Is 2012 The Last Gasp For The Republican Party?

By Dr. Henry Flores, NewsTaco

            Some pundits, I will count myself among this group, have begun declaring that this presidential election will be the last one where the Republican Party will be able to (that is if they succeed) to rely almost totally on Anglo or White voters to win the White House.  All you have to do is compare the performances of both party’s at their national conventions and you come away with some stark contrasts.

The Republican convention had several ugly situations where some participants, some say these individuals were delegates other officials claim they were alternate delegates regardless they were present, threw peanuts at an African American CNN newsperson yelling that “This is the way we feed animals!”  The offenders were ushered out of the convention but the damage had been done.

The second incident was when a Puerto Rican delegate, she was the head of the delegation from Puerto Rico, began to deliver her remarks in heavily accented English.  The appreciative crowd started chanting “USA, USA!”  This was reminiscent of a high school basketball crowd in San Antonio who greeted the basketball team from an almost totally Latino public school with the same chant.  The Republican convention crowd was difficult to silence even by the presiding chairperson.

No wonder that the Republican Party has spent such large amounts of money pursuing every strategy possible to suppress the votes of Latinos in the United States.  The now infamous Ballot Security and Integrity Program (don’t you just love the language?  It’s so self-righteous!) that features everything from processes to “purge voting rolls of illegal voters” to voter identification card programs to protect the integrity of the voting system from fraud.  The only fraud being perpetuated on the election system is by Republican office holders who waste taxpayer’s money on such frivolous programs.

At the second convention, the Democratic, one found a uplifting spirit and a great deal of diversity among the speakers. Even the attacks on Romney were “tongue-in-cheek” and accomplished with smiles.  Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats constructed and presented an atmosphere of inclusiveness.  Also there was a feeling that they were in touch with the needs of Americans of all sorts including women, children, seniors, ethnic groups, soldiers, wives, moms, just everyone.

Although I watched both conventions the Republican one made me want to see what was on the other channels all the time because it was the same thing over and over again, just plain old mean spiritedness, exclusion of all people except a certain type of white person.  The only program that Republicans are putting forth is denying President Obama a second term for some unspoken reason and then cutting taxes and programs and just letting the country go down the drain.  If you stop and think of the Republican program (have you read their platform it’s down right scary) it appears that they wish to do so much damage to the country that what they are putting forth could appear, well, unpatriotic.

One has to stop and wonder about the plight of the Republican Party.  It cannot or doesn’t want to face the reality of changing times.  The GOP has a platform that appears to stand for nothing and against everything.  Cut this, cut that, restrict this and that, and stop them and those.  It appears that Republicans don’t seem to stand for anything; they have become the party that’s against everything!

In this light they have created an image that is driving away those populations that will make up the majority of this country in the near future.  The Republicans say that they want to attract Latinos to their “Big Tent” but every position they take on the economy, health care, education and immigration will hurt the Latino community in one way or the other.  How can they even hope to become attractive to Latinos if all they want to do is put forth policies that appear anti-Latino?

Frankly, if the Republican Party does not clean its act up and become more reasonable, open and rational I think they will be relegated to the “ash heaps” of history.  For those of us who waste all of our time watching politics this moment is historical because we’re watching the demise of a major political party.  If this is indeed the case, will another or others replace the Republican Party, as we know it today.  Will there be a party of true conservatism in the tradition of Russell Kirk?  Will a moderate-centrist party arise?  Who knows the answer to these questions?  All I am willing to say here is that at this moment in American political history the Republican Party is in dire straits and does not have a bright future if it continues down the path it has chosen.