 2012 at 11:50 am
I’m so fortunate. I have no GOPTP representatives, only trustworthy Democratic ones. Yipeee! But if I did, you can be sure I’d be right there with you, making their lives miserable until they either got it right or we drove them out of office.
Thanks & keep up the good work!
Lionel Martinez
Nov. 9th, 2012 at 5:39 am
As a latino who voted for Obama, I can assure everybody that it doesn’t matter how many Latinos the GOP throws at me I would still vote for who I deemed a candidate for the people and right about now it sure as hell don’t look like no Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz. Those two are just teabagg puppets, I’d vote for Hillary any day over any of GOP clowns regardless of the color of skin.
singhx
Nov. 9th, 2012 at 6:37 am
Well, at least the had the decency to keep their ugly maws shut before drooling out another one of their criteria…religious preference.
So, does one of them ‘Lat-teen-noose’ (I’m writing Latino this way because we watch Will Ferrell’s “You’re Welcome, America” last night…ah memories) the GOP spin machine wants to run have the right religious personification? If not, well, heck, they better get on it because they’ll loose their WMD’s (white male demographic)!
It’s a mindless loop of self-destruction for these die hard GOP insiders…Apparently, the are not only incapable of change, but of any self-reflection; they’re still full of hubris, denial and, are smothering their own in order to keep up appearances. Their persona that is killing them.
Honestly, IMHO, they just don’t care, and, in the game of life, you gotta care. Race or no race, people elected the President because they care/he cares; the “R”people, they don’t get it.
Sandra
Nov. 9th, 2012 at 1:48 pm
R’thugs never learn, they dumped $arah Palin on America thinking she would get Hillary’s supporters, didn’t work, so they tried Michael Steel as RNC Chairman to attract the black votes, didn’t work then either so they dumped him pronto. Now they’re planning on annointing a Latino, Marco Rubio is my best guess to attract the Hispanic/Latino voters which will not work either. They have insulted every ethnicity including intelligent, decent, honourable Whites.
My guess is they think we’re all just dumb asses who will buy into their bs and progaganda, look Ma, I’m not a racist anymore.
Joe
Nov. 9th, 2012 at 11:48 pm
Um..wrong, totally wrong there were about 8 million less white voters that decided not to vote for the Most liberal GOP candidate ever in Romney. They stayed home, as did Ron Paul supporters and Palin supporters.
Hispanics are big Goverment lovers that take in about 65% of California’s programs for the poor. They voted for Obama only to continue the handouts.
Bottom line the Democrats will get crushed again in 2014 like they did in 2010, when it’s not about a single liberal candidate, but go on thinking the way you do.
Shiva (Moderator)
Nov. 10th, 2012 at 12:14 am
Great comedy act you have going there
I seriously doubt anything you said is true
Gary Vaughn
Nov. 10th, 2012 at 5:30 am
You idiots got lucky in 2010 because we got complacent and stayed in. And Paul supporters would only be about 1 point, so that is blown up. Look at what happened, Rove and Boehner and Mcconnell all thought they were gonna wine big, but we took 3 senate seats and 1 independent. Took back a few house seats with gerrymandering barely keeping some in (Bachmann for one). Don’t take 2012 as evidence, look at 2011. Republican got shell shocked. Especially personhood crap and SB5 in Ohio. Even Pierce the evangelical hater lost his seat. You idiots had better wake up and smell the Tea, you are done with in 2014.
misanthropope
Nov. 16th, 2012 at 10:35 pm
what you mean to assert is that we are lucky that you are stupid. well, it’s too dependable to be “luck”, and seeing that you lack the decency to stay in your caves between elections, it damn sure isn’t GOOD luck