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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (31490)	1/14/2009 5:40:48 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

We became more concerned with stem cell policy than economic policy, and with prayer in schools rather than balance in our public budgets and priorities. Stem cell policy was something Republicans spent relatively little time on, and an area where Republicans introduced no serious sweeping changes over policies that had existed earlier. Prayer in schools has always been a fringe issue on the national level for the Republican party, maybe at the local level too much time was spent on it. rather than balance in our public budgets and priorities If he means that Republicans in recent years didn't balance budgets, but in fact moved in the opposite direction, than he's certain correct about that. Davis's other major indictment of the GOP? The wholesale rejection of attempts to court black and Hispanic voters. "We've long-since given up on the African-American vote," he writes. "We're forfeiting the Hispanic vote with unwarranted and unsavory vitriol against immigrants." Unsavor vitriol can be found from all sides on all issues, including from the Republicans on immigration. Leaving aside the most fringe stuff, whether or not most of the statements and policy ideas from the Republicans where unwarranted, is something that could be debated. I'm not taking a position here, just pointing out supporting strong immigration restrictions isn't the same as "unwarranted and unsavory vitriol against immigrants. For the most part the message was NOT "we don't like immigrants". But OTOH this is about perceptions. As for the African-American vote, I wonder what he thinks Republicans should do to get a chunk of it. The biggest problem I see isn't a constant "bash the immigrant" or "we don't like blacks" message, or moving in the direction of the religious right. None of those things happened to any great extent. The biggest problem is the almost total abandonment of the idea of limited government, except perhaps as expressed in tax cuts (and even there is was just cuts, with no reform tax reform to reduce the intrusiveness and complexity of the tax code).