Geek Survey: The GOP Diversifies (and not their portfolios)
The GOP has made it to the 1970s in their grasp of diversity!
John McCain wanted the GOP convention keynote speaker line up to show the party’s diversity. This is what they came up with:
- Rudy Giuliani
- Joe Lieberman
- George Bush
- Dick Cheney
- Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Laura Bush
Let’s examine that diversity, shall we?
- White and lispy.
- White and Jewish.
- White and mentally challenged.
- White and evil.
- White and foreign.
- White and female.
Who knew there were so many different kinds of white? Other than Sherman-Williams? Just look at all these whites:
There’s Arcade White, Dover White, Panda White, Medici Ivory, Marshmallow, and Ski Slope!
Oh, wait. Undead Grampers’ campaign manager said this was about diversity of ideology within the GOP.
So not, like, actual diversity.
Although, the GOP will be allowing a man of Indian decent, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and an African-American, Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, on stage. For that, the GOP gets bumped right up into the 1980s for their level of diversity. The GOP deserves a lollipop.
Score
Lollipops!: 1 Geeks: 0
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I’m not a republican or anything, and no one’s ever going to accuse the GOP of being a rainbow coalition, but it’s not entirely fair to accuse them of lilly-white racism either. I mean, George the 2nd (And I’m not a fan) has appointed more minorities to high office than any other president before him, including Clinton. He’s also the first president to have actively campaigned to hispanic voters, and he reaped a lot of rewards from it.
His brother (Who I think was being groomed for the presidency, but will not get it now owing to our present president’s dumbfuckery ruining the brand name for everyone) has a hispanic wife, speaks spanish fluently (Better than he speaks english, actually), and used the hispanic vote to carry the elections in florida twice. He’d *still* be governor if not for term limits down there.
So while I’m not a fan, and won’t be voting for them, a little credit where credit’s due; George did appoint the first black Secretary of State, and no democrat ever bothered to do so, despite the fact that there were undeniably qualified people of color available. And while they’re primarily a party of white middle-class protestants, look at what geographic areas they represent: the south and the midwest. At least they’re trying, you know? Not doing a very good job, but I think we should encourage them (in every way excepting our votes, of course).
There are always going to be forward thinking individuals in any group (holy crap, I think I just called GWB “forward thinking” on something – I think I need to go to the hospital). But, as a group they are, as you say, a party of middle-class white protestants. (I’d throw some other demographic indicators into that description, such as “didn’t attend college”, “suburban”, “rural”, etc., but there will always be someone who’s an exception to that.)
As far as the Hispanic vote,what I’ve learned from living in Florida and the Southwest, is that courting Hispanic voters in Florida is likely much different than courting Hispanic voters in Arizona. The GOP can’t trashtalk Castro as a strategy in Arizona because most Hispanic voters there aren’t Cuban (which isn’t to say that most in Florida are, that’s just an example).
Also, something that white people tend to forget is that non-white people (or off-white people as a hispanic friend of mine called himself once) don’t all like each other. We tend to assume that anybody who isn’t american is hegemoniously allied w/ all the other non-americans, like some goofy star trek alien race.
Not the case in actual practice: Cubans hate, hate, hate Mexicans. I don’t know if mexicans hate Cubans back, but it wouldn’t surprise me. One time I was vacationing down in Florida, and saw some canadian tourists get the living shit kicked out of themselves becuase they were in a cuban restaraunt and kept saying things like “I wish these noisy mexicans would keep it down, eh?”
A Jamaican friend of mine I had growing, who was as black as black can be always identified himself as “West Indian” and looked down on Africans. German Jews who immigrated to the US in the 1850s hated the hell out of the Russian Jews who immigrated in the 1890s because “They make us look bad.”
Everyone hates everyone, it seems, but in the US it’s most trendy to hate white middle class protestants. “How dare they come here to escape religious persecution, build a country based on egalitarianism and freedom, tame a continent, and then have the timerity to kick Germany’s ass in two world wars and force their tripple-damned insidious protestant egalitarian freedom on fascist countries that didn’t want it! How dare they do that! How dare they save two continents from generations of enslavement in evil empires, and defeat the Soviets without ever firing a shot! That’s just plain evil! How dare they make up 70% of the american population, anyway? What gives them the right?”
(Disclaimer: I was trying to be funny there. I’m not a republican.)
No worries. I’m not a Republican either; although I was a Socialist for a while. Which I realize has nothing to do with the GOP.
It’s trendy to hate white middle class protestants, but sometimes they just make it so easy. I, however, prefer to dispense my hate in a more equal opportunity manner: I pretty much hate right wing nutjobs in general, whether they’re waspy or not.
If I were gonna’ hate a group, I think I’d hate reactionary types. That allows me to hate knee-jerk republicans and knee-jerk democrats equally, and let’s face it: both deserve it. (And I know they’re laying awake at night thinking, “oh no! Hoobajoobah hates us! We’re doomed!”)
But of course this is a problem you’re always gonna’ have in a massive democracy: the majority will always win eventually, and if they happen to be right, shiny, but all-too-often it’s a rule by the rabble.
I bet they’re thinking “We’re doomed!” in C-3P0’s voice.
You know what I find interesting about all this? The illusion of choice, rather than a real one.
There’s really not a lot of actual difference between the parties. There’s an attitudinal difference, but on paper and in practice, they’re 97% the same, they favor trade, human rights, some forms of education, stable economy, credible defence, blah blah blah. The differences are pretty much matters of degree, or ‘optional’ issues that really only directly affect a very small portion of the population, and though they pretend to hate each other on tv – and the hoi paloi members really do hate each other – curiously they always, always, always act to freeze out any third party or radical new idea that comes along. They don’t allow 3rd parties in debates, they’ve passed laws in the past to shut out 3rd party candidates in state elections, made back-room deals.
I’m not a conspiracy buff – and I don’t think this is a conspiracy – but basically the two parties agree to work together to shut out any radical or even additional options. I mean, every other democracy in the world has 3 or more viable parties, but we never have. Never. Why is that? Again, I don’t think this is a conspiracy, I think they’re pretty open about it: they’ll work together to shut out anyone new or outside, and essentially that makes both parties essentially twin nodes of one great big party. Or macro-party if you like.
Hence, even the radical stuff the democrats talk about is pretty conservative, and the conservative stuff the republicans talk about in actual practice is really pretty moderate and occasionally leftist. And no one talks about any serious ground-floor changes. No one talks about writing a new constitution, or changing the fundamental basis of our economy, or re-defining our (hopelessly superattenuated) legal system, or anything like that, and yet these are things that every other democracy in the world deals with on a fairly regular basis. But not us. Never us.
Why is that?
Even though our ancestors were the type to get on a boat and hurl themselves across the ocean or ride out into the unknown western frontier (or fight off a government that wasn’t working for them – imagine that), modern Americans are terrified by the idea of changing what they know as the status quo. That’s why our public education model has barely changed since the 1920s. That’s why there are no ground floor changes like what you’re talking about. The perception is that it’s always been as we’ve known it. It’s like people think that the Declaration was signed and then, BOOM!, the government as we know it was born right then.
I think part of it is that, one some level, no one wants to admit that any country is essentially a work in progress and, sometimes, countries can cease to exist. Also, most don’t acknowledge that the United States is still a young country. I mean, there’s bee a France since, what, the 9th century? There’s been an England since about the same time period. We have just over 200 years under our belt. That’s nothing.
Yeah, but time speeds up. More happens in a century now than happened in a millenium before.
But I basically agree with you, and I’ve never understood Republicans raging about how liberal schools and colleges are. I’ve always held them to be conservative institutions since no one is ever talking about radical solutions, or even radical ideas, just jiggle-the-handle kinds of solutions. An actual liberal school would be talking about completely shaking up the social order.
A friend of mine once wrote a novel where the founding fathers were cloned and due to doubletalk SF Mojo had all their previous memories. They *immediately* set about attempting to overthrow government since that’s just kind of the thing they do, thus the govt. ended up fighting it’s own founders, and ultimately killing them. None-too-subtle, but pretty funny. He couldn’t get it published, though.
(PS – our ancestors have fought governments twice – the revolution and the Civil War. I always felt it was a bit hypocritical of us to fight to keep a region that didn’t wanna’ be here)