Demographics and pragmatism among younger Americans are killing it; the GOP’s attacks on Labor Unions, Women, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid as well as their blatent xenophobia and homophobia.
That pathetic cry of “they are taking away my America”
Is still resonating in our collective ears; not thinking that this is everybody’s America. It does not belong to a few privileged few at the top 2% of the food chain nor does it belong to the WASPHs any longer. (White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, Heterosexuals)
If there is a message that came loud and clear in these last November elections was that the Teahadist-Republicans don’t really have a clear mandate and that their party is being pushed to the extreme right when most of America is clearly in the middle. Don’t misinterpret it as a mandate to enact ultra-right wing legislation or to make it a referendum on President Obama. The signs are there if you look for them. The voters wanted government to work, they wanted jobs and the Republicans are hell bent on government to fail because of their inherited mantra “government is the problem”; also they are destroying jobs, not creating them with the dual purpose of making President Obama look bad and to get cheap labor…so that a lot of voters are beginning to have buyer’s remorse.
Wisconsin is a very good indicator of the buyer’s remorse as we have seen voters come out in staggering numbers to protest and now we also see very successful recall efforts. Wisconsin is just the tip of the iceberg…as Republicans push forward this right wing agenda it will spread nationwide.
Just like what has happened in California, it will continue to happen albeit piecemeal and gradually in other parts of the country.
Dante Atkins says: “California progressives had been saying it for years: The California Republican Party had no future. It was simple math; at a time when younger voters were becoming increasingly progressive and non-white populations were becoming a larger and larger share of the electorate, a party whose base consisted increasingly of older, white voters would become increasingly marginalized--through demographics alone, if not by ideology.”
You see, the Democratic Party has no litmus test like the Republican Party does. We are not on a crusade to throw under the bus those who are moderates or not fitting the extreme end of the ideology spectrum. But we Democrats, seem to have a general consensus that progressive-liberals know that if we want progress we have to be progressive; if we want social justice we have to be open minded and liberal; if we want to have the free enterprise system work for everyone then it has to have regulations. And most importantly; we know that TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS doesn’t work, taking away from the poor and the middle class to give to the rich is downright immoral.
Lastly, Democrats celebrate diversity, we don’t repudiate it; we know that everyone has to be equal under the laws of our country and that racism and discrimination is wrong…that my friends are facts that none of your fellow American Teahadist-Republicans can “REFUDIATE”. So put that in your collective pipes and smoke it.
As John Boehner would say:
“SO BE IT”
A good article from Dante Atkins on Sun Nov 28, 2010
“Over at Calitics, my fellow Yes, the Republicans made large gains in the recent midterm elections--fueled by a combination of disaffected Democrats, soured independents and a highly motivated conservative base that sincerely believes that Barack Obama is not only responsible for the nation's economic woes, but is also a communist Kenyan Muslim. But while the GOP's gains were comparable in numbers to the 1994 sweep that ushered in the era of Speaker Gingrich, there are significant differences. Most notable is that in 1994, the GOP's gains could be considered the culmination of a gradual shift in the nation's ideology, as the party's gains were relatively evenly distributed across the country. 2010's wave, however, could hardly be considered such a shift, as it followed immediately upon two Democratic wave years. But perhaps more importantly, those gains were concentrated in areas with a particular demographic profile: older, white and working-class. And while the GOP celebrates its gains, these results should actually be the cause of some degree of alarm--especially when combined with the results from California.
Republicans made sweeping gains in Congress, but also in legislative seats and governorships across the country. In California, however? No such luck. No victories in any of the statewide offices. No Congressional seats. No Senate pickup. In fact, Democrats even managed to pick up a seat in the State Assembly. A chief reason why was the prominence of the Latino electorate, which voted strongly for the Democratic ticket in large part because of Meg Whitman's issues with her undocumented housekeeper and her opposition to California's DREAM Act:
One answer lies in the voting patterns of non-whites, who overwhelmingly supported the Democratic ticket. While Democrats weren't the most effective at the national level in inspiring their traditional minority constituencies to come to the ballot box anywhere else, it was a different story in California, where Latinos comprised a whopping 22 percent of the state's electorate, according to the Los Angeles Times. And they voted overwhelmingly Democratic, supporting Brown over Whitman by a margin of 55 points. Whitman said she wanted to be "tough as nails" on undocumented immigrants; her campaign chair was Pete Wilson, who is still persona non grata because of the odious Proposition 187, which denied all public services to undocumented immigrants; she gave a callous and condescending debate response to an undocumented student who inquired as to her position on the DREAM act; and if that weren't enough, the scandal regarding the treatment of her undocumented housekeeper whom she unceremoniously fired after many years of service perpetuated the existing narrative about Whitman's hostility to Latinos, and towards lower-income people in general.
As Robert Cruickshank noted shortly after the election, Whitman defeated Brown among white voters, and among voters age 65 and older. A political party looking for long-term viability would realize that this is not a formula for long-term success in a state--or a country--where non-white voters are becoming an increasingly large share of the electorate. Republicans of all stripes are coming to this realization: the California Republican Party is dead. After all, if you're a Republican and you can't win in the environment that led up to 2010, you probably can't win at all. The question is how to revive it--and this is already leading to a fascinating civil war, as exemplied in Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton's latest column. The conservative wing of the party is hankering for a retreat from the so-called "moderates" such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Meg Whitman and outgoing Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado, who have defined the Party in recent years:
I called Jon Fleischman, a conservative blogger — Flash Report — and Southern California vice chairman of the Republican Party. "Political parties are defined by office-holders and candidates," he says.
"We have been defined by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Meg Whitman. And I don't know that anyone could tell you what the California Republican Party stands for anymore....
"We've watched our brand name get ruined and the party destroyed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Hopefully we can develop a better brand once he's gone."
The problem, of course, is that going hard-right--especially on social issues and immigration--is substantially what cost the GOP the election in California in the first place, because an increasingly Democratic and increasingly non-white electorate is not ready to accept those positions and there is no "silent majority" out there just waiting to be activated by the second coming of Ronald Reagan. And the establishment wing of the party recognizes this as well:
"The Republican Party is now a regional party, not a statewide party, mainly because Republicans no longer are capable of getting people of color to vote for them," says Allan Hoffenblum, a former GOP consultant who publishes the Target Book, which handicaps legislative races.
Everyone who isn't in denial knows what the California GOP must do to survive:
Drop the demagoguery about illegal immigrants because it scares off the fast-growing Latino electorate.
The main problem, of course? The establishment wing of the GOP no longer has a choice in the matter; the Tea Party and the conservative wing are uniting to take stances that will ultimately result in the total marginalization of the Republican Party and of conservative candidates in California. Arizona's draconian and unconstitutional immigration law, SB1070, was a massive motivator of the Latino electorate across the entire West--a factor which aided California's statewide sweep for Democrats, but also ensured that endangered Democrats in other states, such as Harry Reid in Nevada, hung on to win despite a climate in which they might not have been reelected under other circumstances.
Some California conservatives haven't learned from that experience, and are seeking to replicate it. Unlike in Arizona, a law similar to SB1070 could never pass through the heavily Democratic legislature--but California has a popular referendum process, and some Tea Party groups are spearheading an effort to place a similar law on the ballot in California. If they do qualify it in time, the timing couldn't be worse for the GOP, as the initiative would likely appear on the 2012 Presidential Primary ballot. This, in turn, would force the Republican candidates into the same difficult position that they found themselves in over SB1070 earlier: support it to bolster their conservative credentials among the older white male Republican electorate and damage their popularity among the Latinos that they would need to win key Western battleground states, or oppose it to blunt the general election attacks while enraging the Tea Party primary voters.
It's a stark choice. Of course, if Rep. King gets his way and makes even more noise about his unconstitutional bill to overturn the 14th Amendment, it may be a moot point”
