GOP Race- and Religion-Baiting Finally Pays Off

In May of this year, the Republican Party received crushing news -- it was dying:

CBS News:

For the first time, racial and ethnic minorities make up more than half the children born in the U.S., capping decades of heady immigration growth that is now slowing.

New 2011 census estimates highlight sweeping changes in the nation's racial makeup and the prolonged impact of a weak economy, which is now resulting in fewer Hispanics entering the U.S.

"This is an important landmark," said Roderick Harrison, a former chief of racial statistics at the Census Bureau who is now a sociologist at Howard University. "This generation is growing up much more accustomed to diversity than its elders."

Yes, white people were becoming just another minority in the vast, multicultural landscape of America. It was terrible. Decades of scapegoating minorities as the source of all evil in the nation -- whether it be casting Latinos as people who "refuse to learn English" or blacks who they pretty much argue are all on welfare -- had finally come back around to bite them from behind. They had been launching racist attacks against minorities for decades. These people would never vote for them in any real numbers in a million years. Richard Nixon's racist "southern strategy" turned out to be as lacking in forethought as the invasion of Iraq. And as disastrous. Publicly, Republicans either shrug their shoulders over the troubles they have with minority voters or blame Democrats for it. But in their heart of hearts, they know why minorities shun them.

Already coping with that particular demographic death sentence, the GOP received another yesterday.

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99-Percenters Winning the War of Popular Opinion

It's inevitable that comparisons are drawn between the Tea Party and the Occupy movement, as much as people in both groups write off those comparisons. The media, after all, have their narratives and "everyone's freaked out about spending!" has seemingly changed overnight into "everyone wants to take on the wealthy!" So the media's natural reaction is to compare the two movements and see what, if anything, has changed.

But the Tea Party was never an actual movement, in the sense that it was the result of people demanding change. In fact, almost the exact opposite was true -- the people were the result of the "movement." The Tea Party was, is, and always will be a corporate PR stunt -- a guerilla ad campaign -- aimed at getting the rightwing talk radio/Fox News/wingnut blogosphere crowd (i.e., the gullible) out in public demanding that Republicans do what Republicans were already planning on doing.

The Occupy movement, on the other hand, seems to be the result of actual frustration with Washington. Republicans have been blocking everything and talking about "what the American people want," while totally ignoring polling that shows the American people want what the Republicans are blocking. Meanwhile, conservative and centrist Democrats -- including the Obama administration -- have often played along, watering down good legislation or compromising it out of existence. Where the Tea Party embodies manufactured outrage, the 99-percenters' is organic -- and justified.

We see this backed up in polling -- which should surprise no one. A United Technologies/National Journal poll finds "some 59 percent of adults either completely agree or mostly agree with the protesters, while 31 percent mostly disagree or completely disagree" with them. 68% support a tax on the wealthy to pay for the President's jobs plan and "nearly one-third of Republicans -- 31 percent -- completely or mostly agree" with the protesters' goals. Those are goals, by the way, that the media keeps telling everyone are a complete mystery. Apparently, the average voter finds them much less mysterious than the average TV pundit.

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