George Graham

America is Awakening from a Bad Dream

Say goodbye to the Tea Party and the other extremists who have afflicted American politics recently. Republicans are realizing they can’t survive as a major political force if only old, white males share their politics.

With the Hispanic population growing the way it is and the younger generation rejecting bigotry and xenophobia, the party has to broaden its appeal.  To keep pace with the future. Republicans will probably choose presidential candidates like Jeb Bush and his half-Latino son George – not barnacles like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

Already, the party has begun to moderate its message. Conservative pundits like Bill Crystal and Sean Hannity are  making sounds that seem unusually conciliatory, even reasonable.

Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh and Grover Norquist are spitting fire. Norquist said Obama made voters see Mitt Romney as a “poopy head.” And Limbaugh raged that Latinos voted for President Obama because they’re a bunch of freeloaders. I don’t see people who resort to that kind of infantile name calling maintaining their credibility in a major American political party. Do you?

They sound like echoes from a primitive past.

As for those Ron Paul Republicans, how on earth can they find common ground with people who would force women to undergo trans-vaginal probes in order to have an abortion? And who would, if they could, ban abortion altogether – even in cases of rape?

If Libertarians want the government to leave them alone, wouldn’t they want the government to leave other Americans alone, too? Surely, a woman has as much right to her own reproductive choices as a man (or woman) has to gun ownership?

There’s no way the Tea Party and the Libertarians can continue to inhabit the same tent – regardless of its size.

I see the Tea Party going off on its own – as the GOP moves to the middle – eventually disappearing altogether when its aging members die off.

I see the neo-con warmongers who surrounded Mitt Romney slinking away to mutter dementedly in some dark corner.

The party will lose some Libertarian members, but most will stay on, a driving force for small government and international isolationism within the GOP.

At the other end of the spectrum, I see Progressives remaining under the Democrats’ Big Tent, grumbling and poking but still loyal, a gadfly group that will keep the party from drifting too far to the pragmatic right.

And I see America sailing on serenely, thankfully awakening from what will turn out to have been just another bad dream.

About the author

gwgraeme

I am a Jamaican-born writer who has lived and worked in Canada and the United States. I live in Lakeland, Florida with my wife, Sandra, our three cats and two dogs. I like to play golf and enjoy our garden, even though it's a lot of work. Since retiring from newspaper reporting I've written a few books. I also write a monthly column for Jamaicans.com