And the Republicans have been sowing primarily out of the back end of their digestive tract.
Hispanics and Asians have basically joined blacks in nearly unanimously hating/fearing the GOP. A lot of this is probably due to the GOP's spectacular failures over the last decade-and-change - 64% of whites also disapprove of the 'Pubs. But a lot of it is about race, ethnicity, tribe...whatever you want to call it.
Hispanics are the big voting bloc, but Asians are really the group to watch here. Back in the 80s, when Republicans could credibly claim they were about something other than race, they'd say something like "Black people are just lazy and/or untalented, and they want to use the government to grab money from the white man because they can't or won't earn it themselves" (you can see echoes of this idea in the modern-day GOP's racist jokes). It was hard to say this about Hispanics with a straight face - after all, they come here to work, don't they? But you still heard mumblings about "illegal immigrants collecting welfare," etc. The idea was that blacks and Hispanics voted for the Democrats not because they disliked and feared the white supremacist views of the GOP, but because they wanted to redistribute money from prosperous whites to themselves.
But you can't say that about Asians. Asians, on average, make more money than whites (in the case of Indian-Americans, LOTS more money). They are also healthier. Welfare, national health care, etc. would end up taking money away from Asians. So it's laughable to claim that there's any kind of selfish economic motive in Asians' hatred for the GOP.
What happened was, Asians saw the obvious. They heard the racist jokes. They saw the mock Obama lynchings and the racist T-shirts. They watched the YouTube videos. They heard a woman tell McCain Obama was "an Arab". And they came to the obvious conclusion: Behind all the talk of free enterprise and American patriotism and Christian values, the Republican Party is an organization devoted to preserving the political power of the "white" ethnic group. And Asians, sharing humankind's God-given gift for seeing the blatantly obvious, realized that despite their high income and strong work ethic, they would always be on the outs with that bloc. Bye-bye GOP.
The good news here is that a majority of whites in America also have no interest whatsoever in white supremacy. Most whites - especially outside the South - have absolutely zero problem sharing their streets, their schools, their government, and their kids' hand in marriage with Asians and Hispanics. And white-black tensions, though still poisoned by history, seem to be on the wane as well (and in any case were never as severe outside the South). The threat the Republicans are doing their best to play up - the idea that immigration and Obama are threatening to end America's identity as a Caucasian nation - is just not very scary to must of us white folk.
And thank God and the Flying Spaghetti Monster for that fact - the Union will hold. We will not splinter along racial lines. It would just be nice if both of our parties wanted that Union to hold. It would just be nice if the Republicans started seeing America as a nation - a republic - instead of a tribe. Perhaps massive and prolonged electoral defeat will help them see the light. Or maybe they'll just retreat to gated communities. And/or start shooting.
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