Conservatives, It’s Not Your Country To Take Back

If there was one phrase heard most often during the health care debate in 2009 and 2010 it was “I want my country back.” This phrase, used exclusively by white conservatives, encapsulates the palpable fear felt by a shrinking white majority. This is not a phrase that would be uttered by African-Americans or Latinos, for good reason, and let’s not mince words. — White conservatives are talking about an increasingly diverse country with many more brown and black people, and it scares them to the core.

• • •

The Republican Electoral College Math Challenge

20120812-234518.jpgIt will be interesting to see the result of the popular vote vs. electoral college in the upcoming election. Any path to victory for Mitt Romney will involve a close popular vote and close electoral college vote. For President Obama, he could win slim in the popular vote but still win fairly large in the electoral college. The problem for Republicans in this election and future elections is demographics. Many of the most populated states are solidly Democratic and they are also states that have large minority populations that are growing larger each year. As long as the Republican Party continues to be the party of old white guys (ok, Paul Ryan is only one of those things) they will find the electoral college math increasingly challenging.

• • •

GOP Disdain for Americans Who Don’t Pay Income Taxes

There is a growing chorus of Republicans singing the same tune about a recent report that 46% of Americans pay no federal incomes taxes. The voices include Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry to name the most prominent. I posit that the reason they point to this statistic is to offer further proof towards a longstanding conservative narrative that there are people in this country getting a free ride. That these people are the freeloaders that are taking advantage of the “productive class” in this country.

• • •