Lack of GOP Diversity A Problem

While the Republican Party delegates in St. Paul are excited by their ticket and are as enthused in their own way as the Democratic delegates were last week in Denver, the overwhelming lack of ethnic and racial diversity in the convention hall, so blatantly obvious as the networks pan the venue with their cameras, is a troubling prophecy for the future of the Republican Party.

For all its talk about being the Party of Lincoln, and the Party of the Big Tent, the uncanny reality is something else entirely. A party truly committed to the big tent idea will certainly have scores of white members. But when the overwhelming majority of the delegates to the convention, as any observer can clearly see, are white (with some rare exceptions in the crowd), then the GOP has a significant problem.

By the year 2050, caucasian Americans will cease to be the numerical majority in the United States of America. Numerous studies and analyses confirm this undeniable fact. The Republican Party may wish that it can continue to advocate for presidential tickets of white wasps and white protestants, but the fact is that the very base the GOP is catering to this week will not hold the numerical majority in this country forever, as much as they wish it were so.

The GOP can attack the "angry left" all it wants to, but the fact remains that only one party in this country has a significantly consistent history of being open to whites, blacks, hispanics, straight people, gay people, single parents, married couples, small town people, big city people, people of all religious affiliations or none at all, people who love their homes, their guns, their seniors , and their flag just as much as the GOP, despite its shameful smear tactics every four years-and that consistently open party is the Democratic Party.

Only one party has a history of working to unite people from all segments of society and all walks of life, the true hallmark of patriotism and love of country, and that is the Democratic Party.

The GOP can wrap itself in Old Glory all it wants, but its history of divisive tactics, smear politics, religious profiling, racial profiling, assaults on the middle class and the labor movement, and its consistent opposition to every major piece of progressive legislation that improved quality of life in America during the last half of the twentieth century continue to make it the dirt path to the past, not the highway to the future.