More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
October 18 - November 1, 2020
There is a collective blame shared by those of us who have created the modern Republican Party that has so egregiously failed the principles it claimed to represent.
With the bulk of the black vote going to a third-party candidate, the race between the Republican and the Democrat largely came down to a fight for white voters.
What happens if you spend decades focused on appealing to white voters and treating nonwhite voters with, at best, benign neglect? You get good at doing what it takes to appeal to white voters. That is the truth that led to what is famously called “the southern strategy.” That is the path that leads you to becoming what the Republican Party now proudly embraces: a white grievance party.
The fact that the Republican establishment is so invested in the myth that their problems are a matter of language is revealing and self-damning. At the root of it is a deep condescension that they—the de facto White Party of America—know what is best for black folks, and it’s unfortunate these black folks don’t seem to get it but, you know, they are different and we have to talk to them in a language they can understand. The reality is just the opposite.
Since then, in my decades working in Republican politics, I have heard variations on this theme countless times, referring to black voters, Hispanic voters, Asian voters—any nonwhite voters: they care about the same issues as white voters. This is one of those insidious half-truths that conceal a deeper, more important truth. Yes, pretty much all voters do care about jobs. But to say a white college-educated male or female cared about jobs in the same way as an African American is delusional. It was akin to saying that everyone would like not to get shot and that this truth means the same to a
...more
The majority of all welfare goes to white Americans and always has, but the specificity of a woman in Chicago makes the racial appeal clear.
The modern Democratic Party has fought for civil rights and believes government has a moral role in helping to create racial equality in America. The modern Republican Party has fought civil rights and is very hesitant to assert government has a role in equality of any sort, including racial.
But the inadequacy of legislation supported by Democrats is far different from a calculated effort to appeal to white voters by manipulating the race issue. One is a failure of policy. The other is a moral failure.
So many Republicans embraced Trump’s view that they were victims, as was he, because they had actually believed this all along. Theirs was a white birthright, and the rise of nonwhites was an unjust usurping of their rights.
How do you abandon deeply held beliefs about character, personal responsibility, foreign policy, and the national debt in a matter of months? You don’t. The obvious answer is those beliefs weren’t deeply held. In the end, the Republican Party rallied behind Donald Trump because if that was the deal needed to regain power, what was the problem? Because it had always been about power. The rest? The principles? The values? It was all a lie.
The entire modern Republican definition of the conservative movement is about efforts to define itself as “normal” and everything else as “not normal.”
who paint their bodies with the team colors and go shirtless on frigid days. It’s the crazy person who lunges at the ref and jumps over seats to fight the other team’s fans who is cheered by his fellow fans as he is led away on the jumbotron. What is the
If it often seems that the Republican Party is living in a world disconnected from reality, that’s because it is. Large elements of the Republican Party have made a collective decision that there is no objective truth.
Legitimizing hate is like a war: it is easier to begin than to stop. If there is any one single truth that binds together the varying concepts of conservatism, it must be about the nature of conserving that which is essential to a civil society.
“The final test.” This is the language used to recruit suicide bombers, not a rational discussion of political choices in a civil society. The reality that so many Republicans feel the need to justify their support of Trump with these apocalyptic constructs is a telling indication of their desperate contortions to prove that doing what they know is wrong is in pursuit of some higher good.
In Trump’s mind—and it sadly reflects the minds of many Republicans—the assumption is that any illegal voters would be Democratic voters with the associated assumption that they must be illegal Hispanic voters. As a way of trying to justify voter-suppression steps, the Republican Party has invested heavily in the myth of voter fraud. The fraud is trying to convince the public there is voter fraud of any significance. I’ve worked in campaigns since 1978, and I don’t know of a single race in which illegal voters were remotely a factor. Does some illegal voting happen? Sure, just as elephantiasis
...more
The new voter suppression of the Republican Party is almost an inevitable outcome of the party’s failure to expand beyond white voters, combined with a self-rationalizing conviction that winning by any means is more than justified; it is required to save the country from…something.
The common thread is fear. Fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of losing power while forgetting the purpose of power.
But Republicans have thrown their power behind making sure more of “their” people vote instead of trying to make the party more appealing.
Only once since 1988 have Republicans won the popular vote in a presidential race. A sane reaction to that reality would be to acknowledge that the party must fundamentally change.