Pro-life and pro-family agendas can appeal to minority voters in an increasingly diverse society. California, Arizona and Florida approved amendments banning same-sex marriage. They did so at least partially on the basis of African-American and Hispanic voters who "surged" for Barack Obama and then voted against same-sex marriage. In California (70%) and Florida (71%) black voters supported both traditional marriage and Sen. Obama overwhelmingly.
The third core value must be a diversity agenda that aggressively recruits ethnic minorities into significant involvement in the GOP. The 2008 Republican National Convention did not reflect America's ethnic diversity. Demographics dictate that this must change, and decency demands that it should. This must include a more proactive approach on immigration reform.
So not entirely for the rest of us, but if it were inclusive it wouldn't be a southern strategy. I've thought that this was the way forward for the GOP for awhile--thought not that forward. In a parallel universe, where Hillary and Huckabee have gotten their respective party's nomination, I see Huckabee peeling off a solid 20--possibly 30--percent of the black vote.
That said, much like the original Southern Strategy, this is the sort of solution that bets on ignorance and the past, as opposed to education and the future. "Blame teh blackz" and especially "blame teh latinz," presents a demographic problem that "blame teh gayz" doesn't. But it still has the same limited returns, in that it bets on young people being as uncomfortable with gay people as their parents. I see virtually no evidence to support that idea, and a lot of evidence for the reverse. A bet against gay marriage is a bet against the future. These cats are going to have to come up with something that appeals to young people--not because young people are going to vote at the same rate as their parents, but because young people will one day actually be parents.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I don't mind religious leaders commenting on political issues, but the way Richard Land shills for the GOP is disgraceful. If he wants to be a GOP operative, he should quit his job with the SBC.
A bet against gay marriage is a bet against the future.
But conservatism as a philosophy is a bet against the future. It's based on the notion that things were better in the past, and that we need to return to some nostalgic golden age that never really existed. That's a hard enough sell to anyone who isn't rich and white, but it's a really hard sell to any person of color in this country, because the recent past wasn't all that great for them, and the farther back you go, the crappier it gets.
There's a reason why conservatism is becoming the bastion of upper-middle-aged white men--because fifty years ago was the height of their power. No wonder they want to go back to it.
It always amazes me how these moral issues are discussed entirely tactically, without any moral weight. Doesn't the GOP rank-and-file realize from this that their leadership doesn't give a shit for their big social issues, and are basically looking for foot soldiers willing to vote against their own economic interests? Doesn't the amorality of this approach give the GOP leadership pause? And what has any of this got to do with anything approaching real public policy?
Huckabee's appeal, I always thought, was as much about his populism as his conservatism, though-- he wouldn't have made John McCain's mistake of not using the word 'middle class' enough in speeches and debates. I notice Land's tapped into this too, suggesting a real economic agenda and 'helping people help themselves' in education.
I would love to see a real 'pro-family' agenda in politics. But I think shutting the door in the faces of gays and lesbians isn't pro-family at all, and it's a wedge that can hurt as much as help.
This reminds me of two recent news bits:
1) Sarah Palin, asked by Wolf Blitzer about one or two Republican ideas for the future, replied that Republican governors have a lot of them, being on the front lines and all. When he followed up (her personal kryptonite) she repeated that governors are the place to go for your front line ideas.
2) Some Republican guy, defending Palin, pointed out that Pawlenty and Crist had all these ideas for appealing to a broader base but their states didn't even go Republican this year. So let's see, they got elected as Republicans in states that trended blue, and the presumption is that they know nothing about how to win a race. No, Palin, whose state went Republican like it usually does, is the model for how to win.
For the first point, Republicans need some actual pro-family initiatives. They need to figure out whether they are for or against or neutral on family values for gay people. They need to figure out how "pro-family initiative" and "smaller government" go together. That is, they can't start winning voters of color and young people on pro-family stuff until they figure out some consistent positions other than stating they are in favor of the family.
For the second point, they need to find something better than "Dear registered Republican, please go find a person of color and tell them why you are a Republican, and why they should become one." Start talking to Republicans who have won in blue states and won those swing groups in swing states--they know something about broadening the coalition and appealing to enough voters to win.
Right now the Palin-is-the-solution people still seem to be winning, and so I don't see much progress beyond "Announce that we ARE conservative, wait for people to flood to us" as a strategy going forward. I don't see that working.
Deleted. Weird crowd I'm attracting post-election...
The problem with terms like "pro-family," Persia, is that they don't mean anything in and of themselves. The religious right says they're "pro-family" by hating on LGBT folks, by opposing a woman's right to choose, and by trying to impose a very limited view of Christianity on the public square. People like me say we're "pro-family" by pushing for same-sex marriage and the rights of LGBT couples to adopt, early childhood education, universal health care, easy access to birth control and the morning after pill as well as the right to choose, affordable child care, better schools, and so on. Who's right?
Well, obviously, I am, but my point is that it's not enough to simply throw the label out there without something to define it, without something to back it up.
First, Nigel, you make me laugh.
Second, TNC, I am always a little skeptical of narratives of inevitable progress, or that just give it a generation and it will work itself out. Because politics change over time. I don't doubt that some of those young voters "slide" as they get older. That may not change your overall message that the Republicans seem out of touch with youth and will probably have to work to get them to slide into homophobia. But without struggle from the other side, that may not be so difficult. So the watchword ought not be "wait," but, still, "struggle."
Well, obviously, I am, but my point is that it's not enough to simply throw the label out there without something to define it, without something to back it up.
Total agreement. And I'm not particularly emotionally invested in helping the Republicans define the right message that would be 'pro-family' and actually, you know, appeal to people. But I think Huckabee had the right idea-- to talk about giving economic opportunity to families, etc. What about older couples who can't get married because they'd lose the Social Security/Medicaid benefits they rely on? Why not talk about something like that?
Richard Land should either leave his official position with the Southern Baptists or they should lose their tax exemption. Lest we forget, this is a church that exists as an independent entity solely because they provided theological justifications for slavery and segregation for over a century.
The denomination is fully in the hands of rightwing ideologues. "Diversity" for them, as it is for many corporate entities, is not a value - it's a desperate strategy for survival in a world that's moving beyond their insular agendas. Also telling that Land's social agenda is so in line with the Latter Day Saints, who after years of preaching hate ("Communist control" of the civil rights movement was one of their hobby horses well into the '60s) only recognized black people as worthy of full membership about 15 years AFTER the Civil Rights Bill was passed (and that under heavy external pressure.)
The Southern Baptists aren't simply morally opposed to homosexual practices among their flock - they are aggressively spreading a deep antagonism. They went so far as to pass a resolution opposing Clinton's nomination of James Hormel, a gay philanthropist, as Ambassador to Luxemborg. Land is a demagogic scumbag of major proportions, albeit a slick one, with a lock on a key commission within his church that he uses to promote the rightwing of the GOP.
What the hell is the WSJ doing treating him as any more credible now in an op-ed than some flaming segregationist in 1963 ? He's not just some old guy who's behind the curve, he's aggressively at the center of the fight against democratic rights. (I guess that's a question that answers itself re: WSJ. I keep forgetting the schizo Journal is two different papers - one with news, the other a more literate version of the Rush Limbaugh show. )
But I think Huckabee had the right idea-- to talk about giving economic opportunity to families, etc. What about older couples who can't get married because they'd lose the Social Security/Medicaid benefits they rely on? Why not talk about something like that?
Because the other huge bloc in the Republican party is made up of the people who want to reduce government to the point where it can be drowned in a bathtub. They want to privatize, if not completely eliminate Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, because their idea of economic opportunity involves a return to the Gilded Age, where a very small number had all the wealth, and everyone else worked until they died--and they tended to die young by today's standards.
I don't know, but since Republicans have long since branded themselves as the party of "business," a quick mental survey of the young voters I know (my kids are 20 and 22, so I know lots of new voters,) leads me to believe business ethics is the open door for Republican branding.
They're sick of being sold crap. They spend a great deal of their time scoping out what they believe are the superior products amongst the sea of crap since they are living on very limited budgets.
They've watched the financial failures, they have trouble finding jobs pay better then minimum wage or treat them with anything remotely resembling respect. . .and they know they'll be paying off this debt.
So if Republicans want their votes; I'd say business ethics is the key. Better products, better work environments, more accountability, and less scamming consumers/workers. Otherwise, they'll be union members/dems for life.
"The third core value must be a diversity agenda that aggressively recruits ethnic minorities into significant involvement in the GOP."
Republicans have been doing this for years, with little to show for it. Look at President Bush's cabinet, the most diverse one in this country's history. Remember that the GOP nominated African American Senate candidates in Ohio and Maryland in '06, and the Maryland candidate (Michael Steele) is in consideration to be the next head of the RNC. Consider also that the candidate of the future who gets Rush Limbaugh excited is an Indian American, Bobby Jindal. The reason Republicans have had little to show for their minority outreach is the same reason they've had diminishing returns with cultural issues: economics trumps identity politics, and it trumps cultural issues.
Republicans need to advocate economic policies that will facilitate the creation of sustainable, good-paying jobs for more Americans (not the sort of unionism practiced by the UAW, which is clearly not sustainable). When people can support themselves comfortably, they are more likely to vote for the party that advocates (or used to advocate) limited government. Some of these policies might include:
- Increased domestic energy exploration and production, and increased use of nuclear power. Aside from directly creating a lot of high-paying jobs, this will lead to lower energy costs. All things being equal, lower energy costs will encourage more businesses to start or expand in the U.S.
- Lower taxes on businesses. Republicans need to forget about promising lower personal income taxes -- the income tax code is already so progressive that most Americans pay little in federal income taxes anyway. Better to focus on making taxes on businesses more competitive with those in other first world countries. No reason why we should have higher corporate income tax rates than Sweden, for example. If that means making up the lost revenues by shifting to a consumption tax, so be it.
- An immigration policy closer to the kind that, say, Australia has -- one that seeks to attract immigrants with high levels of human capital, who will pay more in taxes than they consume in government resources, and who will contribute at high levels to American industry and entrepreneurship, creating more jobs. Not the current system that attracts unskilled workers who are a net drain on government resources and who drive down the wages of unskilled Americans.
@zic: That would be a good idea, but those things suggest improved regulation, i.e. making things transparent requires someone to check up on that, impose penalties, etc. They need to square that with drowning the government in the bathtub. (Or admitting that people don't want the government drowned in a bathtub, and worry about having something to eat at age 65, rather than workers conveniently dying off at 50-60.)
@Dave: The second is fiercely regressive--this isn't just convincing people to cut taxes on the rich because they might someday be rich themselves, but convincing them to raise taxes on themselves and everyone earning less than them now.
Please stop comparing me, an African American, to homosexuality. The two are apples and oranges, and quite frankly, offensive. I was born Black, but the homosexual lifestyle is a choice. You are the ones who are LGBT-- if you are bisexual, you like both sexes (how could this be?) TO me , to compare me to homosexuality is probably as offensive to some of you as comparing homosexuals to pedophilia. Yet, if we are to use the homosexual argument of no choice- in-the-matter, pedophiles also might argue that they cannot help being attracted to children. Where will we draw the line? If everything is right, nothing is wrong. Let every man be a liar, but God be true.
A bet against gay marriage is a bet against the future.
This nonsense isn't going to get them anywhere with young people of color. Latino 18-29s in California voted overwhelmingly for gay marriage and against abortion restrictions. Not quite as strongly as their white age cohorts, but pretty damn close.
There weren't enough respondents to give us age subsamples for black, Asian-American and "other race" Californians, but I'd be really surprised if they didn't have the same kind of generation gap.
If the "as California goes, so goes the nation" saying holds up, the Republicans are going to need a new schtick, and fast. The next generation is done with your culture war.
Fay, could you please describe the exact moment you consciously decided to *not* be attracted to women, but to be attracted to men, instead. I mean, clearly, if it is choice, you must have sat down one day and decided to be heterosexual, to close yourself off from the idea of loving someone of the same gender. What was that like for you?
@Fay. Please. I'm Black too, I think homosexuality is not a choice. You want to know what's offensive, comparing gays to pedophiles.
@T-NC I gotta disagree with Huckabee pulling 20-30% of the Black vote. I know the guy's a populist & likable but what concrete reason would a sizable number of Black folk suddenly choose to vote GOP?
Richard Land in 1996, writing about his vision of an "ideal America": "America in 1955 without the racism and without the sexual discrimination against women...The year 1955 was not perfect, but it looks better every day compared to what has come since."
Anyone willing to be so ignorant of the fact that racism and sexism largely made this so-called ideal America isn't qualified to be talking about a more diverse GOP.
Just a note on corporate taxes in the US. McCain sort of demagoged Ireland as a place with lower corporate tax rates than the US to justify cutting corporate taxes. Yglesias had some info up the other day showing that while the corporate tax rate in Ireland was lower, their tax structure was also simpler. Apparently, corporations pay a significantly higher percentage of taxes in Ireland than in the US because they have fewer dodges than US corporations. So some of these comparisons really are apples, oranges and wishful (or purposefully misleading) thinking.
This country needs two (and more!) competitive political parties. I don't want my demographic groups (check the lists!) taken for granted. I don't want assumptions made as to which party I will vote for. Or inaccurate polls bandied about to deliberately demean my group(s)!
Both political parties should state a philosophy for governing and why - that's what I want to see. Marketing campaigns as to who is the best liar is not and has not been good for this country. I know that's the standard deal, but it has to change.
"Dave: The second is fiercely regressive--this isn't just convincing people to cut taxes on the rich because they might someday be rich themselves, but convincing them to raise taxes on themselves and everyone earning less than them now."
Not necessarily, Deborah. You could have a personal exemption that would make the consumption tax progressive. That's what advocates of the 'Fair Tax' proposed. And the point about having lower taxes on businesses isn't that one day you might own such a business (you may or may not), but that, all things being equal, the less the company has to pay in taxes, the more it can spend on hiring folks like you.
@deborah -- is the @ a new style in blogging response? I'm so old, can't keep up with these things; need my kids to constantly explain the changing mores.
Thinking that ethics requires regulations means you're thinking like a Democrat; ethics simply requires a sound grounding in ethics, and the guts to think living by them is a sound business principle, not a quaint fashion that hinders making ahpha profits.
zic, I'm 40, just picking up what the kids do. (Not twitter, though. And no lol cats unless used sparingly for irony.) @commentator helps to clarify what point you're responding to, especially as 8 new post might appear while you're composing.
In principle I agree that ethics exist independent of regulation. However, then the new GOP case comes down to "We talk about being ethical"--which, like favoring Mom and America and Family Values and Puppies, is something we all agree on. And the GOP is already down as the party that's spent 30 years talking about outlawing abortion while doing very little to reduce the number of abortions, much less outlaw them. If you're an ethical businesswoman who follows best practices, what would make you join the Republicans, and vote Republican? People want to understand how that vote will translate into policies that affect them. It will take more than branding--unless it becomes clear over the next decade that all ethically run businesses are headed by self-proclaimed Republicans, and all shady businesses by self-proclaimed Democrats, which seems a tad unlikely.
@Dave,
People who understood the fair tax and ran the numbers argued that it was very regressive; is there anywhere else in the world that's using it and could be studied for contrast, the way we should be picking and choosing the best experiments in single-payer healthcare?
Yet, if we are to use the homosexual argument of no choice- in-the-matter, pedophiles also might argue that they cannot help being attracted to children.
The distinction is in whether behavior harms anyone else--sexual urges that harm others, whether considered inborn or a product of environment or a simple choice are not to be acted on, and if they are the person should be removed from society.
Sexual urges that are outside the norm of whatever 51% of the population does (like a foot fetish) but don't hurt other people are to be tolerated.
Homosexuality comes down to being attracted to the same sex. I've never met someone who debated their sexual orientation: sex with one gender is very appealing and the other is icky or dull or just not interesting or mildly intriguing, depending on where you are on the curve. I don't need to know the details of anyone's foot fetish, but they can marry each other and raise kids and its fine with me and good for society as a whole--more stability, more 2-parent homes.
All the scientific evidence at the moment seems to suggest homosexuality is inborn--it's there at a young age, it doesn't change if you think really hard, or pray really hard, that it be different. The idea that people debate "Would I like to be part of the norm, my partnership recognized and approved by society, or would I like to be part of a second-class minority and maybe get beat up in certain districts? The latter sounds fun! And great for having a family!" is pretty far out there. Stuff that is inborn--race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, height--and that harms no one is, indeed, equivalent.
@zic, that and $2 will get you a cup of coffee. Honestly, everyone's going to start to become moral overnight through exhortation? Moral scoldery alone has never solved anything (hat tip to Reinhold Niebuhr here).
Moreover, in a competitive environment business ethics can go by the board. If a company that uses a practice that seems unethical makes more money than its rivals, and there's no law against the practice, how long do you expect the rivals to hold on to their ethics?
Deborah,
The Fair Tax people refuted the claims that it was regressive, and did so fairly effectively. As I said though, I am not advocating the Fair Tax; I just mentioned it to make the point that with a large enough standard deduction any flat tax -- whether an income tax or a consumption tax -- can be made progressive. It need not even be flat; you could have graduated consumption tax rates as well, if that's necessary to assuage populists.
If we're lucky, we won't end up with any form of universal single-payer health care system. In any case, we ought to figure out how to pay for our current single-payer system (Medicare) before offering something similar to those under age 65.
"Doesn't the GOP rank-and-file realize from this that their leadership doesn't give a shit for their big social issues, and are basically looking for foot soldiers willing to vote against their own economic interests?" g
TR: Yes. However Democratic administrations haven't been all that great for working people in the last thirty years. And in my case knowing that most major Democrats explicitly say my life is less valuable is a big turn-off.
(Because that's what "late term abortion is okay if the kid has a genetic condition" says to me as a dwarfish man with a congenital bone ailment. That's what a more liberal euthanasia law also says. It says "you really shouldn't be born, and if you ever feel suicidal tell us where we can stick the needle.")
You also have to realize that Gen-Y or Millenials by 2016 will be the largest voting block in the country.