I've thought about this before, but for some reason it has resurfaced in my mind recently. For all the contemptible ways this Administration has behaved over the years, the diversity of the Cabinet is enviable.
Off the top of my head, Education, Transportation, Labor, Justice, and State (twice) have been headed by an ethnic minority at one point or another. Sure, Clinton had lots of minorities too, but as a Democrat that is not unexpected. He certainly didn't do anything like appoint a black woman to be head of the National Security Council. Regardless of what we think of their performances, the emergence of this many black, brown, and Asian faces in a GOP administration is an important development.
In my vision of a less racially polarized electorate, the Republican Party inevitably will become darker. Not only would that be good for America as a whole, it would help our side if we adjust correctly to the changing landscape.
Racial politics are taken for granted today. I think I read that in Trent Lott's last election he got 90% of the white vote and his opponent got 90% of the black vote. Of course that's in Mississippi, but here in urban upstate New York I know that lots of people vote for Republicans because they don't want their tax dollars to go to black people. We write it off as though this is an unstoppable force, but its not.
As more and more black and Hispanic Americans enter the middle and upper classes, more will naturally join the GOP out of economic interest and a delusion that they succeeded without anyone's help. I think this process is already underway and will manifest itself more readily in the coming decade or two.
At first this will be difficult for us. Racist white voters will gladly welcome minorities who speak out against affirmative action and welfare. But over time, as minorities become entrenched in the establishment to a much greater degree, many of these whites will come to realize that it was always about class and they are on the bottom end of the scale.
If fact, I would say that the voters who vote against the Democrats for racial reasons are already voting on what they perceive to be class lines. While they may actually be lower or lower middle class, these voters look at black Americans and say "Well those black guys are poor, so I'm obviously not poor." And since the poor are those lazy, violent, oversexed blacks, we shouldn't help them.
This is why I see the "anti-tax" wing of the GOP as a small collection of true anti-tax ideologues (Club for Growth, Chamber of Commerce) supported electorally by a vast number of white people who would be happy to pay higher taxes if it didn't go to waste on the Negroes. Once enough of these voters come around to the idea that anti-tax ideology creates vast disparities in wealth, to their detriment, we will gain access to a previously untouchable swath of voters.
There is one possible problem with this scenario. As the party becomes defined less by race and more by class, we may have to scale back on the social liberalism. The African American bloc of the party is less tolerant on issues like gay rights than Democrats as a whole. As the civil rights era fades, blacks will be more open to a Republican message of intolerance and economic populism (a la Mike Huckabee). This may be the biggest adjustment we'll have to make, but hopefully the reestablishment of the social liberal wing of the Republican Party will temper our rightward shift. This dynamic will also give room for a third party, or a handful of regional parties, to emerge.
Ok, no snappy conclusion, just throwin' some stuff out there that's been baning around the old noggin for a while.