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This is the face of the modern Republican Party

by: The Big E

Fri Jul 17, 2009 at 18:19:30 PM CDT

I've been following the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings. I'm not surprised, but I am appalled at the overt racism of today's Republican Party. From the de facto leader of the party, Rush Limbaugh, to their propaganda arm, Fox News, to the Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee embarrassing themselves every time they open their mouths, they are all playing the same racist game. They are following Nixon's southern strategy through to it's bitter, divisive ends.

The Republicans have become a southern regional party. They're power in the NE, midwest and west coast has drastically diminished and will likely continue to do so.

Why?

Pat Buchanan exemplifies everything that is wrong with the modern Republican party. The modern Republican party is angry and racist and not afraid to say so.

The Republicans have probably permanently lost the hispanic vote with these confirmation hearings.

So what are the implications of this for the MN?

The Big E :: This is the face of the modern Republican Party

The MN Republicans are just a microcosm of the national party. Duh. That's not exactly brilliant analysis, but as the Republican gubernatorial candidates vie for their party's nomination, they will play to their base which means when it comes to immigration, they're going to be just as racist as the national party.

Republican candidates are going to score points with their base by trying to one-up each other on how much they hate hispanics and how hard they'll crack down on them if they were to become Governor.

They're going to promise that if they're Governor, they'll make sure that police and state troopers become enforcement arms for the INS. They might even promise to get the police to start checking for immigration papers for anyone who looks hispanic ... can you imagine how this would play out in real life?

They're going to promise to do make sure the police are pulling more drivers over for DWH (driving while hispanic). Of course, they will try and couch this in Orwellian terms so that at face value it doesn't sound quite as racist as it is.

They will promise the base that they will make sure that no illegal immigrant's child born in the US has a chance at citizenship.

They will promise to make sure that no illegal immigrant can get access to health care in MN.

What can we progressives do about this? First of all, continue to organize. We need to work at organizing in the Hispanic/Latino community so that they know what the stakes are in the 2010 Governor's race. We need to get even more of this community registered to vote and out to the polls.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) worked hard in 2008 to explode the vote in his district. What if we could have turned out an extra 1% in MN-05? Franken would've won by thousands. What if we can increase the turnout in the Hispanic/Latino community by 5% in 2010?

Tags: Pat Buchanan, Racism, Republican, MN-Gov, Minnesota, Governor, (All Tags)

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This is the face of the modern Republican Party | 3 comments

neo-Know Nothing (0.00 / 0)

"Neo-Know Nothing" is a term I coined to describe what is commonly called nativist or paleoconservative, to differentiate them from neoconservatives, but since "neoconservative" has become a common term, I like "neo-Know Nothing" better. How this relates to your post is how this conservative racism will affect the Hispanic community, because I'm seeing parallels between how modern Republicans alienate Hispanics and how the Know Nothings of the middle 19th century helped drive Irish Catholics into the Democratic party for a century. Actually, Buchanan has long reminded me of the Know Nothings.

It strikes me as ironic to see an Irish Catholic nativist, because Buchanan's ideological ancestors hated...Irish Catholics. They organized themselves to make life suck for immigrants, and forced immigrants to organize too in order to have a share of public life. The place where the Irish organized themselves was in the Democratic Party, which had no defining ideology, but was an existing party that could be taken over. This was the mechanism by which the Irish built the big city machines, which we think of in terms of corruption like Boss Tweed, but allowed people formerly outside the power structure to get a share of power for themselves. For all the corruption, things did get done. The Irish could get the streets fixed, get hired for city jobs, etc.

And these Irish stayed reliably Democratic through the Kennedy administration.

Obviously there some differences between Hispanics and Irish, like a century and a half has passed, and Hispanics are much more polyglot than the Irish were. Nonetheless, predictably, Republican nativism and racism has pushed Hispanics towards the Democratic Party and like the Irish of the original Know Nothings' time, these are a group that is growing in number and disproportionately new voters still forming their voting habits. So the Republicans are taking a serious risk of pushing away Hispanics for generations to come. They have just a few more elections, tops, to avoid this calamity, while we have an opportunity to make Hispanics a Democratic voting block.

by: ericf @ Sat Jul 18, 2009 at 01:17:48 AM CDT

One long spin of lies (0.00 / 0)

Media Matters tackles that here

http://mediamatters.org/resear...

by: Grace Kelly @ Sat Jul 18, 2009 at 10:26:35 AM CDT

As long as we look at people as voting blocs (0.00 / 0)

the country should remain in great shape. Seems like the Alberto Gonzales thing didn't work out so well either. Hopefully the "Hispanic bloc" can be counted on in the future as a one issue group...

by: tom a. @ Sun Jul 19, 2009 at 21:34:11 PM CDT