"Michael Tomasky: Obama Is Winning Because of the Shrinking GOPby Michael Tomasky"

[applegrove]

Michael Tomasky: Obama Is Winning Because of the Shrinking GOP

by Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/15/michael-tomasky-obama-is-winning-because-of-the-shrinking-gop.html

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Thomas Jefferson argued roughly that it was in the nature of mankind to divide itself, wherever there be free government, into two basic factions: an aristocratic party that wishes to “draw all powers...into the hands of the higher classes,” as he once put it; and a party that opposes that one, representing the broader people. The GOP has, I admit, done a marvelous job of convincing the media and even some liberals that it is the party of the people, because of its hold on the white working-class majority (a segment that is fast dwindling, by the way—electoral demographer Ruy Teixeira reported recently that this bloc will constitute a sizeable 3 percent less of the electorate this year than it did in 2008—the minority vote will overtake the white working-class by 2016 or certainly 2020).

The GOP has no moderate faction anymore. It’s a rump amalgamation of plutocrats and the people who service their air conditioning.


The Republican hold on this bloc is real, but it is, as we all know, completely about race and culture. I say this not to insult these voters. Far from it, in fact. I don’t think they’re stupid people. I think they’re entirely rational and have decided that culture is more important to them than economics, and so they’ve thrown in with the GOP on cultural grounds, even while they must know on some level that the party does not represent them in the least economically. But they accept the deal, and it permits the people who are the real heart and soul of the GOP, the corporate titans and the plutocrats, to call whatever economic shots they wish.

But their crossover appeal, shall we say, is limited. Throw in their lickspittles on Capitol Hill and in the right-wing media, and their neo-Leninist political tactics, and the picture gets even worse. The lot of them look like a bunch of grim Pharisees, and it’s all too obvious that all they really care about is cutting rich people’s taxes. It’s not a coincidence that, just a year after the Republicans took power in the House, and the public had a good chance to size them up, the GOP as of January was at its lowest point in terms of party-identification percentage since 1988, just 27 percent. The Democrats have lost ground, too, but at least they’re still in the low 30s.

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