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GOP cannot out-pander Democrats
President Bush and the Republicans can never beat the Democrats in pandering to minorities, says Samuel Francis. After his heavy-duty pandering to Hispanics in the 2000 election won him only 35 percent of their votes, Bush did not learn the obvious lesson but proceeded to try harder, proposing a partial amnesty for illegal aliens. But now House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt has outflanked Bush by proposing amnesty and legal residency for all illegals, which would make the very concept of illegal alien obsolete. As Francis points out, the modern Democratic party was literally built on pandering to minorities. The Republican party—largely white, business-oriented, and culturally conservative— cannot begin to compete in that game, and only succeeds in alienating its own constituency when it tries. So why keep trying?
The answer, I believe, is that the GOP panders to Hispanics for same reason that Israel is now requiring that every street sign in Israel be in Arabic as well as Hebrew, and for the same reason that every Western country is now embarked on a course of cultural and racial suicide. The real purpose is not to win the votes of minority groups, but to demonstrate one’s own moral legitimacy by striving to make the minorities equal in every way to the majority.
Comments
The 35% figure is inflated by the Cubans in Florida and Bush’s being Governor of Texas. By carrying Texas in a landslide, he increased his Hispanic vote. Last year, I read somewhere that Bush’s pro-hispanic stance was supposed to appeal to white suburban yuppies. These people are “uncomfortable” with a “too white” Republican party. Posted by: David on July 28, 2002 8:31 PMAbsolutely. That whole minority dog and pony show at the 2000 GOP convention was aimed at making whites comfortable with the GOP. Which is consonant with the idea that Republicans’ main motive in all this pandering is to secure their own moral legitimacy in a diverse liberal society rather than to win the actual approval and votes of minority groups. Posted by: Lawrence Auster on July 28, 2002 10:39 PMI think Mr. Auster is right about moral legitimacy. We can’t live without transcendence—without something that is morally authoritative and can’t be reduced to ourselves and our experience. Since other people do seem to have some sort of moral claim on us, and since they can’t be reduced to aspects of our own experience, they become a substitute for God in a society that has abolished God. And since the holy is defined by its otherness, the more different the other people are from us the better they substitute for God. Posted by: Jim Kalb on July 29, 2002 7:20 AM |