With Republican candidates for president lining up to pledge that they won’t even consider appointing any Muslims to their cabinet I have to wonder how close to zero percent of the Muslim vote the eventual nominee will get in 2012. Obviously, there are always some folks who can overlook that kind of hostility and vote for people who openly hate them, but rarely does hate get this explicit. I’m sure there must have been more than one African-American who voted for Strom Thurmond, by mistake if nothing else, but I’m sure Strom could count his black votes on his fingers and toes. In a state like Michigan, where Republicans just had a big year, getting no Muslim votes could be decisive. But sending that kind of message to Muslims has to have carry-over effects to other minority groups. And it’s all part of a larger narrative the Republicans have been crafting over the last few years since Bush left office. Non-whites need not apply. At some point, I think this approach is going to start hurting the GOP even among whites. Certainly, the younger generations are going to be repelled. Don’t you think?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
All the younger people I know, from my kids on down are pretty much color blind. They are one of my greatest hopes for us as a society.
I have to agree with Indianadem on this one. I have hope for the future. In this area, which is hugely Republican by the way, the extent to which race, religion and sexual orientation are non-issues with young people is really amazing to me. Generally speaking, they really don’t care. I know this is only anecdotal, but so many of them seem to truly judge people by “the content of ones character”. They look at all these middle aged bigots around here with complete bewilderment.
We had dinner last night with some old friends and their 16 year old daughter was talking about three friends of hers who are openly gay in high school. And she says, “Mostly, no one cares. They’re cool. Why should it matter if they’re gay.” Her dad, not a narrow minded person by any means, doesn’t quite know what to make of it all.
Agreed, and the demographic changes provide evidence for the hope.
Roughly 4 million young people each year for the coming decade will turn 18. That’s 40 million potential voters. Assuming only half of them vote, and that they split 60-40 for Democrats, that’s a net plus of 4 million votes for the Democratic ticket nationally in 2020 compared to the current electorate. That’s not even counting the mortality effects (mostly older, whiter and more conservative voters dying off).
When Karl Rove wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold, frightened sweat, this is why.
I find it really funny, within my own family, how uncomfortable some of them get that their white teenage kids/grandkids have African-American friends, Asian friends, Hispanic friends and even Middle Eastern friends. And the kids don’t blink an eye when it comes to some of the cultural customs they see within their circle of friends.
Cute girl has a red dot between her eyes?? Kid’s don’t care. They just think it’s really cool that her dad has a hookah.
The grown ups don’t like it. They don’t like it one bit.
It seems to be hurting the Repubs now.
The Peter King hearing didn’t go over well.
They are painting themselves into a corner.
I think the gambit the GOP is making is that for every vote they lose through bigoted rhetoric like this, they make up AT LEAST one vote from a frustrated white voter. In the long run alienating non-white voters is a horrible strategy, but the GOP has other plans for the long-run that nullify this potential advantage as well (this is what’s at stake in WI, IN, etc with respect to union power).
Although its nothing new, I don’t think it can be stressed enough about what is motivating voters today. Voters don’t look to see which party/candidate is going to make them better off (that’s a very complicated calculation that most individuals can’t work through) but rather which party has their back. In other words, its about identity politics. If you’re an aging white person struggling to make ends meet, the goal of the GOP messaging is to convince that person that its the GOP that has your back. That’s what a vote signifies these days- a recognition that a certain party or candidate has your best interests at heart- regardless of what those interests really are since that’s a step beyond most voters.
Bigoted rhetoric by the right is a signalling mechanism used to corral electoral majorities based on strong support from white voters. And its working.
jcbhan, I agree that the GOP strategy is to “corral electoral majorities based on strong support from white voters.” The reason I’m somewhat hopeful about the future is:
I also agree that the GOP “has other plans for the long-run”, e.g. unions in the Midwest. The problem for Republicans in the Midwest is that, to take Wisconsin as an example:
*1 in 5 households has a public employee or retiree. *1 in 5 households has a union member or retiree.
*those are overlapping sets of households, so that it’s likely that nearly 1/3 of Wisconsin households fall into one of those two categories.
It’s one thing to demonize illegal immigrants (who are young and can’t vote), or Muslims (who are less than 2% of the population in most states. It’s another to overreach and pick a needless fight with a constituency that touches nearly half of all voters without leaving home.
Got “or” and “and” mixed up, there. This means that between 1/10 (non overlap) and 1/5 (100% overlap) have a public employee OR a retiree.
Still a big enough margin to swing an election, normally.
Right, but what the GOP is counting on is that weakening the political power of the unions outweighs the benefits to the dems of picking up union voters who finally know who’s got their back. In my more optimistic moments, I agree with you and think the GOP is overextending themselves here. But its important to keep in mind I think that since November 2008, the GOP hasn’t lost many political battles. I’m not saying they’re geniuses but they are fairly shrewd operators- thinking our guys can beat them at this game may be overly optimistic.
I think this is largely correct, but you have your tense wrong.
The gambit the GOP was making was that for every vote they lost through bigoted rhetoric they made up at least one vote from a frustrated white voter.
That’s the gambit known as the “Southern Strategy” – and it’s the gambit they started running in the 70’s following the Civil Rights Act.
But that’s not what they’re doing anymore – oh, they’re still following the Southern Strategy, but it’s a “strategy” in name only. The cynical political manipulators have been replaced by True Believers – they aren’t cynically using race to drum up votes anymore – they’re just garden-variety racists. It’s like the strategy died a long time back but it lives on as some kind of “strategy zombie” – lurching around and causing mayhem long after it’s value to Brand GOP has declined.
Rove and Bush the Lesser knew this was a problem back in 2000 – hell Bush the Lesser was specifically marketing himself as someone who would reach out to the Hispanic community. But the zombie strategy is just too powerful. And even as the old racists die off, who’s going to replace them?
I agree this isn’t something entirely new, but I do think its an evolution of the strategy, not a zombie version of it. We are living in times where working and middle class americans haven’t had it this bad since the great depression. Every day, the media reports how bad our debt is and how deep spending cuts need to be made. Government is going to shrink and the safety net is going to shrink as well. This is a new dynamic, as the post WWII consensus is essentially no longer applicable. Under this dynamic, bigoted rhetoric isn’t just about dividing people across race instead of class- its about signalling to people which party will fight for which race. When GOP candidates go after Muslims rhetorically, the whole point is just to say, hey white voter, I’ve got your back- like looks out for like and in times like these, you got to stick with who you can trust. There are many more scared, nervous white folks then there are unreconstructed racists, hence the nature of the appeal.
They honestly don’t care Booman.
They’ve seen what kind of discord they can sow when they’re out of power, and they figure that if they lose they can keep grinding people down.
That’s if they lose: I suspect they are counting on the lies generated by the citizens united decision to propel them to victory, and use their bench of governors for strong arm tactics that disenfranchise the kind of voters that vote for democrats. I believe that process is well underway in Ohio and Indiana.
As we saw in 2000, you can win an election even when you didn’t. With the current SCOTUS, I can see a repeat of that. Can’t you?
You have ma a good, if scary point and one worth me thinking about. Thanks.
made
It wasn’t too many years ago when American Jews would have been amongst the first to stand up and protest this anti-Muslim propaganda, correctly surmising that crossing out the word “Muslim” and writing in the word “Jewish” was not a very big stretch for most of these people.
I’m particularly surprised not to hear more concern about the I-Hate-Sharia-Law camp, given that here in NY we have in fact enshrined provisions of Jewish law (the “get” in a divorce) in our statutes.
When you see them attack Muslims, it’s easy to take away Muslim, and insert the ‘ other’.
they think that they can VOTER SUPPRESS their way to victory in 2012.