The GOP's Southern Exposure

The Washington Post ^ | Thursday, December 7, 2006 | Harold Meyerson

[MinorityRepublican]

You've seen the numbers and understand that America is growing steadily less white. You try to push your party, the Grand Old Party, ahead of this curve by taking a tolerant stance on immigration and making common cause with some black churches. Then you go and blow it all in a desperate attempt to turn out your base by demonizing immigrants and running racist ads against Harold Ford. On Election Day, black support for Democrats remains high; Hispanic support for Democrats surges. So what do you do next?

What else? Elect Trent Lott your deputy leader in the Senate. Sure locks in the support of any stray voters who went for Strom in '48.

In case you haven't noticed, a fundamental axiom of modern American politics has been altered in recent weeks. For four decades, it's been the Democrats who've had a Southern problem. Couldn't get any votes for their presidential candidates there; couldn't elect any senators, then any House members, then any dogcatchers. They still can't, but the Southern problem, it turns out, is really the Republicans'. They've become too Southern -- too suffused with the knee-jerk militaristic, anti-scientific, dogmatically religious, and culturally, sexually and racially phobic attitudes of Dixie -- to win friends and influence elections outside the South. Worse yet, they became more Southern still on Election Day last month, when the Democrats decimated the GOP in the North and West. Twenty-seven of the Democrats' 30 House pickups came outside the South.

The Democrats won control of five state legislatures, all outside the South, and took more than 300 state legislative seats away from Republicans, 93 percent of them outside the South.

[zarf]

Then you go and blow it all in a desperate attempt to turn out your base by demonizing immigrants and running racist ads against Harold Ford.

Repeat a lie enough and it becomes a truth.

Can I say FU on FR?

[marsh_of_mists]

demonizing immigrants

What part of "breaking the law" don't these people understand?

[Paleo Conservative]

But aren't poor blacks hurt the most from competition with illegal immigrant labor?

[MinorityRepublican]

But aren't poor blacks hurt the most from competition with illegal immigrant labor?

Why work when you can get welfare?

[zbigreddogz]

What part of "Tancredo doesn't just dislike illegal immigrants" don't you understand?

[thegreatbeast]

Old, old, tired, tired.

[Van Jenerette]

...They've become too Southern -- too suffused with the knee-jerk militaristic, anti-scientific, dogmatically religious, and culturally, sexually and racially phobic attitudes of Dixie...

Ouch!

Deo Vindice

[Killborn]

Harry, if you and your fellow scumbags in the DSM disappear right now, your precious liberals will never see power again.

Leave news reporting to the REAL journalist. No more commienaziislamofascist bootlicking mouth pieces.

zarf, be creative. You could spell out every letter without recieving the almighty zot. :)

[nathanbedford]

It will be interesting to see whether subsequent posters will content themselves with lambasting the author has a stinking liberal, which he is and which he deserves, or, will they address the very very serious issues which he raises and which I have been raising for more than a year.

[marsh_of_mists]

I'm responding to a typical hogwash article throwing up smoke and mirrors about how the GOP lost by pandering to much to it's base instead of those nice victim groups the liberals want us all pandering to. The whole theory's mad from the outset, because if the GOP has been pandering to the conservative base these past two years, I'm a monkey's uncle (of course, to liberals, anything the GOP does that doesn't pander to them panders to the EXTREME WINGNUT FRINGE).

Furthermore, it states that anyone not swallowing open borders/amnesty must be a racist and indeed anyone to left of, say, Olympia Snowe must because...because we say so! Then there's the whole hypocritical anti-Southern bigotry running through this dog turd of an article.

In fact, this article isn't even really about minorities and the GOP, it's just another dribble from the push-the-Republicans-to-the-center-so-conservatives-have-no-voice-in-government-and-Republicans-lose-by-having-no-image-or-agenda-and-the-saintly-liberal-Democrats-assume-their-rightful-place-as-the-leaders-of-the-country department of the MSM. This is what I'm responding to and, somehow, you feel the need to toss up the eeeeevil bigoted Tom Tancredo, who hates brown people, as some kind of rebuttal to the irrefutable fact that illegal immigration is, in fact, illegal! If you think national borders are a mere nuisance to the RNC get-out-the-Latino-vote drive, just say so, but don't toss up spooks and specters about the the Devil Tancredo and his hordes of cross-burning nativists to try to distract as you help them slip more ten million more Dem voters in under the table from Meh-HEE-co.

You know what, I think you're right, after all. I'm going to go kiss Nancy Pelosi's bum right now. It may be disgusting and degrading, but I least no one could then accuse of not despising El Tancredo Diablo with every fiber of my being.

If this response sounds excessively long and vitriolic relative to your one-line glib remark, it is! Because I'm ever more pissed off about the willful stupidity coming from Republicans and self-described conservatives, ever more easily taken in by the airy nothings of the country club crowd and Republican "leaders". Parroting just what this dinosaur media article is spouting: "Abandon our national sovereignty! Must get the Hispanics, must get the Hispanics! Diversity, diversity! Squawk!" Thanks, but I prefer truth, unpopular though it may. If the precious Hispanics can't get on board with protecting our country's sovereignty and obeying it's laws, then @%&# them! Let them all move onto the Dem plantation with the all those blacks, the blue-collar union workers and all those other genius groups that perpetually vote against their own interests. I don't care. I didn't vote for Republicans so that they could act like Democrats, @#%$ it!

[mbennett203]

"demonizing immigrants"

I'm not demonizing immigrants, I have a serious problem with illegal immigrants/immigration. People that waited a long time to get their papers and come here legally are not where my problem is, my problem is with people who hop the fence and then have the gall to tell me they have every right to be here (and it makes me even madder when American citizens validate this crap).

If someone has to blatantly lie to further their argument, you're probably best ignoring them.

[Recovering_Democrat]

The author is an ass. There were no racist ads against Harold Ford.

[Cementjungle]

What part of "breaking the law" don't these people understand?

Pretty much every part of it.

[oblomov]

Harold Meyerson is not just a liberal, but a full-blown socialist. He is co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.

This said, I do agree with him that the GOP has engaged its Southern base at the expense of its Western base. And yes, there is a Western base, withered on the vine though it may be, which celebrates individualism, the self-made man, particularity, economic expansion, and small government.

Among the GOP presidential pospects for 2008, who comes from this tradition, the same tradition as Reagan and Goldwater? It now seems almost impossible to imagine a Republican presidential candidate winning California- but it did happen, not so long ago.

[NapkinUser]

Harold Meyerson can go to hell. Ignorant piece of trash.

[NapkinUser]

What part of "Tancredo doesn't just dislike illegal immigrants" don't you understand?

What part of "Tancredo wasn't even mentioned in this editorial or marsh_of_mists' post" don't you understand?

[TN4Liberty]

Repeat a lie enough and it becomes a truth.

Zarf, I was copying the exact sentence to type the exact reply. I'm still waiting for someone to say what was racist about the ad (and make some sense of it)

[Jim Noble]

But aren't poor blacks hurt the most from competition with illegal immigrant labor?

Yes, they are.

Think about what that means.

Think about how important bringing down Charlie must be to them.

[Coldwater Creek]

Jr.'s goofy hypocrisy, his corrupt family, and old time WHITE DEMOCRATS is what cost him the Senate seat.