Men. White men, it should say. If they could count on solid support from white people the Republicans would be far, far better off. But they can't even claim to be the party of whites.

There is a new rumbling amongst my non-Democrat friends, who are not crazy enough to vote Republican, to vote a third party and get said party above 5% to qualify for federal funds in the next round of elections. I actually support this heartily.
1) That many fewer votes for Romney and the GOP platform.
2) I think this country and the Democrats need a legitimate opposition party with a fiscally conservative bent, but which is not racist, bat-crap crazy.

My one concern is, which party should this movement get behind and how can we facilitate getting the word out? I honestly do think it is for the health of our country.

The GOP's already got all the followers they're going to get. Their focus now is not on recruiting new members, it's on disenfranchising the opposition.

We can only hope. And work hard to re-elect the best president this country has had in sixty years. America is changing and Republicans hate change. Especially when the change comes from proof of their failures. I was raised in that exclusively white part of America. It was self interested, self absorbed and appallingly racist. They disgusted me then, but now I feel only pity at their blindness.

@2 For any new party to form, the biggest influence you need is the media. They need their own Fox or MSNBC that can push their agenda. But for them to get a channel, they need a following first...catch 22.

What actually needs to happen is for Fox News to grow some testicles and realize that the Tea Party does NOT represent republican ideals and start telling the truth. Those fuckers are scary and they're destroying their base.

@2- what is needed is a proper Parliamentary system, such as in Germany, where minority parties actually DO have a say in policy, and can rapidly gain a platform. The US system is so anti-Democratic as to be pathetic.

It's as Democratic as is the mobile-phone market or the cable-TV market in the US.

And the people in charge like it that way.

Good Morning Charles,

Back from a long holiday.

Disappointed in your last paragraph. The politcs of race lurks for better or for worst in both parties. "250 years of white political domination will enter the final twilight" is baloney. Nixon is no longer President, Obama is. As a rational Republican (@2, second point), I never found the GOP to be racist in my lifetime. Classist, perhaps but not racist. Obviously, we all want ALL inclusiveness in our political process. And, we want ALL to participate too.

I see a more integrated America in both parties. I look to ideas not faces in the crowd at the DNC & RNC. I am not angry. I just want change. My race whatever construct it is, has nothing to do with it.

@7, lark, i was imagining he view point of norris, not mine or reality.

@5- FOX is the mouth piece of the Teabaggers, not, per se, the GOP. FOX is the primary fulcrum pushing the GOP, and the nation, ever rightward. The Teabaggers DO represent republican ideas.

Speaking as an angry, old, white, gun-owning, heterosexual male I'm STILL not going to vote Republican. At least not until the party as a whole makes some changes.

1. Learn science.

2. Get a real economic platform and be able to explain how and why. Taxes are low right now. Explain why that hasn't fixed the problems that you claimed it would.

3. Small government means small government. Get out of the social issues. If gays want to marry, let them.

4. War. Stop demanding that our military get involved in every country you don't like (but couldn't find on a blank map).

5. Kick the racists and bigots out of your party.

There are lots of problems with the Democrats. But their problems are smaller than yours. And don't bother pointing to individual Republicans who don't have such extreme views on certain issues. As long as they vote as a bloc they are the problem.

Wouldn't it be hilarious if the privatized prison industry, to feed its own coffers, somehow incarcerated a lot of angry white men who, "defendin' their freedoms against the tyranny of the state" with their real good guns through road rage, armed robbery, domestic violence, ideological imperatives, mental illness, having been charged with manslaughter and murder lost their rights to vote?

"Where are our Bubbas?"
"At the correctional institutes run by privateers who gave generously to our candidates."

@7- The party of voter suppression wants "ALL inclusiveness in our political process"? Ya, sure, ya betcha.

I would like to echo everything @10 says, except for the part about being old. Though by Slog standards I may be.

(I don't own a gun either, but I like knowing that I could.)

Dear Stranger staffers: Please stop editing posts after the fact without making some note of the change.

Sorry, OT I know, but that's one of my personal peeves.

Talk about burying the lede!! Here is the excerpt that should be on the front page:

Describing the evolution of the Republicans' racial appeal, the late Lee Atwater, one-time chair of the Republican National Committee and member of the Reagan administration, said in 1981. "You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger'. By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' – that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing [and] states' rights. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites … obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'nigger, nigger'."

The party of "ALL inclusiveness" at work:
http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c…

Will Partisan Bullies at the Ballot Box Change the Outcome of Election 2012?

Voting Rights Groups Release Report on Voter Protection Laws in 10 Key States as Self-Appointed Activists Promise To Block, Intimidate Voters

WHAT: Self-appointed partisan activists are reportedly working to recruit 1 million volunteers to challenge and block certain voters’ right to vote on and before Election Day, creating an atmosphere of intimidation at the polls. In response to these efforts, voting rights organizations Common Cause and Demos will release a new report on voter protection laws in 10 states considered critical in the 2012 election. “Bullies at the Ballot Box: Protecting the Freedom to Vote Against Wrongful Challenges and Intimidation,” highlights laws in key states like Florida and Pennsylvania that could allow partisan activists to prevent voters from casting regular ballots on Election Day and could create chaos for election officials.

The report also details laws in states such as Ohio and North Carolina that do a better job protecting eligible Americans from those who seek to stop them from voting. Wrongful challenges in states with weak voter protection laws could impact the outcome of the elections due to the number of voters who could be wrongfully removed from voting lists or prevented from voting regular ballots on Election Day by the actions of groups like True the Vote and others.

The ten states reviewed in “Bullies at the Ballot Box” include Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia.

I had a great history teacher in college who showed the class how things like social and political movements always flower before they die. These movements become bigger, fancier and more attention-getting before they drown in their own excesses. He gave us a dozen examples. I would say that the far right is in full flower right now. I just hope that the tea party movement dies off before 2016.

@16, while it's nice of them to do an "analysis" of Colorado's laws and all, it won't matter too much. You see, almost everyone here will be voting by mail.

Fear of a black planet. Fear baby.

"You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks," Nixon told him.

This statement calls for explication.

What problem exactly?

http://home1.gte.net/res0kzdq/haldemanpa…

So actually from the link above this statement was made in the context of setting up welfare. And the problem was with the poor whites who would not want to be lumped in with blacks when it came to aid!

It was Nixon, a Republican, who was trying to make it palatable to create the social net (which was more broadly defined by Nixon than any President in history!!)

@18- Washington's population is about 6.8 million, equaling roughly 2% of the nations total of 314 million... So your point is... What exactly? Voter intimidation doesn't matter because you mail in your vote? Voter suppression doesn't directly affect you so, whatever, who cares?

i have no fear of a black planet. i welcome it. if anything, i have fear of a WHITE planet.

@ 6 is pretty much right, but it's Americans themselves who get in the way. The real problem is the lack of interest in politics exhibited by most. Forming multiple parties would require people to think deeply about matters and decide what they really care about, and many unaffiliated voters simply don't do that. They're vaguely socially liberal and fiscally conservative, but can be very knee-jerk about those things when the parties manipulate hot button issues (such as opposing gay marriage because they never gave same sex relationships any thought, or supporting any major government spending in their locality).

@ 6 mentions Germany specifically. Without looking it up, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Germans on average are way more politically literate than American. And America is probably behind most of the world's other stable democracies as well.

FWIW, it's not a Nixon quote, it's a Haldeman diary quote summarizing extended discussion among himself, "E" (Erlichman), and "P" (the President):

Monday, April 28, 1969

Got into a deep discussion of welfare, trying to think out the Family Security decision, with E and me (welfare reform had been one of P's campaign issues). P emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to. Problem with overall welfare plan is that it forces poor whites into same position as blacks. Feels we have to get rid of the veil of hypocrisy and guilt and face reality.

Pointed out that there has never in history been an adequate black nation, and they are the only race of which this is true. Says Africa is hopeless, the worst there is Liberia, which we built.

(Emphases in the original)

@ 18, actually Common Cause is talking about efforts to challenge the votes cast - you know, because allegedly we have a HUGE problem with non-citizens voting, even though the only comprehensive national study was only able to find 10 such votes out of 150 MILLION cast. They're not talking about thugs at polling places.

Now, I have no idea if the danger is overblown or not, but there have definitely been right-wing efforts against voting, and our GOP Sec'y of State is our own Katherine Harris. I don't doubt that some dirty tricks are going to tried out here.

@23, no, my point was that, given the way voting is conducted here, I don't even think voter intimidation would be possible here, so I was unsure why they singled us out.

But thanks, Matt, for your input. That part of it makes sense.

28- Washington isn't mentioned at all. Ten other states are mentioned as places were voter intimidaters are being actively recruited by the right wing. I posted the link in reference to @7, who made the claim that the GOP is focused on inclusivity and not a de facto party of racists.

(1) Except on gay equality, the Democratic Party and the President are the furthest to the right they have been for decades, and arguably since before the Great Depression. Quite apart from revulsion at the rebirth of the Klan and the John Birch Society in the Tea Party movement, Blacks who might previously have been inclined to vote Republican on general economic or personal financial grounds are getting most of what they want from Democrats.

(2) @3 (Urgutha Forka): Bingo.

(3) Where are all the angry white guys at? Screw that. What I want to know is, Where the white women at?

(1) Except on gay equality, the Democratic Party and the President are the furthest to the right they have been for decades, and arguably since before the Great Depression. Quite apart from revulsion at the rebirth of the Klan and the John Birch Society in the Tea Party movement, Blacks who might previously have been inclined to vote Republican on general economic or personal financial grounds are getting most of what they want from Democrats.

(2) @3 (Urgutha Forka): Bingo.