I’m sitting here at 7 am in Taiwan, watching the start of the Republican Convention, with the singing of ‘America the Beautiful,’ and I am struck as the camera pans out over the cloud how vastly this convention differs from the Democratic one held just last week.
We all know that Obama is capable of drawing wildly excited supporters to his rallies, and that his campaign attempts to structure things to showcase this to the maximum effect. But what really struck me when I watched the camera pan over the crowds at the Democratic Convention and Obama’s acceptance speech was how American the crowd looked. Blacks, whites, Latinos, Asians, people of all ages and colors coming together to show their support for this candidate. The camera is panning over the crowd at the Republican Convention now, and do you know what I see? Middle-aged and elderly white people. I haven’t seen a single delegate or person of color on the floor other than Ruby Dee, who just finished singing ‘America the Beautiful.’
I don’t like the GOP to begin with, but really, if the future of the party is predominantly white, and its leadership makes no attempt to include or enthuse the young to turn up for events like the convention, to get involved in the political process the way Obama has for the Democrats, they may well find themselves one day even more out of touch than they already appear to be. America is a diverse nation, not just one made up of white Christians (or Christians period), and the sooner the GOP realizes it, the better off they will be.
3 Comments
September 3, 2008 at 11:24 pm
I may be a bit biased too, but it seems to me, given the speeches last night, especially from Fred Thompson, that the Republicans really want to keep America divided. I saw no effort of inclusion in anything they said.
September 3, 2008 at 11:33 pm
I completely agree, 100%.
September 5, 2008 at 10:06 am
You’re right; the Republican party has become to politics what the suburbs are to our major cities. They know that minorities are out there (somewhere), but as long as they can stay on the other side of the river, we’ll all be fine… right? It is absurd, and it will mean the end of the Republican party in my lifetime if these clowns don’t wake-up to America’s multicultural tapestry.