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Originally Posted by wolfbittenpoet
What happened to Log Cabin Republicanism? What happened to when republicans really were the liberals? I know it's idealistic but I think we need a modern day Abe Lincoln. Suspend civil liberties it's already occuring but at least make some long term changes.
Plus whoever hired Anne Coulter must be smoking crack.  |
Since the Southern Strategy came up yesterday, I thought I would put in this quote from Kevin Phillips (who authored the strategy) as quoted by the WaPo's Eugene Robinson in his column this morning. This is Phillips interviewed by the NYT in 1970:
"From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that," Phillips said, "but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."
Robinson goes on to say that he wishes the GOP would do more to court the black vote. I'm going to do him one better and say that the GOP would do well to court the black and *queer* votes. Now, before I get deeper into this let me make it clear I am a political liberal that believes that social democracy is the most stable form of politico-economic arrangement yet conceived. That said, I'm also a political pragmatist and so I think that the Democratic party should have to compete for my vote both as a lesbian and as a black woman. Yet they don't HAVE to compete for my vote because the other party has almost nothing at all to offer me in their stated platform. If I look at something BEYOND my own short-term economic interests then the Democratic party is my natural home.
This is why these two black gay Republicans make *some* kind of sense to me. If you ignore the theocratic bent of the Republican party or dismiss the religious right as simply so many snake-handlers meeting in a basement church then if you are on a certain part of the economic food chain then voting Republican makes sense. The GOP is doing what makes strategic sense in the short-term but not in the long term. They would be better served by trying to sheer off the more economically secure people of color and queer people but that would require them alienating their older, conservative, white Christian base which isn't about to happen anytime before I am old and grey.
Now, would I vote Republican if they did outreach? No, because I have reasons for voting liberally that goes beyond the social issues (pro-choice, pro gay rights, etc.) but the GOP SHOULD be competing for my vote but they aren't.
Cheers
Aj