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Party of Lincoln, Lincoln, Bo, Bincoln . . .
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9 Responses to “Party of Lincoln, Lincoln, Bo, Bincoln . . .”
No matter how much they protest about scheduling conflicts, actions speak louder than words for the four frontrunners. I agree with Gingrich and Kemp that this is a grievous error and with Huckabee that the frontrunners have shamed the party. Missing this debate as well as the one held by the Urban League and the upcoming debate on Univision puts the party in a poor position to counteract arguments that they are now the party of the affluent, suburban white male.
Even if they make no converts in the black community, the symbolism of reaching out is key to their assertions that they are still the party of Lincoln in 2007.
Kritter: The GOP as the party of Lincoln means absolutely nothing and has meant absolutely nothing for decades. Everything changed once FDR engineered the New Deal and LBJ made minority groups not only recognized, not only protected, but favored for entitlements.
The GOP is now the stereotypical demon of the Left when the Left is rabid, and draws sighs from the Left the rest of the time: It is the party of middle-age-and-older, normally-more-affluent, white males. Just look at the photographs atop this thread.
Very few of the elite liberal whites who want to critcize Republicans for not appearing in front of a gorup of voters who will never vote for a Republican have pointed out how Brownback was shamelessly pandering to the blacks in the audience.
Brownback’s behavoir serves as the perfect example of why the Repubican frontrunnters did not show up. All of the Repubican candidates would have been expected to pander as much or more than Brownback and would have been called racist if they had not.
The black vote is lost to Republicans and the front runners know it. Also, the elite whites in the MSM know it but that does not keep them from repeating liberal talking points about how the Republicans should pander to blacks.
DLS, SD- So you admit that the GOP is the party of the affluent white male. That’s not going to be enough to keep you guys in power.
And all politicians pander to their supporters- they bring home the bacon in the form of earmarks and take money from lobbyists which then affects their votes. Republicans don’t mind demagoging to white voters about illegal immigration when they think they have a receptive audience. Pandering is just another word for campaigning.
Affirmative action was initiated to try to help blacks catch up after decades of Jim Crow. Lincoln probably would have approved. How is letting a poor black kid into Yale any different than letting someone like George Bush in as a legacy admission? Probably both lack the qualifications to get in on their own. Affirmative action just evens the playing field so that everyone has a chance.
krit,
Pandering is making pointless apologies like Bill Clinton loved to do.
Actually, the affluent vote Democratic. How else to you think that DC, NYC, and San FRancisco vote so overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates. Look at the red/blue county map of the U.S. and it should be easy to see that Republicans are generally the middle class whites and the Democratic Party is the rich, the poor, and minorities. If you would study the politics of banana republicans and third world countries, it would resemble the Democratic Party.
If the Democratic Party wants to discriminate for social engineering reasons, then it should amend the Constitution to allow the government to discriminate. Since, the Constituion says that the government cannot discriminate on the basis of race, AA is unconstitutional. Look at how the courts has to create the idea of “compelling intereat” to find a reasons to violate people’s rights.
George Bush got into Yale 40 years ago under a very different system than today. The question today is why should the children of Barack Obama get into Yale with an SAT score of 200 points less than some middle class white family where the parents attend a state univeristy.
Besides, every study that very looked at AA at the Ivies has shown that very few poor blacks benefit. Over half of the “blacks” at the Ivies are really the children of immigrants or are foreign exchange.
Pandering is part of the job description for politicians. The only point of political speeches is to pander in order to get votes, so let’s keep accusations of pandering in perspective.
It’s only when pandering is largely hypocritical or begins to look like bribery that it’s worthy of discussion.
That the absentees were so condemmed by those who came to pander was just another example of political maneuvering. It was a chance for the second stringers to draw attention to themselves, and they took the chance.
Business as usual and nothing extraordinary, as far as I could see
Yes, that is what the party is best known for, truly identified with, the affluent white male, though plenty of affluent and not-as-affluent white females vote Republican, too (they don’t like the Dems any more than the males do, or would be as ashamed as the males to vote Democratic), and minorities vote Republican, too, and not just during periods of war and terrorism when they view the Democrats not only as soft on crime but on our foreign enemies, too. (2002 and 2004 do not define a new permanent trend; 2006 proved that. Even 1994 was not necessarily pro-Republican; it was obviously anti-Clinton and was also anti-Democratic. It truly shocked the media and other loci of people much more liberal and heavily Democratic and out of sync with the American public, while shocking nobody on the street, Main Street.)
We are far different than in 1950-1960 (despite what radicals may falsely claim — as any visit to California or any thriving major metro area will promptly reveal as well as to so many modern workplaces — who hasn’t worked for women by now, for example?), but the face of the US mainstream remains that of a middle-age-and-older white male. That is associated as well with conservatism (greatly distorted by liberals), as people tend to become more conservative as they grow older, more experienced in life, and wiser (and yes, become creatures of habit as well as become jaded or cynical sometimes, or pessimistic rather than optimistic).
The Democrats have no shame. Would they use what else, a child as a prop to gain support for their S-CHIP-based federal health care expansion effort, because they say it’s For the Children! [tm]? Yes, they are exploiting a child. They have no shame.
Kritter, affirmative action is wrong (it is, in fact, unconstitutional as well as morally wrong because it is reverse discrimination and frequently undisguised white-bashing, not merely radical, pathological nihilistically perverted egalitarianism), as is the legacy system (and other instances of exceptional advantages based on connections of various kinds, such as nepotism and cronyism).
Actually, whites have been on the defensive since liberalism became radical and became not only nihilistic, but filled with pathological anger and even hatred not only of the USA and the West and its successes, but against men and particularly against whites, not just mainstream society and culture — and singled out for hatred are Southern whites and the religious (because they normally are not liberal, much less radical; they are heretical to the political correctness quasi-religion).
You should be aware that the majority of Americans, not only whites, are strongly in favor of immigration reform, which includes limits on immigration; few but radicals and others with special interests at stake want unlimited immigration. There is no absolute freedom to come here, and of course there are no rights by anyone who comes here to receive entitlements of all kinds (and vote Democratic in gratitude).
DLS- You know perfectly well that the reason that Americans are up in arms about immigration is that talk radio loudmouths and Lou Dobbs screaming incessantly about amnesty for over 2 years.
I’d liken it to the populist demagogery that we saw when Dubai was about to take over the management of our ports. But getting the masses incensed produces unworkable, expensive solutions that are dreamed up to appease them (like rounding up 12 million illegals and shipping them home) . This in turn prevents anyone from coming up with a reasonable compromise that will at least address the problem.
Affirmative action was instituted to remedy the much greater moral wrong —decades of segregation, which systematically insured that whites only could advance to the upper echelons of society.
Had slavery followed by Jim Crow not existed, it wouldn’t have been necessary to have affirmative action programs. I believe most affirmative action programs were initiated under President Nixon- a Republican. (even though he also benefitted from using the Southern strategy in his elections to flip racist whites who had previously belonged to the Democratic or Dixiecrat parties)
As I sit here and read the comments people have on what is right and wrong about politics I wonder where the actual discussion went.? So, since it went to race and then to children and insurance and then to immagration I am having a hard time fallowing any of the converstation or is it just because everyone is on their “soapbox”? I believe I will join the crowd and hop up on my “soapbox” and ask…
are any of you in to position to understand how any of this really effects the “average joe”? You know the ones that live on the border and experience immagration first hand or do any of you have children and are not the “bourgeois” so affording insurance is not a question, it is just not a possiblity altogether or are you all really good at jumping on a band wagon of politics or do you argue these things because you experience first hand?