Friday, November 14, 2008

George Will's confused mind

Following an interview with Mitch McConnell, George F. Will argues that the result of 2008 is not irreversible:

Ninety percent of John McCain's vote was white, and the white percentage of the turnout has fallen from 90 percent in 1976 to 77 percent in 2004 and 74 percent in 2008. Still, McConnell believes that although Hispanics, the nation's largest minority, gave Obama two-thirds of their votes, they are entrepreneurial and culturally conservative, and therefore are not beyond the reach of Republicans.


So all the GOP needs to do is to engineer a situation where white voters are 90% of the electorate!

Well actually not, because the decline of the 'white' share of the vote is the result of non-white voters voting in greater numbers. By 'white', Wills seems to mean 'people like me' a rather narrower definition than 'caucasian'. That was achieved in large measure through deliberate disenfranchisement of minority voters in the US South.

A charitable interpretation of McConnell's plan is that he is suggesting that the GOP can attract minority voters to its cause. The thought that does not appear to occur to either is that the reason that only 10% of GOP support is coming from minorities might be the fact that a large portion of the party is quite happy to play the race card.

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