Republicans and Racism

I have a a fair amount of Republican friends, some of whom may choose to re-evaluate their status after reading this article. that's fair enough; I am speaking in generalities here, and that shouldn't require constant disclaimers.

I also have number of NON Republican friends, a strong number of whom consider the GOP to be racist. I'm usually dismissive of that kind of talk, but after the last election, I have to wonder if there's more truth than non truth.

Before going forward, let me be very clear: this is not about whether you did or did not vote for Obama. This is about whether fears and concerns about the future were based primarily on race, rather than reality.

Republicans should have loved Obama's first term. Gun control? Not a whimper, aside from the chatter that followed the unfortunate shooting of Gabriel Giffords. Trickle down economics? Done, to the point of not one, but TWO stimulus packages that favored big banks, interest rates held at historic lows, and tax policy that retained capital gains at a low rate favoring the wealthy. War President? He continued action on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, only scaling down the latter on a timetable established by his predecessor.

Add to that his continuation of detentions at Guantanamo Bay, extension of Patriot Act Provisions, and adoption of a longstanding Republican health care model based on an individual mandate, and you could have called this guy Bush III.

But Republicans suddenly became fiscal conservatives, and the deficits that "didn't matter" under Bush II became deficits that mattered. And the same people that gave W a blank check to reinvigorate the economy got squeamish.

But even that paled in comparison to their Presidential choice. If they wanted a candidate who could make government so small "you can drown it in a bathtub", they had that candidate. They had that chance. Ron Paul offered all of that and more.

Instead they chose as a candidate the one who authored the model for the ACA; a big government, big spender from Massachussetts. Why? Aside from his contempt for the poor, there really was not a huge difference between Obama and Romney. No radical new tax plan, no spending reduction plan, nothing that would have altered the suddenly all important budget significantly. No exit strategy for the remaining war in Afghanistan, or government reduction plan, when these issues were allegedly important. Only vague suggestions, altogether reminiscent of the "change" mantra from 4 years ago.

Ahhh, but it gets better. The GOP prides itself on the Christian Right (a group that is neither). And having lived for most of my life around people who self identify as part of the Christian Right, I know that in their worship, they're pretty open about the feeling that the LDS church is a cult. There have been volumes of books written on the subject, and all you need to do is walk into a Christian bookstore OUTSIDE of the state of Utah, and you'll find them prominently displayed in the cult section. Yet all of that not only didn't matter to these people, they literally shouted down anyone who felt that it SHOULD matter.

Seeing all of this, one has to wonder why. Why they would select as their candidate a priesthood holder in a faith they consider to be evil over another candidate whose policies were largely a continuation of the policies of his predecessor. And as I search the horizon, I can find only one.

Are Republicans racists? I can't call that, really. I know a good number of Republicans who are decent people, who don't have a racist bone in their body. Those people were usually the ones who reluctantly voted for Romney, in my personal experience. But it's starting to appear there is at least a plurality within the party that does the label does fit. And that plurality, I believe, is significant enough that no thinking conservative would want to be involved with a party that allows and even embraces it.