Or the past? Dig Buchanan on Latinos and blacks about halfway through. Again. Wow.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
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I think the biggest part of the clip is at the end when the Black guy almost went da phuck off on Pat Buchanan. Even though he heard "canada" when Buchanan said "candidate" it was still the same sentiment. Buchanan told him to get "his" candidate and he could have ONLY meant a minority candidate. Tweety saved Buchanan from himself again but sooner or later Buchanan is going to slip and say the N word or just jump off the deep end of the racist cliff some other way and I for one will be applauding is fall the whole way down!
Can't watch the video- could someone please tell me what Buchanan said?
Buchanan told him to get "his" candidate and he could have ONLY meant a minority candidate.
Ehhhh, I got no use for Pat for I don't think that was what he was saying. The other guy said he thought Pawlenty was someone to look at as the future of the GOP. Pawlenty isn't a random someone, he's about a 100% likely GOP candidate and I'm sure Pat took it in that spirit.
It's nonsensical otherwise, there isn't even a fantasyland, black, GOP nominee outside Alan Keyes, and Pat is a racist, mean person but he's not a moron.
I don't get what was so awful about what Pat Buchanan said here.
I thought Mike Paul was pretty terrible, vague and only speaking in generalities about what was wrong and not really offering up any concrete alternatives.
As for his being upset at the end, I think he completely misheard what PB said and he looked and sounded like a biatch. I'd never have him back on the show if I was Tweety.
Also, I didn't infer that Pat was necessarily talking about a black or minority candidate when he said the part about go get a candidate take him to Iowa and promote him.
I think what he meant was don't just talk theory to me about how the party needs to expand it's big tent without telling me specifically what message will attract black/hispanics. If you know so much, go get a live person and go down to Iowa (the proving grounds) and do it and then we can talk.
Sure, there is Alan Keyes - the man Obama beat in his race for the Senate. But Keyes scares me, not in the "I'm afraid of what he'll do to this country!" sort of way, because he really will never BE IN that position to do anything to anyone (he's just nuts). He scares me in the "That guy is nuts!" kind of way.
My mental track for the first 5 minutes: This Mike Paul guy is pretty good, willing to criticize Palin as a bad direction, hitting her real weaknesses, talks about examining the whole party: Mike Paul for Republican Spokesperson!
My mental track for the other half of the interview: Oooorrrr Mike Paul by 2010 will have quit to go off and work with the non-crazy party, along with the remaining moderate Republicans. The yurt has Buchanan, Limbaugh, some neocons, and an uneasy alliance of southern evangelicals and western mormons.
I had the opposite take from dkan--Buchanan is trying to find one person to blame: Bush! For the Iraq war! All his fault, not anything systemic with the party, its platform, its other candidates. And Paul kept trying to talk about appealing to young people, to nonwhites, and Buchanan has one issue--all them minorities vote only on amnesty! No other issues, even if you're Asian, even if your family immigrated from Mexico in 1890, nope, all them people of color are poor and want lots of government services. Buchanan kept yelling about the 60s, and Paul almost sonned him on "look, I was born in 1964, nothing you're saying is attracting people like me to this party."
Why do they keep The World's Oldest Angry Single White Male around, anyway? He'd be more useful stuffed with candy and made into a pinata.
Maybe some of you cats don't realize it but the Mike Paul can't come out and say that he belongs to a racist party. Thats why he HAD to talk in generalities. But he is absolutely right that the Republican party does not reach out to minorities and that is the biggest part of their problem. He was hamstrung because he really didnt want to put his party on blast but the truth is Pat Buchanan kept saying John McCain was Mr Amnesty but in order to get the nomination John McCain turned his back on hispanics and pandered to the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys of the Republican party who were raking him over the coals because his stance on immigration. The rhetoric from those guys and the Lou Dobbes and Bill Os of the world along with McCain going on Meet the Press and telling Tim Russert he wouldnt vote for his own immigration bill pushed hispanics away from the republican party and into the arms of the Democrats. Now ostensibly the conversation had turned to how they could get or whether they could get minority support for the republican party so maybe some of you don't know Buchanan's history. You can go back a couple of weeks to see him saying Colin Powell was voting for Obama because he was black but thats not even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Buchanan's history and the southern strategy. But back to our convesation today, go ahead and rewind the tape back to where basically Buchanan threw out a totally made up stat that 90 percent of immigrants favor Democrats because they are poor and want hand outs. Are you seriously going to overlook that and say Buchanan didnt say anything wrong and didn't mean anything by it when he said the black guy should go get his own candidate and go to Iowa? It must feel great to be that naive...
Todd Palin is Sarah's svengali, without him coaching her almost directly, she's worthless. He was practically controlling the Alaska governor's office.
The Republicans sowed the seeds of their own demographic destruction by giving in to agricultural lobbyists who opposed real enforcement of immigration laws. We already had one immigration amnesty, then lead immigrants on to believe we would have another, since the government refused to appropriate money to enforce immigration laws.
From 2001 through 2005, the Bush administration repeatedly requested REDUCTIONS in the budget of the Border Patrol, the INS and the Coast Guard, the nation's first defenses against terrorism and illegal immigration. Only after they were called out publicly, did the Bushitas propose increases in those budgets.
I don't have a problem with Mexicans immigrating to the US, per se. The availability of Mexican labor, on either side of the border (as in maquildoras) helps make the US more competitive in the world marketplace. The issue to me is with the hypocrisy of ignoring immigration law to benefit agribusiness, then demonizing people who were offered good money to be here, and then whining that, after they've been here long enough to become citizens (which ain't easy) they don't vote the way that some natives like.
If Pat is racist and mean, he IS a moron.
It sure sounds like at the end Buchanan says, "Why don't you get a candidate and go into Ottawa and see if he does well." Also, Pat says, "Why don't you examine yourself" repeatedly at about the 9:20 mark, and I'm not sure how to interpret that other than racially. Add the nasty stereotyping of all immigrants and African-Americans from earlier, and I don't think you can blame Mike Paul for completely losing it at the end.
Pat Buchanan is an *hick-up*hole but he didn't say Canada, he said "candidate". This talk of strategy was pointless considering the fact that America's demographics are changing faster than the Republican Party could understand. Look at Virginia! Hello! The Latino vote! Hello! The "Grand White Party" to which we called the 2008 Republican Convention was really shameful. They could have invited their gardeners and nannies, which would have increased the look of the minority audience quite substantially. But no they want to be archaic and think that this sort of thing will be tolerated in 2016. It won't. And they wonder why the world let out a collective breath after Obama won the election?
Mike Paul first made the "personal attack" charge when Buchanan said "examine yourself". As much as I hate to, I have to defend him on this one. He was blunt, but honest, and it wasn't a personal attack. The Republican party is not going to change in an attempt to attract blacks, especially when they don't have to.
"Why don't you get a candidate and go into Ottawa and see if he does well."
Iowa, not Ottawa.
I don't think Pat is saying get a black candidate. Pat is framing this as "We tried a liberal amnesty guy and it didn't work, so we won't do that again. Hey, we had a great system in 1964. And '68--that was so cool. We know how to win these things, it's with great candidates like Nixon.* Anyway, you get a candidate and see if he can win." And Paul isn't at that stage yet, he's at the "we lost all down the ticket, we lost every demographic except old white people, we need to seriously look at why Latinos, blacks, Asians, and young people of all stripes, even evangelicals, are abandoning us--what Republicans actually won by overturning a sitting Democrat not involved in a hideous sex scandal? Anyone?" stage.
*As much as I'm glad to see a Republican not harping on Reagan, I'm not sure going even further back in time to harp on a candidate who is now universally reviled is the way to go. I back Anuzis for GOP head because his entire platform didn't mention Reagan once; maybe he can hire Paul and they can figure out how to rebuild. (Also very telling--Paul assumes they're out for 8 years. He isn't thinking 2012, especially if his party puts up that dingbat.**)
**I really like the glasses Palin is wearing in these.
Also, Pat says, "Why don't you examine yourself" repeatedly at about the 9:20 mark, and I'm not sure how to interpret that other than racially.
I think he's going for "Why should the party examine itself? There's nothing wrong with the party! We won with Nixon! You want some self-examination, you go examine yourself. I have nothing to self-examine, because I have always been right and the party has always been right, except for Bush, who this month we'll just say has been totally wrong about everything, ever, sure, under the bus--I never liked his immigration proposals either." He doesn't see anything wrong with the party except not being conservative enough.
Add the nasty stereotyping of all immigrants and African-Americans from earlier, and I don't think you can blame Mike Paul for completely losing it at the end.
Strategically, even if Pat'd said Canada and Ottawa, it would be better not to complain about a personal attack--never comes off well. Finish strong by repeating that the party lost every demographic except Pat Buchanan's, and the country doesn't look like Pat Buchanan anymore.
But blame him? No. I'd have lost it and been deriding Chris for having me on with Tancredo-lite and his Palin-puffing by about minute 3.
I really, really don't get the argument Pat uses here that McCain was too centrist to win. He lost by 6 points - that's actually a damn good showing when you consider what the GOP has done to this country, and when you look at the disparity between D's and R's on the generic ballot. McCain outperformed expectations, he didn't underperform at all. And with Palin on the ticket, it's not as if they were hemorraging the wingnuts. Replace McCain with some hardcore culture warrior and I would be shocked if the race would have tightened up.
PJ O'Rourke has an epic rant here. He gets where Paul is coming from. Sample:
The "Southern Strategy" was bequeathed to the Republican party by Richard Nixon...Southern whites were on--begging the pardon of the Scopes trial jury--an evolutionary course toward becoming Republican...There was no need to piss off the entire black population of America to get Dixie's electoral votes.
...
When it comes to a full-on, hemp-wearing, kelp-eating, mandala-tatted, fool-coifed liberal with socks in sandals, I have never met a Muslim like that or a Chinese and very few Hispanics. No U.S. immigrants from the Indian subcontinent fill that bill (the odd charlatan yogi excepted), nor do immigrants from Africa, Eastern Europe, or East Asia. And Japanese tourists may go so far as socks in sandals, but their liberal nonsense stops at the ankles.
We have all of this going for us, worldwide. And yet we chose to deliver our sermons only to the faithful or the already converted.
Pat was basically saying 'why change the party? Just change the candidate and we'll win again', but he's is an A1 example of why the repubs are in deep trouble.
He demonstrates and is proud of their lack of policy ideas. Living in the past is not going to offer any solutions to what's happening now, both nationally and internationally.
McCain was supposed to be a moderate conservative, but he tacked heavily to the right and still ran a stock nasty repub campaign. Too many of them just don't have the big ideas for right now. And they just don't get where they went wrong. It's gonna be a long time in the wilderness.
Replace McCain with some hardcore culture warrior and I would be shocked if the race would have tightened up.
That's what they are going to do in 2012. Well, it's what they are going to do in 2010, also. That's why they pulled their freakout about immigration the last two years. They have been having this internal debate about how the Christian White Peoples Party is getting seriously outnumbered and the choice is to quit being that, or to get mad and bitter about it (tee-hee) and tilt at lances at the border windwill. Pat and them think everyone who isn't part of that party are out for the welfare dole and don't buy into the rest of his ideology.
It's an illusion, they are killing themselves, they had inroads in the Hispanic community. They destroyed them when ICE started raiding places and detaining all vaguely dark people and detaining them no matter what their ID said. I know people who denounced my politics as communism, said I didn't know the value of work, etc.. third generation Mexicans who voted Obama this year. It doesn't do you any damn good to be a good American Republican if the Republicans are hellbent on fucking you over.
Iowa! Right, then.
At any rate, I'm not saying Mike Paul did a great job. (And Chris Matthews, btw, was atrocious. Showing a winner-take-all colored map and then saying, "geography tells us how you vote." Dumb.)
I'd have lost it and been deriding Chris for having me on with Tancredo-lite and his Palin-puffing by about minute 3.
Exactly. Stop beating around the bush with this 'outreach' stuff and just say it. The GOP is seen as nativist and dismissive of anyone not in their white, religious demographic, and that isn't going to cut it with anyone born since Nixon.
Having Pat on TV and taking his ideas seriously is equivalent to the farce of the media pretending Palin was a serious candidate.
What about the Legacy? Doesn't he know anything about the legacy? Did Paul see the point? He was a part of a legacy of triumph. 1968: a year of unification. Ths South made a good show. 12%...20% of the Black vote! Why couldn't Paul see that?
Paul of course saw the legacy. He was a dot on the statement of change. The end result must be new! Didn't Pat see the point? What is for nothing that he talked to other members about the "youth" issue? The numbers...65%? Such a loss. The young, blacks, latinos, married suburban women. Why couldn't Pat see that?
Buchanan and Paul both came ready for a fight. Buchanan wants the party to go on fussing about low spending, isolationism, and crime--and thinks McCain blew it. Paul thinks that's a losing formula in the whole country, and a double loser with minority voters, and a triple loser with minority voters if the rest of what the party does signals that they should stay away--and thinks that Palin and her backers are setting up to blow it again.
Paul came ready to hold his ground so firmly that Buchanan would go wild, look old, make Paul's main point for him.
He almost did it, until....
Paul said "the party needs to examine itself."
Buchanan said "Why don't you examine yourself?"
That was disrespect.
Paul's face showed he'd noticed the disrespect.
Matthews stepped into slow down the head-on conflict, trying to get Buchanan to calm down and admit Paul had a point that deserved, well, respect. (Meaning Matthews heard the disrespect, too.)
Then, at the very end, it became clear that Paul thought Buchanan said "move to Canada" rather than "examine yourself."
He would have been in the right about the lesser snarl Buchanan had actually delivered. But you can't be right about about something that didn't happen.
That's sad all around. Paul was giving a good demonstration of how sane Republicans can fight their way back to a party that deserves some votes. I was hoping he and Buchanan would be back for round after round, until Buchanan lost it so completely Buchanan was the one who had to disappear.
Now I think Paul will be back, but he won't be back with Buchanan. Buchanan will get to prattle about Nixon and admire Palin for a lot longer as a result. And he got away with the snarling rudeness he actually displayed to Paul.
Thanks for the P.J. O'Rourke Piece, Deborah. I found it a bit shocking. He almost sounds completely unhinged talking about "liberals". I can't tell where his satire begins and ends any more.
Maybe that's part of the problem. the GOP has engaged in demonization for so long that it seriously believes in demons. Not that slagging your opponents doesn't happen in other countries, of course, but there's something truly weird about American discourse when it comes to burnishing anti-leftist bonafides. It's like McCarthy never really died. From the outside looking in, I don't get it.
I hope the GOP can claw their way back to reality at some point, but the Buchanan/Paul exchange suggests that the shoutfest will be long and protracted, and if they do look in the mirror, it'll be a funhouse one.
Whoa, Buchanan was practically foaming at the mouth and screaming, talking about those damn poor brown folks. Why is this man on television, again?
First Buchanan is not representative of the Republican Party. I think the last time he ran for President he ran as a member of the Reform Party or something. He's not a deciding voice for the Republican Party, I'm not sure he's any kind of voice of the Republicans these days. For the last sixteen years or so he's kind of been a cancer on the party.
Still it is true that a great many conservatives feel they lost because McCain was too liberal. That this depressed conservative turnout and that Palin was insufficient to make up for that. They would likely agree McCain was "Mr. Amnesty."
I think they're wrong or mostly wrong anyway. If anti-illegal sentiment were such a big thing to the average Republican Tom Tancredo or Duncan Hunter wouldn't have gone exactly nowhere. Besides which McCain won Arizona and Texas, the other border-states aren't so right-wing on this issue.
Still McCain's "moderateness" could've depressed the social-conservative vote, at least a little, because many of them still don't trust him. Although Palin pleased them, she might not have been enough. I don't think this is a deciding issue though.
Republicans do need to do better with Hispanics and Asians even if I'm not sure how. Sadly the black vote I think just can't be won, or even shifted greatly, by Republicans. At least not in the next decade or so.
Buchanan is still fighting the old wars, and he will continue doing so until he dies. MSNBC has him on whatever shows it can because he's amusing and harmless, more of a sideshow than anything else, and you can always count on him to start laughing halfway through his own screeds because even he doesn't really buy the shit he's selling, and he has a crush on Rachel Maddow. He's a joke. But yes, he ought to be told that the GOP is in the shitter because that's where it belongs, not because there's been some misunderstanding of its intentions or because the electorate simply wants to the GOP to serve a four-year detention and then it can come out and play. The GOP sucks. It's full of assholes, bigots, cowards, and morons, and only the fearful and ignorant find them enchanting anymore. It's all about "starbursts", bogeymen, paranoia, hatred, fear, nostalgia for the days when wives would shut up and stay at home, and, above all, it's about fucking most people over for the benefit of a small cadre of mean white geezers with double chins, small dicks, and Oedipal complexes. It took a while for the majority of voters to realize that they'd been had, but that time has finally come. And that's how a black candidate ends up kicking the ass of the old white war hero by 7-8 million votes. Suck on it, Pat. Suck on it long and hard.
Republicans do need to do better with Hispanics and Asians even if I'm not sure how.
Well, I suspect they could start doing a better job by marginalizing, disavowing, and firing the media mouthpieces and far-right superstars who defend the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, defend torture, hate immigrants, vow to destroy programs that benefit minorities, say racist shit, and start stupid wars.
But they won't do that. They'll just try to recruit some brown and yellow people——Hey! Look over there! It's Bobby Jindal! Wow, he's so young and so ethnic! He's the new face of the GOP!——and they'll throw Mike Allen on the TV and say, 'See? We're inclusive! We like you people! We really do!'
Basically, 2012 will be 2000 all over again.
They'll have a candidate who speaks spanish, claims to be compassionate and a uniter, and knows how to run a competent, competitive political campaign. For the convention, they'll feature every black they have in the party; they'll promote an actual center-right platform; they'll tie up the far-right wingnuts and lock them in the back room.
If they win, they'll release all of the far-right wingnuts who'll all stream out like the zombies in a Dawn of the Dead movie. We'll be subjected to 4-8 years of scandals, wars, bad financial decisions, and moralizing about how we're all going to hell if we don't deny someone's rights.
How exactly does the Republican party "reach out" to blacks and Hispanics? If we are talking about creating government welfare programs targeted towards minorities, then the Republican Party would cease to be a meaningful alternative to the Democrats.
As the “conservative” party, limited government and self sufficiency have to be the message or it's no longer a conservative message. I, frankly, see no way that a conservative party can win minorities with that message (which is what PB is saying as well). If you are a minority and you believe the system is inherently racist and rigged against you, who will you be willing to vote for? The side that says, “yeah, it’s rigged, but we’ll step in and offer you some benefits that might make it easier for you to overcome.” Or the side that says, “everyone can succeed if they put their minds to it, let us get government out of the way and you can do the rest. Remember, just work hard and everything will be fine!” Even if you agree with the second of these two messages in spirit, you’ll still be suspicious that the message is hiding an agenda. “Yeah, sure he wants to compete against me on an even playing field, because he knows he’ll win, because it’s not really even.”
The only way Republicans can win with that message is to convince blacks and Hispanics that it actually is an even playing field. I don’t see that happening in my lifetime. Maybe Obama will (ironically) help the Republicans here by demonstrating that it is an (mostly) even playing field.
Pat Buchanan, clearly, has followed this logic and concluded that the only hope a conservative party has left is to close the border and limit non-white immigration. Or he might just not like non-white people.
Man, if you want to see, first hand, where the Republican Party went wrong, then you need to look no further than my classroom. First thing you should know is that the school where I work is urban and almost entirely Hispanic. Second thing you should know is that it's in California. Anyway, I had asked my students to write interview questions for a public figure of their choosing. One of them said he wanted to interview John McCain. And one of the questions he wanted to ask was, and I quote, "John McCain, why do you hate Mexicans?" That was far from the first time I heard this from them. In fact, it seemed to be the consensus leading up to the election. These kids wore Obama t-shirts and talked about how McCain doesn't "want us to get papers."
I mean, if that's what the young folks think of you...if that's what they get from seeing you on tv and from listening to their parents talking about you, then you're probably not doing a good job getting your message out in their community. And if McCain was really supposed to be "Mr. Amnesty," then you'd think that the Republican Party would try to get that message out to people in communities like mine.
Instead, we saw Obama ads that grouped McCain with idiots like Limbaugh. And for all the flack that Obama got from folks on the right about how misleading this ad was supposed to be, I think that McCain really set himself up for it when he came out against his own immigration bill. True, he never talked about the issue like Rush, but he did side with him and the folks that were demogoging the issue...the folks that won't shut up about this supposed invasion and affront to the rule of law, despite the fact that illegal immigration peaked some time in the 90s and is on the decline. Truth be told, cats like Pete Wilson might have made places like my neighborhood off limits for the Republican Party for all times but I don't think it's that simple.
And to counter Derek, let me just say that the ideals of self-sufficiency and limited government would play just fine where I stay. I mean, the folks that came here recently, even those that came illegally, came to work not to live off the welfare state. (In fact, it's a lot of people that are afraid to have any interaction with the government for fear of deportation). And one of the little nuggets of information that often gets left out of discussions on education is that vouchers aren't exactly unpopular in the inner-city, those bluest of blue areas on the county maps. And did I mention that blacks and Hispanics tend to be more socially conservative than white folk?
Nah man, a sensible Republican Party that was not demogoging immigration or belittling community organizers could expect to do better than 30 something percent of the Hispanic vote or 3 percent of the black vote. My advice to the Republican Party would be to change course on the drug war. The war on drugs is not in keeping with conservative principles nor is it effective.
Peace
"Man, if you want to see, first hand, where the Republican Party went wrong, then you need to look no further than my classroom. First thing you should know is that the school where I work is urban and almost entirely Hispanic. Second thing you should know is that it's in California. Anyway, I had asked my students to write interview questions for a public figure of their choosing. One of them said he wanted to interview John McCain. And one of the questions he wanted to ask was, and I quote, "John McCain, why do you hate Mexicans?""
Julio,
That just shows how ignorant your students are and what a bad job you've done of educating them on current affairs. John McCain loves Hispanics and was the biggest advocate of amnesty for illegals in the party (with the possible exception of George W. Bush, who, I'm sure your students don't know, has a Hispanic sister-in-law and nephew). McCain was so in favor of amnesty for illegals from Mexico that grassroots Republicans call him 'McAmnesty'.
The GOP is the party of entrepreneurship and business. As long as most Hispanics are working minimum wage jobs, there's nothing the party can do to appeal to them, save offering them more handouts than the Democrats. And we can't beat Dems at being Santa Claus, so that's out.
Fred, With the North Pole melting, Santa Claus has moved. You can address all correspondence to: Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus, 100.5 Wall Street, New York, NY 10005. Handouts are weekly. Executive bonuses are fantastic.
Fred, you really have no idea of just what it is you're talking about, do you?
Let me first state the obvious. You don't know my students. You don't know me. You don't know what happens in my classroom. And you are therefore in no position to call my students ignorant or assess my teaching skills. You ass.
Moreover, you missed my point. My point was that there are people in my neighborhood that have come to believe that the Republican Party is openly hostile towards them. That's what my students take away from hearing their parents or people on the block talking politics.
You can blame this on me if you want. That's perfectly fine with me. But in doing so you'd be ignoring the fact that I don't do minority outreach for your party. It's not my job to see to it that everyone around the way knows all about whatever John McCain's immigration policy is at the moment. That's your party's job. And if they don't do a better job they'll never recover.
And with regard to your last point:
The GOP is the party of entrepreneurship and business. As long as most Hispanics are working minimum wage jobs, there's nothing the party can do to appeal to them, save offering them more handouts than the Democrats. And we can't beat Dems at being Santa Claus, so that's out.
So even you don't think that your party has anything to offer the lower class? It's really no wonder you guys are losing, is it?
Fred-
You are the GOP's problem.
Angry, rude, culturally insensitive-if not racist, white, know-nothings who confuse name-calling for an effective communication strategy.
But by all means, keep digging your hole, about 6 feet deep should do it.
I think Herr Buchanan actually has a point.
Yes, he starts off with the nostalgic dreaming of every 70-ish semi-racist white man, just do what Nixon and Reagan did! Never mind the demographic changes anyone with sense knows about. Reagan, (Governor of California, signer of liberal abortion rights bill, divorced, non-church goer), might not pass the right-wing test today, I don't know. But Nixon?!? The right-wing of today would be calling him a Communist pinko Quaker.
But Buchanan telling Paul to go to Iowa with his Reform Republican Candidate is worth noting. The Iowa Republican Party is totally controlled by the Religious Right. No, really. The organization that used to be the Christian Coalition of Iowa is the most powerful GOP faction in the state. How do you think Huckabee won? Or didn't you hear about the story of longtime US Senator Chuck Grassley being denied a spot in the Iowa delegation for the RNC this year? Know why? He was the one leading the investigation into phony televangelists for the past year...he was also the one who told James Dobson to "shut his mouth" during the Harriet Myers fiasco. Grassley being an otherwise conservative stalwart didn't help him.
Paul is right for what he hinted to but didn't say. But he's also just spinning his wheels.
Julio, if you reread my comment, I wrote, "Even if you agree with the second of these two messages in spirit, you’ll still be suspicious that the message is hiding an agenda."
I have zero doubt that Hispanics are hard working and distrustful of Government (insofar as the "Government" is represented by the INS). The message from Obama and the Dems isn't, "We are going to increase government so that INS is fully staffed and we are going to hunt your illegal ass down!" The message is, "we are the party that loves minorities and will always try to make things easier for you to be successful in America." The Republican's cannot compete with that using a traditionally understood conservative (law and order, less handouts, etc.) message.
The Republican party is increasingly going to become the party of white people and the Dems are going to be the party of non whites. I think this sucks, by the way, but it's the truth. If the Republicans are serious about winning elections (as opposed to doing what's best for their country) they should close the borders and deport as many nonwhite immigrants as possible.
You Dems who are in ecstasy over the election should be nervous. What's about to happen to the Republican party is going to be ugly.
Just to clarify, here was McCain’s message to Hispanics:
“A. Do not fear me. I will not deport you. I will do everything I can to make sure you can stay in America.
B. Simultaneously, I will arrest the growth of government and make sure that no one receives handouts from the government. Small government!”
Obama’s message was:
“A. Do not fear me. I will not deport you. I will do everything I can to make sure you can stay in America.
B. I recognize that America is a difficult place for non-whites to get ahead. Elect me and I will put government to work helping you get a leg up.”
If you are Hispanic, who would you vote for? The Republican’s are screwed. How do they keep message “B” and still win elections with the population becoming more and more Hispanic? Buchanan wants to change message “A” in the hopes that he can preserve conservative votes. I think more and more Republican’s will listen to that message now that McCainism has been destroyed so thoroughly.
Fred...you're as unhinged as Pat is. Attacking people based on what? your immense knowledge of what mexicans do and don't do? The party of "entrepeneurship"?? Can you please send me some of that prime shit you've been smoking?? The GOP hasn't talked about that since reagan. period. It's all culture-war, xenophobic "real america" bullshit...and btw...why did John MR Immigration Reform McCain not even vote for his own bill?? Probably because he didn't want to lose your vote. The problem isn't you per se, but the general notion of the republican party being about the white, exurban, christian values, nationalist party. It's probably the best description, it's not even about being a patriot any more, it's nationalism. And the core idea, that, we stick to these "principles" and the "furnurs" be damned if they don't like it.
Fred and Asher,
I'm deleting both of your comments on this blog from now on. I think I've been tolerant. The trolling is now officially over.
To the points raised by Derek and Asher:
The Republicans have a hard time running on small government right now, given how it grew under Reagan, Bush 1, and Bush 2. Plus a fiscal policy of tax cuts combined with borrowing to fund guns and butter, especially for the wealthy. Individuals might shine, but as a group they have not exemplified any sort of fiscal responsibility or determination to make government smaller. Why should anyone believe that plank?
I also agree that a lot of minority groups are more socially conservative; the issue then is who actually delivers on social conservatism. Done anything to reduce the numbers of abortions? Or is that another talking plank that will see no action for the Republican's turn in office? You believe in traditional marriage? How many people on that stage have been divorced? "I believe in strong families, though I did dump my first set of kids. And I believe in families sitting down together and talking and having dinner together, even though I'm not on speaking terms with my own grown children." And besides, the country as a whole would like there to be fewer abortions, but the option available to them; they would like there to be more strong families, but no government intervention in their own family.
Small government and social conservatism haven't really worked together, as the libertarians keep pointing out--plenty of social conservatives fall into the libertarian camp, not the evangelical.
There's a piece in the New Yorker this week about the Obama campaign, and Axelrod, in analyzing possible general election opponents more than a year ago, decided that John McCain 2000 would be really, really hard to run against with "change." But he figured that if he won the nomination John would have made so many Faustian bargains that tying him to Bush would be easy. That's what happened with immigration--McCain rejected his own bill, and rightly lost all credit for having once been centrist on the issue. (O'Rourke represents a particular subset of Republicans and others who argue that anyone who will perform a triathlon to get here so they can pick lettuce is the kind of citizen we want.)
Besides, just as women don't vote only on abortion, Latinos don't vote only on immigration. But man did those various Republican venues this year manage to communicate (to O'Rourke's fury and disgust) that Republicans hate immigrants and hate all those people who look like they might be immigrants. The real damning of Allen's macaca moment to my ears was that he welcomed to Virginia and the USA a man born in Virginia and the USA--to George Allen, Republican spokesperson, all those brown people don't come from the real USA, don't know the real USA.
I was very impressed with Mike Paul, having not been familiar with him before. It appears that some Republicans actually understand why their party is circling the drain.
Man, I hope they don't listen to him.
Here's his blog: http://www.mikepaulblog.com/blog/
Darn. I meant Derek and Julio. Sorry Julio, and welcome to the conversation.
Reading lists for this subject:
"The Year of Magical Thinking" by Didion.
It's a memoir about grief but it fits well with the question of how does one accept something that is so encompassing and finite? For like grass that withers...
"Bleak House" by Dickens.
A novel about the destructive consumption of legacies by self-waged wars against those you should connect with. Only connect.
The truth behind perceptions is the adage that first impressions are hard to shake. For conservatives and Republicans, Gov. Palin and Sen. McCain gave the collective cry of "Maverick!" In the spirit of the cavalier in our country, we admire fighters. But what were they to fight? Themselves? Reformers? Bringing change to Washington is questionable when the public perception is that your party caused the muck in the first place. We all can't be Cassius.
The inevitability of shifts in people and thought shall not be ignored. The GOP needs their "Summa Logicae" with which to temper the tide of the disillusionment coupled with the shifts. Not reaching out to minorities is simply the symptom of the illogical assumption of the "majorities" to which they hold to. Demographics change and one must be flexible towards new pockets of plebis in whatever shape they possess. People talk of the symptoms that the GOP possesses but not the disease for which their needs a cure. The disease is mendacity. And the cure is a resolution that only intolerable complacency will seek to stop.
Andy: Do we root for sensible people to prevail, just in case they wind up in charge? Or do we root for nutjobs to prevail, trusting that independents then won't vote Republican?
If I had more faith in my fellow Americans I'd be comfortable with the latter strategy....
The GOP did so many things wrong in this campaign and in the years preceding it that you could pick any one of, say, a dozen major mistakes they've made and say, "This, here, is the key to the loss!"
I'm reminded of the parable of the blind men examining the elephant. The punch line, which I've just learned, is that none of them realize that the elephant is dead.
The Republican party is increasingly going to become the party of white people and the Dems are going to be the party of non whites.
Well, Obama just won 44% of whites. The GOP will be the party of tribalist white people. Not enough votes there.
TNC, I appreciate you dumping the trolls. Thank you. At the same time, Julio's 100% right on Fred -- and it's good to be reminded that thousands of Freds sitting and seething at their keyboards sank immigration reform, which might have changed the picture for Republicans this year. That's one of the realities that's got Mike Paul concerned for the future of his party. Losing this big among Latinos was not inevitable.
Fake uncle Pat and the rest of the bloviators need to stop crying about the so called "Palin bounce". There was no such thing. McCain had a normal convention bounce, and it decayed faster than usual. Historically, convention bounces have taken about 6 weeks to level out. McCain's levelled out in around 2. It is likely that Palin had nothing to do with the initial bounce, but everything to do with the quick decay. Nate Silver posted a plethora of information about this back in September, but I still hear the talking heads yammer about the "Palin bounce". Someone needs to educate them. I nominate Maddow.
As for the Republicans and the changing demographics -- they are marginalizing themselves. The more they listen to the Buchanans and ignore the Pauls, the further their party will slide into irrelevance.
Julio was right: John McCain hates Mexicans. Anyone who has been following the news knows that. Fred is ignorant for thinking otherwise. Bush hates Mexicans too. He even hates his nephew George P. Bush, who is half Mexican.
As long as Republicans keep hating on their own half-Mexican nephews, they shouldn't expect Hispanics to vote for them.
wow... very interesting. i think what buchanan meant when he said "you got YOUR candidate" was that "you" (meaning blacks) got McCain, who he feels was "the most liberal candidate in the field" which is what he said right before the "your candidate" comment. It's disturbing to see him equate blackness with "L"iberalism, frankly, and this guy Mike Paul is exactly right -- it's why they've got to examine themselves and why they're not gonna win anything any time soon.
I was hoping he would articulate that the reason they need to examine themselves is to find out WHY minority voters don't feel comfortable with the Republican party. I was also disappointed that neither he nor Matthews called Buchanan out on his disgusting characterization of all Hispanic immigrants as basically welfare queens. It goes together with Buchanan's conflation of his version of cultural and actually racial whiteness with conservatism. Not only does that get conservatism completely wrong -- IT IS EXACTLY WHY MOST NON-WHITE PEOPLE IN AMERICA DO NOT FEEL WELCOME WITHIN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. Regardless of ideology! They're not even TRYING to sell true conservatism to us because they think we're too selfish and lazy to buy it - and they think that based on our race! This is 2008! It makes me sad, frankly, because I am partial to the libertarian wing of that party and to the ideas of limited government, individual liberty and responsibility, low taxes, simple laws that are as unrestrictive as possible while preserving the public good, and other ideas which the Republican Party is supposed to stand for.
I don't want to paint the entire party as racist or to pretend that Pat Buchanan is entirely representative of Republicans; certainly most people I know who have voted Republican in the past, and I believe probably a majority in general, are not really more racist than those who haven't, and the same goes for many of their past candidates. But politically, not only do they not even try to understand us (I'm Indian, but I mean all non-whites), not just the differences but the similarities, but they actually tend to use wink-nod racist demagoguery to get racist white voters! Un-American even when whites were the vast majority, and simply political suicide going forward.
Sorry for the caps and the vehemence but I feel strongly about this. I'm a loyal, hard-working American and I take offense at being characterized otherwise on the basis of my race. Fuck Pat Buchanan - he's just dumb if he does not realize that this country would hardly exist, much less be the greatest powerhouse the world has ever seen, on the strength and work of Europe-descended people alone. Not even counting who did the literal heavy lifting.
"disavowing, and firing the media mouthpieces and far-right superstars who defend the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, defend torture, hate immigrants, vow to destroy programs that benefit minorities, say racist shit, and start stupid wars." tinisoli
TR: I agree. Well I don't think they have it in their power to fire them, freedom of speech and all means they'll get hired somewhere, but those people shouldn't ever be invited to any official conservative function again. They should be marginalized as much as possible. Now for some stuff concerning other posts.
And I don't think being the party of business and entrepeneurial spirit has to mean being bad to lower-class people. My Mom ran a store when we were basically living on strawberries and rice. To me Republicans could be the party for cottage industry, getting people to trade schools, or encouraging job training. I think it could adjust to being more amenable to the working poor without abandoning the idea that people should work and be as independent of the state as possible. Maybe that only appeals to white people as well though, I'm not sure.
Lastly to say John McCain hates Mexicans, as Randy indicates, is really implausible. He didn't do that bad with Hispanics in his own state and there's nothing in his history to indicate any hostility to them. This is the guy Tom Tancredo sent "nachos" to in order to bash him for being too pro-Mexican. He curried favors with the anti-immigrant Right because the Ann Coulters et alia spooked him with their threats of not voting if he won. It's deplorable, but it's more opportunistic than hateful.
Thomas,
Are you trying to say that Julio's students are ignorant of current events or that he hasn't done a good job of teaching them? If those kids think McCain hates Mexicans, then McCain hates Mexicans. The kids are Mexican after all. They'd know.
Kind of a bummer you did Asher like that. He isn't a troll, just a contrarian. He has made some good points. I missed whatever it was that he said to set you off this time, Ta, but I don't think it's right to delete the dude wholesale. Just sayin'.
Re: Replace McCain with some hardcore culture warrior and I would be shocked if the race would have tightened up.
Isn't that what Sarah Palin was for? What happened to all that rightwing gushing about how McCain had really reved up the GOP base with her as VP? Was she too moderate after all? Good grief, just how far out into the fever swamps do they need to go? Maybe Fred Phelps so they can sew up the Westboro Baptist vote?
"Are you trying to say that Julio's students are ignorant of current events or that he hasn't done a good job of teaching them?"
TR: Neither. Although generally speaking the majority of kids are ignorant of current events. Maybe you went to a much better High School than me, okay you probably did, but I'm skeptical most kids are all that interested in news. I'd say a good percent of adults aren't interested either.
Anyway what I'm saying is those kids probably have never met John McCain or know much about his political history. The idea that because High School kids said it it must be true is pretty silly. A class of white High School kids may believe some stupid things about Obama. This does not necessarily mean their teacher's no good or that they're actually dumb kids.
Mike Paul is the future of the Republican Party. Too bad Buchanan (and Matthews for that matter) didn't see it. I think that Mike was on a good tack when he said that he was born in 1964, after Pat talked about Republican strategy at that time. Obama said in his interview with Atlantic earlier in the campaign that all of what happened in the sixties was before his time. It's time to get beyond all of this, and the Democrats are the first party to move forward. Will the Republicans follow, or stay in their old culture-war mindset.
Pat will continue to pound the culture-war meme because that is what he knows, and that got him where he is today. He continues to fight the previous battle.
Earth to Pat: A lot of people that voted in 1964 are now dead. That trend will continue, guaranteed.
The 'culture warrior' aspect of Pat Buchanan is only part of his message, and one he seems to have de-emphasized in recent years. Buchanan's essays in recent years have been populist, protectionist, and isolationist. He was against the war in Iraq, he is in favor of tariffs on foreign goods to protect domestic manufacturing, and he is nostalgic for the days when an American man could sleepwalk through high school and then get married and support a family on a high-paying manufacturing job.
What Buchanan seems to miss is that technology has probably had more to do with the decline in domestic manufacturing employment than foreign competition has. America manufactures more stuff now than ever before, it just doesn't require as many workers because our factories are so high-tech. The CEO of United Technologies, one of the great American manufacturing companies, gave an example of this in a CNBC interview last month. He mentioned that his company's Otis Elevator division was building 400% more elevators now than it built in 1992, and that this 400% increase in output only required a 24% increase in the size of the workforce.
The Republicans *could* have locked in an African-American vote if they could find a coded language that speaks to the conservative factions of the African-American community while drawing in the moderate sections of the White community.
They've tried this, of course, with gay marriage and immigration, but all they've done is alienate moderate Whites with the former message, and all Latinos with the latter message.
In all fairness, what they're trying to do is like trying to make a cue ball go left and right at the same time.
They could go after gay-divorce. "No-fault divorce is just for us straights, if you gays want to be married so bad you're going to have to stick with it better than we do!" and then blame lawyers for wanting quicky gay-divorce. Also straights would still get to have their marriages be different in some way.
Not being precisely serious here.