March 7, 2014
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This week is the right wing’s annual Conservative
Political Action Conference (CPAC), which is organized by the 50-year
old American Conservative Union. CPAC is where conservative stars are
born, and where hopeful Republican Party presidential candidates undergo
the mandatory rite of passage.
"After the Super Bowl
and the two parties' national conventions, CPAC is the most covered
event in the country," says Al Cardenas, chairman of the American
Conservative Union. "It's the only venue where thousands of activists
get to see, back to back during our three-day conference, the likely
2016 leading GOP presidential candidates and begin to create perceptions
which last through Election Day."
With the national
mainstream media tuning in, it’s an opportunity for the Republican Party
to let America know exactly where it stands on the issues du jour.
Last
month, the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released the results
of a major new survey that reveals the American people's list of issues
they believe should be the focus of government attention in 2014.
Healthcare
reform tops the public's list of priorities, mentioned by 52 percent of
respondents as one of the top 10 problems, followed by unemployment (42
percent), the economy in general (39 percent), and the federal deficit
(31 percent). On healthcare, it’s significant to note that a majority of
Americans favor improving the Affordable Care Act, despite the GOP’s
never-ending story of voting to repeal it.
Day 1 of CPAC
addressed absolutely nothing when it comes to what concerns Americans
the most. Instead it became the usual conservative conference where
middle-class Republicans go to have rich Republicans teach them how to
beat up on middle-class Americans. The first day of the event had no
shortage of offensive sound bites.
Donald Trump said, "Immigrants
are taking your jobs," while also mistakenly contending that President
Carter was deceased. The NRA's Wayne LaPierre said Americans need more
guns because there are "knockout gamers and rapers" around every corner.
Center for Neighborhood Enterprise president Robert L. Woodson, Sr.
said black liberals made Detroit look like Hiroshima after it was nuked.
“Poor people are suffering from their friends in Detroit, where they
have been led by liberal black Democrats for 40 years, and it looks like
Hiroshima did when it was bombed. Hiroshima looked like Detroit did 60
years ago.”
Woodson left out the part where since the
mid 1960s, the majority of Michigan state legislators and governors have
been Republicans. He also left out how cheap, non-unionized labor in
the South has drained Detroit of its auto industry jobs. But that’s
another story.
Leading into the event, CPAC made headlines for
all the wrong reasons when it shut out gay and atheist groups, while
welcoming an anti-immigrant organization run by a white nationalist. If
there was ever a textbook example of political tone-deafness, surely
this must be it, especially given the national outrage Arizona
Republicans whipped up in voting for a bill that would have enacted Jim
Crow-era laws against gay Americans.
A
recent Public Religion Research Institute study reveals that nearly 7 in
10 (69%) Millennials (ages 18 to 33) favor same-sex marriage, yet the
Republican Party is waging a war to discriminate against LGBTs in a
dozen states. The GOP is alienating itself from average Americans in so
many ways, but the party’s undemocratic and un-American efforts to
suppress the voting rights of minorities surely ranks at the top of the
list.
After they got hammered in the 2012 election, and with
early polls indicating the GOP might be facing an even bigger wipeout in
2016, a moment of introspection might have revealed valuable insights
to the party. Instead, party leaders seem hell-bent on continuing the
trend of demonizing the poor, gays, atheists, liberals, Muslims, and
women in an effort to appeal to its rabid Christian evangelical base.
A
new Pew Research Poll shows how dramatically the Republican Party is
losing touch with young people, with 50% of millennials identifying as
independent, 27% Democrat, while Republicans only draw 17% support. This
is a big deal. Eventually, the party will run out of old, angry, white,
heterosexual, religious people. Middle-class Republicans may soon
realize that conservative headwinds are blowing against them, too.
On
almost every issue, the GOP is on the wrong side of history and popular
opinion. A majority of Americans now favor liberal policies, whether
it's same-sex marriage, women's reproductive rights, immigration reform,
sensible gun control laws, tax code reform, the minimum wage, the role
of government, and healthcare.
Bizarrely, and against all the
points raised above, the GOP will dominate in the 2014 midterms, due in
part to the Republican Party's gerrymandering efforts post-2010
midterms. They may even take the Senate. This short-term win will only
serve to push the party further to the right and, in doing so, further
away from where most Americans stand.
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