What racism?

The MSM are saying that Romney lost because R’s hate Hispanics.  If only they espoused the Dream Act, they’d get votes.  And in general “non-white” people don’t trust R’s because they are racist. Well, they need to come to Oklahoma.  The state is 8.9% self-identified Hispanic, 8.6% Indian, 7.4% African ancestry, 1.7% Asian for a total of 26.6%--about the same as the national average.  But then consider that 32% of Oklahomans are part Indian, so the total minority population is over 50%. 

      And how do the R’s do?  Well, Mullin won the 2^nd District Congress with 57% so that makes our Congressional delegation of 5 congressmen and 2 senators all Republican.  Governor’s an R as well as all 8 state-wide commissioners. (OK was born under Populism and has many agencies that are independent rather than cabinet offices of the governor.) And the House is 72-29 Republican and the Senate is 36-12 R’s.  All this comes in a state that was 3.5 registered Dems to every Republican in 1976.  House Speaker TW Shannon is half Afro and half Indian.  My candidate, Steve Vaughan ( R ) won re-election with a 60% margin despite getting half of Osage county in redistricting.  Pawhuska is the county seat and has 2.5 registered Democrats for every R.  He even carried that precinct 547 to 533. My favorite incident of the campaign were when we were stopped for lunch at the Deli counter in the grocery store and two Indian ladies came rushing up.  “The tribe says we have to vote straight party Democrat.  They said it in a meeting last night.”  Steve laughed and said, “This is America.  Vote how you want to.  Nobody sees your ballot.”

      If R’s can’t win minorities, how do they clean house in OK?  Well, for one thing, they have intermarried to an extent that the rest of the country will do in about 30 years.  Family means a lot more than what Fasci you belong to. (Fasci, Italian, group, bundle, union)  Labeling people as “white”/ “black”/”red” constitutes what is racist.  All human beings are some shade of brown.  Can’t we just get over this?  Secondly, Okies are a proud bunch of self-reliant people.  When polls of Hispanics and others show they vote Democrat, they vote that way not because of the Dream Act , but they like the idea of government goodies.  Thirdly, Okies are true to their faith.  This is the Bible belt where we believe that a relationship with God trumps the government goodies. 

      And so Steve was talking about Roe vs. Wade.  He noted that neither you nor I will be able to overturn that decision.  He’s not running for the Supreme Court.  But his deeply felt conviction is that life begins at conception.  Only a sneering agnostic would turn up his nose at another’s faith.  When he speaks of the right of property owners, it is with a conviction of the dignity and respect of anyone who has ownership.  And when he talks of education, he talks about how our schools have to be accountable and graded so that local citizens can work to improve them. 

      It may be that this ownership and belonging to a community and family is unique to Oklahomans but I doubt it.  If R’s want to win, they need to stay with core principals and be trustworthy in honoring what they believe.  Those things go hand in hand with being fiscally and socially conservative.   And there are a lot of Americans who are the same way—nearly twice as many conservatives as liberals.

      So when we look back at what Mitt didn’t do, I would say that he wasn’t passionate and heartfelt about his conservatism.  He attacked Obama relentlessly, but didn’t extend his conservative world view to show the disaster that awaits USA if we continue down our present path.  R’s weren’t motivated and 3 million fewer showed up at the polls than did even for McCain. Mitt should have consulted Inhofe who has steadfastly argued against global warming for years, or Coburn who is doing the same about the debt.   Mitt finally did talk about his vision and that was good.  But he won in the primaries by being cautious while having surrogate organizations demolish his competition with character assassination—and in the general election he didn’t have that 5:1 money advantage over Obama.  Obama turned the tables and smeared Mitt, Chicago-style.   In the end, Romney’s candidacy fizzled out and the base checked out.  Next time we need a passionate, determined Conservative.  Seems like the guy we elected in 1980 was such.