Nov 14 2008
The Obama Effect on the GOP
The purpose of this blog is to avoid partisan politics but to talk about this time – the effect of the Obama candidacy on our country. I’ve focused mainly on race, though I’d hoped to get into discussion of gender (Sarah Palin helped me focus there a bit) and the wider discussion of culture – proposition 8 brought out a culture discussion, but I also hoped to talk a little bit about some of the right in front of our face happenings – like when Obama brought the house down doing his brush his shoulders bit. What a moment! 
The Republican Party is having a bit of an identity crisis as a result of the Obama and Palin candidacies. Sarah Palin rallied the religious conservative base of the Republican party while wholly alienating the conservative “elite.” Given a choice, I’d choose that “conservative elite” – education and thoughtfulness deserve to be not only acceptable, but preferred qualities. Barack Obama exemplifies both, which in the long run thrilled his supporters (more on this later!). But the landslide victory of Obama over McCain was partially the result of African Americans and Latino voters going overwhelmingly for Obama. Combine that with an overwhelming youth vote favoring Obama, including a good chunk of evangelical youth, and you can see the problem the republican party is having – demographically they are becoming increasingly irrelevant.
The internal debate on this very issue has begun – with Gov. Michael Steele, one of the most prominant African-Americans in the Republican party – stepping up to run for the chairmanship of the party. And here is a debate between Pat Buchanan and a republican strategist – who happens to be African American:
QT
2 Responses to “The Obama Effect on the GOP”
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Well, that was a very interesting debate. Mr. Poll (sp?) was correct. For the Republican party to remain relevant, they’re going to have to change the way they cater to the elite in this country. The whole ‘move to Canada’ thing was strange, probably mishearing what Buchanan actually said which I found just as offensive.
“Why don’t you examine yourself?” Buchanan always refers to 1964, 1968 and Nixon (probably the only time he was actually relevant) but that was FORTY-FOUR YEARS AGO, PAT! It’s a shame that they can’t see or perhaps don’t understand that lip service and wedge issues are no longer going to be enough. What your party does while it’s in power will be dragged out onto the mat and there will be accountability.
This election was a reckoning. Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado (did I forget one?) jumped into the blue paint vat because the old GOP system is broken. Did anyone ever think the Democrats would win Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana in one cycle?! It shows that their system of politics is broken – the Lee Atwater/Karl Rove style, while working well in the 80′s and 90′s and the notion that there could be a permanent republican majority, burned white hot and extinguished itself out in four short years. (I say short in the grand scheme of things – I know they were four very long years for most of us.)
But I don’t know how they can fix it. Being a fiscal conservative is one thing. But being anti-union and forcing religion into the public arena is another. I’m an hispanic and I can’t for the life of me understand why any hispanic or African-American would vote against their own self interests by voting Republican. I’m dumbfounded by the likes of African-American Republican strategists Ron Christie and Joe Watson on the air. What are they thinking?! How do they sleep at night after bold-faced lying on the air daily?
Mike Poll was the first African-American Republican strategist who made any sense, but his basic premise is to change the party. The thing is if you remake the party, if you change the party for the better ethnically, demographically, if you change the philosophy of the party to attract more people of color, then is it really still the Republican Party we all know?
There will always be a base that you can spoon feed the red meat to – just look at Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity making asses out of themselves with the latest wingnut talking point, “The Obama Recession” – but it’s no longer enough. The Republicans that voted for them who still think that their party is what it was 40 years ago are dying out, their base is shrinking and unless they really start paying attention to the fact that caucasians will soon be the minority in this country, the GOP will go the way of the dinosaur, the automat, and $1 per gallon gasoline.
(I’ve been having more luck commenting than actually blogging on my own site, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to crosspost a version of this comment!)
I don’t mind at all. In fact, many of my comments are from HuffingtonPost, which has a brilliant system of allowing you to post on your own blog while commenting on theirs. I wish I knew how they did it – I want a widget to do likewise on my original site, so I can post there, have it show up here, and invite other bloggers to post there and have their posts show up on their own blogs. That would be SO very cool!
Anyway – there’s been talk of this being a “re-aligning” election, and I don’t know if I agree with what some are saying about that, but one thing that seems at least possible, is that the religious right is fracturing into multiple camps, which gives both parties opportunities to remake themselves. If Obama succeeds in holding on to and expanding his religious base, the republicans would be forced to build outside of a theocratic frame. This would be of benefit to everyone.
QT