A Must-Read
This open letter “to a future Republican strategist regarding white people” is something of a must-read, as it distills very neatly a lot of the problems and complaints that educated and rational Republicans have with the party’s contemporary politics and messaging.
It starts out by confirming the authors’ bona fides as a white male who should be a loyal and dependable Republican voter.
To whom it may concern regarding the United States federal elections of 2014, 2016 and beyond:
Allow me to introduce myself to you, the existing (or aspiring!) strategist for the Republican Party. My name is Eric Arnold Garland and I am a White Man. Boy, am I ever – you need sunglasses just to look at my photo!
If I read the news correctly, I fit a profile that is of extreme importance to the GOP, as I embody the archetype that fits your narrative of Real Americans. Just how much should my profile interest you? Are you sitting down?
- My family lineage goes back to the MAYFLOWER, BOAT ONE!!! (Garland family of New England-> John Adams -> Howard Alden -> Plymouth colony ->KINGS OF MUTHAF***IN’ ENGLAND)
- I am a heterosexual, married to the super Caucasian mother of my two beautiful children who are, inexplicably, EVEN WHITER THAN I AM.
He goes on to explain that he and his wife are educated and well-traveled, and that he has massive problems with the party’s positions and messaging on science, climate, healthcare, war, deficits/debt, and same-sex marriage. He goes on to complain about meanness. The passage on healthcare is particularly on-point:
My wife and I are quite familiar with America’s healthcare system due to our professions, and having lived abroad extensively, also very aware of comparable systems. Your party’s insistence on declaring the private U.S. healthcare system “the best in the world” fails nearly every factual measure available to any curious mind. We watch our country piss away 60% more expenditures than the next most expensive system (Switzerland) for health outcomes that rival former Soviet bloc nations. On a personal scale, my wife watches poor WORKING people show up in emergency rooms with fourth-stage cancer because they were unable to afford primary care visits. I have watched countless small businesses unable to attract talented workers because of the outrageous and climbing cost of private insurance. And I watch European and Asian businesses outpace American companies because they can attract that talent without asking people to risk bankruptcy and death. That you think this state of affairs is somehow preferable to “Obamacare,” which you compared ludicrously to Trotskyite Russian communism, is a sign of deficient minds unfit to guide health policy in America.
I wholly endorse everything he says. Until the Republican Party returns to the world of facts and science, it will continue to marginalize itself both geographically and intellectually.
(Tip of the hat to Little Green Footballs.)
A little education, a little exposure to the wider world and a young person is forever lost to the GOP.
It’s time for Bill to get over his post-election blues and focus on the real battle that’s looming out there and one where he’ll have a salient impact: “The War on Christmas.” Maybe he can get his stooge Miller to dress up as a Grinch-like character, who threatens to replace traditional holiday themes of sharing with the pursuit of narcissism and flatulent self-aggrandizement which suspiciously sounds like the honored holiday traditions @ the O’Reilly household.