The unusually naked racism pouring forth from the GOP lately, greatly amplified by the gasbags on television, and still led by Pat Buchanan, who has been feeding America this revolting Southern Strategy hate speech for 40 years, seems to have brought Republicans to their final cul-de-sac. As they’ve coddled the fears and hatreds of white males for so long against, well, everyone else, simple arithmetic dictates that they’re in dire need of an affirmative action plan. They lost Indiana, for Pete’s sake. And guess what? Just as they’ve been telling us all this time, that to hire and advance women and minorities would mean unqualified people would pass their superior peers on the basis of their color or sex, they’ve become the poster child , nay, exemplar, of this phenonemon. Color me shocked, shocked. How could it be otherwise? If the only selling feature you have to offer the distressingly numerous non-wealthy is keeping darkies and broads in their place, any minorities or women you are able to attract will obviously have to be stupid, crazy, or simply grabby charlatans who, when seeing their opportunities, take ‘em. Most often, all three.
Starting at the top, let’s have a look-see at Michael Steele. He says crazy, often highly damaging things each day, but it’s okay, because no one in the GOP ever planned on listening to him anyway. Having run fresh out of black congressmen, they just wanted to throw someone on stage for color, literally, as Bush so often did at his staged campaign rallies, for the all-white audience to look at. Unfortunately, this one talks, too, which has proven undeniably problematic. If they were smart, at least politically, they’d unload the guy; if their African American votes went from 7% to 5% would it really hurt that much? Fortunately, as we know, they’re not. Steele’s presence merely insults the intelligence of the other 93% of black voters, all of whom are smarter, less crazy, and more qualified than he, and they know that kind of Affirmative Action when they see it.
And then there’s Sarah Palin. Also. Clearly a foaming narcissist with barely two brain cells to rub together, she was nonetheless deemed “perfect” because of her beauty queen fake charm and nice ass, especially when expensively dressed. The anti-environment views were a nice asset, too, although she was too astoundingly dimwitted to ever come close to explaining them coherently. Her very presence in the party, especially lately, is a hard slap in the face of any woman, meaning almost all of them, who ever had to, say, complete a job, accept criticism, learn quickly a lot of new information, and get through a challenging discussion without making an ass of herself. Palin flatly and proudly refuses to do any of those things, but somehow the GOP thinks that even though she’s no intellectual, she’s got a nice set of ideas, and that will have to do. Again, no one planned to listen to her; like Steele, she’s another token, for all to see. Who’s next, Carrie Prejean? That’s starting to look like a yes. She’s got an even nicer set of ideas, and a Regnery book deal to boot. Bathing suits and high heels are very Presidential these days.
Maybe there’s some diabolical strategy behind all this, since obviously it can have no other purpose, embarrassing failure that it demonstrably is. If Steele, Palin, Michele Bachmann, all those kooks in Texas, and a Batista-admiring Cuban or two are the only minorities or women we see on TV representing the GOP, we do start to get the idea that a greater number of them are stupid, crazy charlatans. With the drearily familiar two-sided matchup, it might gradually become lodged in the national subconscious that at least half of all minorities and women are, well, dunderheaded cuckoos, unfit to properly pronounce any sentence beyond, “Do you want fries with that?” See? They were right all along.
A plan so crazy it might work.