I spent election night this year among the Republicans, stationed out at a bland Embassy Suites for the Oregon Republican’s party, snacking on NOBAMA 100 Grand candy bars. The people in charge of the election party had started out the night streaming CBS, then switched over to FOX (which prompted cheering), then when even the news on FOX got so bad, turned off the TV altogether. The crowd quickly turned inward, everyone staring down at their phones.
As Ohio swung for Obama, I struck up conversation with the best dressed people in the room, the Log Cabin Republicans. By that point, even FOX had declared Obama the president. Everyone was a little glum, but the Log Cabiners kept their heads up.
“We have our work cut out for us,” said Oregon Log Cabin President James Owens. “We’ll be making the Republican party more inclusive, which will be making a better Republican party in the future.”
That’s the message of this election: Can the Republican party become less bigoted toward the groups that are increasingly turning out to vote? If the Republican leadership actually tries to branch out over the next four years, they’ll have to work toward policies that benefit LGBT people and women’s reproductive rights.
In this election, the Republicans alienated all kinds of voters. The Republican anti-abortion platform and rape-talk alienates women, who lean more Democrat and trounced candidates like Todd Akin. Their platform and rhetoric alienates people of color and supporters of LGBT equality and young people. Polls show that Republican leaders were hoping fewer young people would turn out than in the previous election—instead, people under 29 made up more of the electorate than in 2008 and went 60 percent for Obama. When your election strategy hinges on not turning out the vote, you know you’ve got a problem.
So: Can the Republican party actually change? In the next four years, are we going to see party drop any of its main alienating policies, or will it stick to its guns—so to speak—and hope the young, non-white, pro-gay voters just don’t show up on election day? To survive, it seems like the party will have to follow the advice of people like Owens and work to be more inclusive. What will be the bigoted policy they axe? Anti-same-sex-marriage campaigns? Racist immigration reform? Laws that limits birth control and abortion access? Promise to repeal the youth-friendly Obamacare? It will be interesting to see whether the Republican leadership can embrace the smartest people in its party—people like Owen, who understand the need for change.
The conundrum is that the only “republican” people who want to take such social-moral stands go into the political realm.
The rest just want government out of the way.
Thus you have two parties – one who wants government to dictate finances and morals, and another that wants just wants to dictate morals.
Don’t get your hopes up on them reaching out to the LGBT community. They don’t need to, and they know it; most of that community isn’t likely to vote for them whatever happens.
They do however need to reach out to women and/or immigrants. Put your money now on Ricky Rubio being their nominee in 2016.
You know, I for one appreciate it when tools like Mssrs Akin, Mourdock etc. explicitly state what much of the Republican party actually feels. Usually they do it through coded language (and certainly the laws they tend to pass reflect this), but only some are dumb enough to actually say it.
Charlie Krauthammer wrote a thing this morning about just that: “candidates who talk like morons about rape.” His suggestion is that they muzzle those who are too explicit, of course, and don’t change anything about their actual stance. The GOP won’t change: why should they? The Dumb need a party, too.
Also, I was wondering if the Merc was sending someone out to the airport on election night. I’d like to hear some more stories from that eve, Smirk.
What have Democrats done for minorities lately?
Will the Republican party will become “less bigoted” in the future? Stranger things have happened. After all, liberals now support imperialist wars, the silencing of whistle blowers, the NDAA, torture, NSA spying, GMO’s and an infinite black hole of debt to finance all of it.
No.
Probably not, especially if you look at the far right. Then again Spindles has some excellent bullet points. Both Parties suck in general and do not have your greater welfare in mind for the most part. Sorry to break that to you. Although many on here appear to be very intelligent you are also naive as hell sadly.
James Owens = Uncle Tom
todd akin = major tom