Anyone Who Thinks The New Atheists Could Flip Texas Is Delusional

Joan Walsh has an excellent column in Salon in which she debunks the absurd stories about how in the aftermath of the tea party almost crashing the bus off the mountainside, the adults are reasserting control of the Republican Party.  She makes a pretty conclusive case that they haven't and they aren't going to, the "adults" in the Republican party were either in on the joy ride in the dark or they are not making the slightest move to reign in the 12-year-olds.   She goes into a bit of detail about how the freest press in history is lying in such a way so as to benefit the Republicans, naming a few of the hundreds of names that could be dropped on that count.  She also points out that the big money donors who are the imaginary unseen hands that will right the GOP are quite invested in the tea baggers and showing little sign of shifting their support.

Walsh's solution is a simple one,  attack the Republicans who voted for default and throw them out of office.  A more brilliant strategy has never been stated, it is made in view of the past six years of the complete failure to reason with them, to placate them, to appease them, to let them have their way.  That is, in effect the mainstream media solution to the problem,  just let them drive the bus one more time and they'll have learned their lesson.   And a stupider idea could not be had, they were the ones who almost wrecked it in 2008 leading to Democrats holding the government, briefly., That is until the media supported the billionaire financed, astro-turfing operation that the tea party was, giving them enough of the artificial legitimacy that media buzz can give something like that.   The same media folks and operations that are now lying about the Republicans having been made to finally, at long last, after going on forty years of being irresponsible brats, growing up fast.

No, the only way to deal with the Republicans is to attack them and defeat them. And that means those who have brought us to this stage.  Democrats have to turn being a Republican into even more of a political burden than it already is, especially those who have given us the long running Washington DC series of massive irresponsibility.   Walsh say it best:

They need to make clear: The 144 House members and 19 senators are the Default Caucus, and they can’t be trusted to do the right thing for the country. We already know this: “Responsible” Republicans can’t be trusted to do the right thing and stop their colleagues. We’ve already seen how well that worked in 2012.

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One thing that fits in with the theme of my last post is her pointing out the possibility that Texas could flip within the next two years to be a Democratic state, once again.  Demographics almost certainly show that is likely to happen.

Even Ted Cruz ought to worry. He’s probably running for president, but if he doesn’t, or if he runs and loses (as he surely would), by 2018 his Texas Senate seat shouldn’t even be safe anymore. Democrats should play their hand well enough to turn Texas blue again.

Texas may turn "blue" again but it will be a different color blue than many on the left believe is the true blue but is merely their preferred shade.   It will be a blue based, not on affluent white people with educations from elite institutions, sharing the common received POV of the class they aspire to or reside in, it will be based on the emerging "minority majority."   That majority will consist of a lot of people who take religion seriously and who will be turned off by the kind of talk that is the default on so-called liberal blogs.   We could blow that opportunity by indulging in exactly the kind of hate talk that is so frequently my theme.  Since it is aimed at the majority of even the white population, it is a political loser.

Keep in mind, while looking at that pie chart, a lot of the people in the "religiously unaffiliated" slice include people like me who are religious but who aren't counted as such by the Pew analysis.

Aim hate talk and, even more damaging, arrogant condescension at the religions of the minorities that will have to constitute that all important new majority in a state like Texas and you could lose the greatest opportunity to turn out politics back from Republican-corporate rule in the past fifty years.

My fear is that the spoiled brats on the Democratic side who insist on a line that has all of the immaturity, stupidity, pointless offensiveness of the tea party but, which, lacking the money backing those brats had has never won an election.   They have every chance of blowing this by indulging in that kind of arrogant junk. The irony - and when discussing this "me party" we always have to count on irony - is that, while doing that, they believe they are the embodiment of intellect and reason and liberal values.   But the history of the past fifty years, real life, the real and only true means of discerning that kind of political truth, proves the opposite. They aren't the ones making demands and getting away with it.