RACE SCARES THE U.S. RIGHT!

The Shrinking White Base of the GOP Cannot Accept the Country In Which It Now Lives

 

 

 

 Written by Gary Younge

 

GUEST WORDS-In the early 1980s veteran pollster Stan Greenberg, conducted a focus group in Macomb County, a Detroit suburb, of former Democrats who had switched allegiance to the Republican Ronald Reagan. After he read a statement by Robert Kennedy about racial inequality, one participant interjected: "No wonder they killed him." 

"That stopped me and led to a whole new analysis of Reagan Democrats," wrote Greenberg in a recent report, Inside the GOP.  "I realized that in trying to reach this group of people race is everything," he told me.

While conducting a focus group with Republicans over the summer he had a similar revelation, although it came not from a sole outburst but almost throwaway comments, often left on cards after the session. As one man left his handout he half-joked: "It's probably digital, so you can check it on the NSA files."

Another asked: "Now you're going to guarantee that what we put down here, we won't be getting a call from the IRS about an audit or anything like that?" Alongside this sense of being spied upon was relief that, in these Republican-only groups, they had found kindred spirits. "I'm not alone in the way I view things for the most part," wrote one on a postcard. "Not by myself in thought process," confided another.

Those seeking to understand what drove the Republican party to shut down the government this month in a strategically disastrous move that laid bare its deep internal divisions – and ultimately led to humiliating defeat – could do worse than start here. The report reveals a sense of ideological, demographic and cultural siege, on the American right, from which there is no obvious escape.

Unable to comprehend or process last year's election defeat, they feel the nation has become unmoored from its founding principles and is on a full-scale, unrelenting descent into chaos. Obama has been victorious in implementing socialism and the party they identify with has proved incapable of halting the decline, leaving them alienated not only from the country at large but one another. If it appears as though they are howling at the moon, it's because they feel all earthly options have been exhausted.

Describing Ireland's economic and cultural transformation in his book The Deportees, Roddy Doyle wrote: "I went to bed in one country and woke up in a different one." Many Republicans have precisely the same feeling.

Central to this deep-seated sense of angst is race. In 2012, 92% of the Republican vote came from white people who, within 30 years, will no longer be in the majority. "They are acutely racially conscious," says Greenberg. "They are very aware that they are 'white' in a country that is becoming increasingly 'minority'."

Growing increasingly dependent on an ever-shrinking base, they see their electoral fortunes waning but are resistant to adapting their message to broaden their appeal beyond their narrow racial confines. Race is less the explicit target of their anxiety (issues such as affirmative action and civil rights no longer dominate) than the primary (if not exclusive) prism through which their political consciousness is being filtered. "Race," writes Greenberg, "is central to their worldview."

There are three main ways in which this has been a factor in the recent government shutdown and Republican schisms. First is gerrymandering. Since race is one of the best predictors of voting behavior, House congressional seats have been manipulated largely on racial grounds. Politicians at state level carve constituencies into odd and unlikely shapes, shuffling around various racial groups to protect incumbents.

Both parties do this when they have the chance but Republicans, who run more state houses, have had more chance and have undertaken the task with much zeal and guile.

As a result, in 2012 the Democrats won more votes nationally for Congress but still got fewer seats, giving the Republicans who shut down the government a fragile mandate. It also means incumbents need not fear losing their seats, leaving them able to act out.

Second is the perceived beneficiaries of government spending. Republicans are more likely to regard intervention as being to support minorities rather than to support the poor. This goes not only for food stamps and welfare but also for Obamacare – which was the issue that initially sparked the shutdown.

"Obamacare is a racial flashpoint for many evangelical and Tea Party voters," writes Greenberg.
Their despair is largely rooted in the assumption that by championing programs that disproportionately help minorities, Obama is effectively buying votes and securing a growing tranche of the electorate who will for evermore be dependent on government.

One participant, echoing the views of many, said: "Every minority group wants to say they have the right to something, and they don't. It's life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It doesn't say happiness. You get to be alive and you get to be free. The rest of it's just a pursuit … you're not guaranteed happiness. You have to work for it."

Finally, there is Obama – the black son of an African immigrant and white mother – who stands as an emblem for all this unease, personifying, in their minds, not only their political impotence today but their demographic irrelevance tomorrow. The word they're most likely to use to describe him is "liar". But their hostility goes beyond his policies and pronouncements to a deeply rooted suspicion of his authenticity.

"[There] is a sense of him being foreign, non-Christian, Muslim – and they wonder what really are his motives for the changes he is advancing." As he moves into his second term, there is now an elision in the Republican mind between what they think he is (an immigrant, a fraudster, a non-American) and what they think he does (assist immigrants and fraudsters in contravention of American ideals).

Their inability to craft a credible strategic response to these insecurities only serves to reinforce them.
"You don't like a particular policy or a particular president?" taunted Obama last week. "Go out there and win an election." The trouble is Republicans can't because their racially charged rhetoric alienates minorities, leaving them more electorally isolated, prompting defeat – which leaves them ever more divided.

Meanwhile, their reckless obstruction in Congress, which nearly triggered a default, makes the nation's descent into chaos more likely. Unable to come to terms with the country in which they live, they are complicit in creating the very future they most fear.

(Gary Younge is a Guardian columnist and feature writer based in the US. This column was posted first by The Guardian/UK and most recently by the excellent CommonDreams.org)

President Obama should not be so quick to penalize the IRS for questioning Tea Party groups, argues Stephen Nuño. (Photo/Getty Images )

Opinion: Time for Republicans to recover grand in Grand Old Party

by Stephen A. Nuño, @StephenANuno 

Conservatives should not need to be told this, but there is more to leadership than being smart.  A Harvard law graduate, Senator Ted Cruz is smart but a seriously flawed individual who has taken on a cultish following of political amateurs who have no greater sense of achievement beyond their noses.

Ted Cruz came out swinging like William Wallace and ended up looking like a prostrate George Wallace.  At a political rally in which he attempted to gather the troops, someone showed up with a Confederate flag.  Jonathon Capehart of the Washington Post was repulsed by the display, and pointed out that the Confederate Flag was seen as a “hostile act” by black families.

The confederate flag represents much more than that.
It represents separatism, slavery, and a Dark Age culture of backwardness towards minorities and women. It is the opposite of how we should aspire to be as a country.

No other flag has been flown in this country to support an economic and social system that so systematically destroyed the lives of so many Americans.  The murder, subjugation, and tyranny over the hearts and minds of not only millions of people, but generations of American families is unprecedented and should no longer be accepted in civilized society.

It is more than a hostile act to display that flag on the lawn of a black family; it is a terrorist act.  It is a hateful act.  It is a shameful act.

And yet when the flag was waved at their rally, neither Ted Cruz nor Sarah Palin bothered to say anything. Not that we should be surprised, since Senator Cruz is an admiring fan of one of this country’s grandest supporters of Jim Crow in the Senate, Jesse Helms.

Ted Cruz was warned before this latest episode of holding the government hostage over the attempt to extend health care to working class and poor families that he and his confederacy of dunces would ultimately lose a showdown between the President and the Senate. Yet Cruz ignored those warnings, he ignored the costs it imposed on working families, on our distressed financial system, and on the poor.

If there is anything salvageable in the Republican Party it will come from those who believe in honorable opposition for the benefit of the country.

Currently, there is nothing grand about this party.  There are no more grand ideas to improve the country, improve our society, and move forward as a nation.

Where Ronald Reagan once envisioned a grand economic and social cooperative between Mexico and Canada, today’s Republicans build walls and quite literally try to convince people that freedom lies within one’s right not to have health care.

This is a party of fear and resentment, whose only display of grandeur is in the remarkable littleness of its leaders. The utter lack of courage to stand up to populism, to succumb to the anxiety of a changing society, and to profit off the misery of its fellow neighbors without one scintilla of effort to try to educate their constituency is an utter failure of what a political party is supposed to do.

Our democracy needs a responsible opposition. Today we have none.

The GOP was once an innovator of ideas in an era of lethargy.  They may not have always been right, but they did think big.  Embracing a global economy, families of all stripes, spirituality in its many positive forms, and our pride in improving opportunities for our future entrepreneurs should be the nexus of where the GOP goes from here.  Driving forward with both eyes on the review mirror is neither conservative, nor healthy.

Perhaps some day the GOP will embrace the power of diversity in society as they do their portfolios. Hopefully that day comes sooner rather than later, because the Democrats are content that it comes later rather than sooner.


Stephen A. Nuño, Ph.D., NBC Latino contributor and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and International Affairs at Northern Arizona University. He is currently writing a book on Republican outreach into the Latino Community.

Opinion: Tea Party’s hostile takeover

 

 by Stephen A. Nuño, @StephenANuno 

This is not how a modern society is supposed to act.  Over the last week, we have seen more concern for national monuments than we have for our poorest neighbors.

We are now at a point where we are being pulled by the ear by a Tea Party faction who no longer cares about the very basic function of democracy,

Due to the shutdown brought about by the refusal of the Tea Party to engage in actual governance – and the Republicans who have gone along with it – private charities have had to pick up where the federal government has eschewed its collective obligation to our poor, our children, and to those families who make the ultimate sacrifice for our nation.  The Laura and John Arnold Foundation has pledged ten million dollars to hold several Head Start programs over until Congress can come to an agreement. Another charity, Fisher House Foundation, has promised to pay survivor benefits to families who have lost loved ones abroad defending their country until we get our act together.

Even if the House approves piecemeal solutions, if this shutdown continues, hundreds of thousands of American families who have fallen on hard times throughout the recession may have delays in the delivery of nutritional support through food stamps, which have already been reduced. This will be beyond the capacity of temporary fixes by charity.

Apart from the real-world effects of this shutdown, most disheartening is what the current GOP has done to our basic understanding of what it means to be conservative.

Rather than looking at society as a cohesive unit with basic civic responsibilities for each other, conservatism has descended into a self-interested libertarian fantasy land that never existed but for a time in which life expectancy was 35 – 40 years. 

Today, by the way, it is eighty years.

Long-time conservative columnist, George Will equated the Affordable Care Act to the Fugitive Slave Act and to the Jim Crow South. One wonders what sense of entitlement one has, in order to feel like a slave simply because the government has set forth regulations of an insurance market that curbs practices that other modern societies have addressed for decades – such as denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.
There has been a stream of libertarian bravado that demonstrates a lack of basic human empathy not only for our fellow Americans, but a language that poisons the well of discussions about how to move forward as a society.

Representative Brenda Barton of Arizona publicly compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler for shutting down the national parks. Governor Brewer offered to reopen the parks using state funds, but was denied.  Perhaps because she needed to be reminded to focus on other priorities, like her initial decision to halt Temporary Cash Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) from reaching the poorest members of the State she represents; the only state in the union to do so.

A recent book by Dr. Chris Parker and Dr. Matt Barreto finds that beyond the conservative values is a sense of anxiety, conspiratorial fantasy, and delusion about the state of the country.

The fundamental flaw of conservatism in our past has been the refusal to view the poor and minorities as full members of society, entitled to the same basic obligations expected from government to assist with, such as Medicare and Social Security.

The President has simply expanded our notion of citizenship and membership, if ever so slightly.
True, by doing so, the President has encroached on the sense of individuality and empowerment that others have felt since the beginning of our founding.

Still, this Tea Party sense of paranoia cannot be allowed to decay our nation.
We should do what we can to prevent this hostile takeover from happening.

Stephen A. Nuño, Ph.D., NBC Latino contributor and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and International Affairs at Northern Arizona University. He is currently writing a book on Republican outreach into the Latino Community.