The painful and difficult irony with Republicans is that they
absolutely must strengthen their
support from women and Hispanics if they have any hope of winning the next generation
of presidential elections. Both of those groups overwhelmingly went for Obama
in the last election out of outrage over what they perceived to be misogynistic
and jingoistic comments from Republican candidates. Some of those comments,
like Todd Akin saying that a woman’s body had some mysterious power to “shut down”
and not produce a baby, if the woman had been raped legitimately, were
borderline psychotic. Some of them, like Mitt Romney’s comment that we plan on
making life for undocumented foreigners so miserable and painful that they
would eventually decide to “self deport,” i.e. leave the country to get some
relief from the oppression, were flat-out cruel.
But at the same time, 96 percent of all
Republican districts are solid, locked down, Republican districts. And the
representatives of those districts are far more concerned about being attacked
in the next primary from someone from the far(ther) right than they are
concerned about who is in the White House. So, to protect their jobs, they have
to vote against what is good for the national party. To do what is good for Republicans
in general, is to do what is not good
for their own re-election prospects. To do what is good for their re-election
is to do what is not good for the party. Crazy statements at home will get them
re-elected. Crazy statements on a national scale will get Hilary elected.
How to get out of that conundrum is something that no one in the Republican party has yet figured out.
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