Posted on 12/12/2012 5:31:23 AM PST by Kaslin
In the scramble to make the GOP more diverse, a lot of people are looking at Asian Americans, whom many believe are a natural constituency for the party. I would love it if Asian Americans converted en masse to the Republican Party, but the challenge for Republicans is harder than many appreciate.
President Obama did spectacularly well with Asian Americans, garnering nearly three-quarters of their vote. This runs counter to a lot of conventional wisdom on both the left and the right. On average, Asian American family income is higher and poverty is lower than it is for non-Latino whites. Entrepreneurship, family cohesion and traditional values all run strong among Asian Americans, and reliance on government runs weak.
And yet, Asian Americans -- now the fastest-growing minority in America -- are rapidly becoming a core constituency of the Democratic Party.
I've joked for years with my Indian American relatives and friends that they are the new Jews because their parents bury them in guilt and overeducate them. It turns out it doesn't end there. Sociologist Milton Himmelfarb observed that "Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans." Well, Indian Americans earn like Jews and ... vote like Jews.
And maybe for similar reasons. The comparison to Jews is instructive. Perhaps the most common explanation for the GOP's problem with Asian Americans is the party's pronounced embrace of Christianity, which turns off many Jews as well.
According to Pew studies, barely a third of Chinese Americans are Christian and less than a fifth of Indian Americans are.
"Whenever a Gujarati or Sikh businessman comes to a Republican event, it begins with an appeal to Jesus Christ," conservative writer Dinesh D'Souza recently told the New York Times magazine. "While the Democrats are really good at making the outsider feel at home, the Republicans make little or no effort."
My friend and colleague Ramesh Ponnuru, an Indian American and devout Catholic, says the GOP has a problem with seeming like a "club for Christians."
That rings true to me. I've attended dozens of conservative events where, as the speaker, I was, in effect, the guest of honor, and yet the opening invocation made no account of the fact that the guest of honor wasn't a Christian. I've never taken offense, but I can imagine how it might seem to someone who felt like he was even less part of the club.
A few years ago, Robert Putnam, a liberal sociologist, reported this finding: As racial and ethnic diversity increases, social trust and cohesion plummets. "Trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer," Putnam found. "People living in ethnically diverse settings appear to 'hunker down' -- that is, to pull in like a turtle."
The villain isn't racism or bigotry or anything so simple. The phenomenon is much more complex. Indeed, it's not clear why this happens, but it's clear that it does. Economic inequality and cultural attitudes do not matter much. "Americans raised in the 1970s," Putnam writes, "seem fully as unnerved by diversity as those raised in the 1920s."
Part of the explanation stems from the fact that people with shared experiences and cultures draw strength from working together, whereas with strangers, language often becomes guarded, intentions questioned.
The GOP is not a Christian club, but there's no disputing that Christianity is a major source of strength and inspiration for many Republican activists. This is nothing new and, generally speaking, there's nothing wrong with this. The abolitionist, progressive and civil rights movements were all significantly powered by Christian faith.
As someone who's long argued for theological pluralism and moral consensus on the right, it strikes me as nuts for the GOP not to do better with Asian Americans, particularly given how little religion has to do with the policy priorities of the day.
Twenty years ago, conservatives started referring to Judeo-Christian values in an effort to be more inclusive. The challenge now is to figure out how to talk in a way that doesn't cause decent and dedicated Christians to pull in like a turtle, while also appealing to non-Judeo-Christians and the nonreligious. That'll be hard, requiring more than name-dropping Confucius or Krishna.
That's called "the catbird seat" and is a good place to be.
At least, it was good enough for John McCain and the RiNO's when they put together the "Gang of 14" -- remember that? -- in the Senate.
Sauce for the RiNO is sauce for the Tea Party. We can broker stuff, too.
Quit warning us off the prize.
He’s saying no such thing. He’s simply saying that tying the Republican Party to one faith is not a very good strategy to win over people of other faiths or no faiths. I’m saying that as a self-identified Christian.
Conservatives should fight diversity itself. Fight the culture war first, win elections second.
I don't read it that way at all. Goldberg is a Jew, and doesn't obviously take offense at the invocation of the name of Christ...he merely is speaking, seems to me, about the need to reach out to people of other faiths who share the same economic and social principles. I agree with him.
I just really don't care anymore about people for whom any mention of Christianity is taken as some kind of existential threat.
No other religion on this planet is expected to self-censor itself in public so thoroughly, and no other one does.
I don't want any more hot house flowers who wet their pants when they hear someone else's opinion; this country already has enough of them.
Is this the great "immigrant spirit" we're supposed to worship?
I agree with you, but I don't think that was Goldberg's POV. He isn't saying "Shut up Christians", he is saying "Republicans don't have to be Christians." And I think that is true.
First off the Mourdock and Aikin loss.When it comes to defending a fundamental religious concept the godless ones have been pretty good at attacking an article of faith and reducing it to ridicule. Now the camp followers in the media as well as certain “conservative” agnostic or atheistic loudmouths help piling it on and the stampede is triggered.
The question becomes how should conservatives handle it ?
Here is a suggested response...
“I happen to believe bla bla bla which will has nothing to do with any legislation that may cross my desk and never will....At least I believe in God ...as a political party God is someone they booed...use the convention clip ...and the ten commandments.... and if you examine (insert name) conduct in office (his her) re-election seems to be a re-newall for the license to steal
...
Your statement would make sense if the country had 46 faiths, with none of them more than a 4% share.
Fact is, the country was founded on a compact, the compact itself was founded on, reliant on, the People's having Christian principles and good moral character. The Framers themselves emphasized this point as a caveat, over and over.
You can't split differences or find common ground between Christianity and Voodoo or Candomble or Palo Mayombe or Hinduism the way you can with Judaism. Theoretically, one could stretch and include Islam as one of the "peoples of the Book", if it were not for Islam's hostility, and that of its chief aggrandizers.
One religion has to predominate, and Christianity has the best moral, historical, and pragmatic claim to being that religion. Goldberg is just doing his Jewish demurrer thing -- he uses the rhetorical device of preterition to lay his marker here -- in asking Christians to quit being so Christian about it. Well, sorry, Jonah, but when these Protestants invoke the protection and wisdom of Providence, they have a strong tendency -- a teaching by their Nazarene Rabbi -- to do it that way.
I am with you and for a new party for Conservatives... 100%!
LLS
LLS
The GOP - not a club for Conservatives.
It is important to remember that a political party is not about principles, but about power for its members. If the GOP doesn’t see a path to power through Conservatism, it isn’t going to be Conservative. Since it is likely we have reached both a Demographic and Social tipping point, we can expect to see both the Democrats and Republicans heading left as fast as they possibly can.
How can one call the GOP a “Christian club” when it nominated for its presidential standard bearer a non-Christian?
republicans cannot win with 90% of the support of Conservatives and when 45% of the party walks away from the republican party, they will never win another national election. They have lost most of us on the right... they will see their treason rot the fruit on their vines.
LLS
Did Goldberg watch the Republican National Convention? Each day, the invocation and the benediction were performed by someone of a different faith.
The GOP does not care whether it is in majority or not, as log as its members get to keep “their” seats.
Many will be voted out of office in 2014.
LLS
“Christians are Conservatives...”
Just as the overwhelming majority of “conservatives” (in the traditional sense) are Christians — and always will be.
The reality here, uncomfortable to many, is that Christianity is the foundation upon which traditional “American conservatism” is constructed.
Take away that foundation, and the edifice built upon it collapses.
The neocons are desperately trying to tiptoe their way around this truth, refusing to acknowledge it or confront it head-on. Goldberg’s article above is an example of such footwork.
The prime reason that the majority of the Asian newcomers do not and will not embrace traditional conservatism is because they’re not Christians. They may indeed be hard-working, but they are also from a culture that traditionally embraces “conformity” to the “system”, a concept almost anathema to the “Scots-Irish” vein of conservatism that celebrates individualism and a mistrust of government.
I doubt the Republican party will ever do much better with Asians than it’s currently doing with Hispanics. Oh, they’ll try and they’ll pander, and in doing so lose many of the Euro-conservatives they actually -need- to remain the regional political party that they are “shrinking towards”.
It will probably do then more harm than good.
Mr. Goldberg, wake up!
“If you want to create a regional party in the Bible Belt that has no ability to ever win the Presidency, and ends the GOP chances of doing so till the end of time, that’s fine, but be sure you are clear on the actual implications.”
The Pubbies seem to be doing a fine job in “regionalizing” themselves, without any help from heavy9 at all.
Want to see them REALLY self-destruct? Then abandon the Christians while trying to coax non-Christians into the party.
The results will be:
- Very few non-Christians will join up, but...
- Millions of Christians will leave in disgust.
There, that fixed it!
That’s what I call strategery!
“How can one call the GOP a “Christian club” when it nominated for its presidential standard bearer a non-Christian?”
Very good point.
Do you think that could have been a factor as to why a large number of Republicans/conservatives simply stayed home this past election?
I do.
How about reaching out to the NINETY MILLION eligible voters who stay home on Election Day?
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