I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't heard it with my own ears. No, wait, yes, I guess I would have believed it. Because this is what the nature of right-wing politics has become.
Yesterday, I overheard two expensively suited Wall Street types discussing the fact that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal would be delivering the GOP response to President Obama's Tuesday evening address to Congress and the American people.
Many people have been speculating about a Jindal run for the presidency in 2012 or beyond. And why not? He's smart, articulate, photogenic, popular, and he toes the Republican party line.
However, the well-heeled duo in my presence did not seem too concerned with Jindal's real qualifications. They support a Jindal candidacy because, well, Jindal -- the son of Indian immigrants -- "is young and he's brown," as one of them put it.
For these two, it's all about identity politics.
After Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic nomination for the presidency, the GOP countered with Sarah Palin in an attempt to win the votes (if not the hearts and minds) of 18 million disappointed Clinton supporters. That didn't work. But they -- at least these two men I encountered yesterday -- didn't take away the lesson that it's not about identity politics, it's about the issues.
So now they figure they'll run a brown guy against the black guy. Apples for apples.
But it will not work. At least not for the reason they think.
The American people these days are smarter than that. And the issues of the day are too important to vote for a skin color or a gender.
Hopefully.
Hopefully those eight years of the Bush administration have taught the American people the importance of voting based on a well-informed and well-reasoned analysis of the issues, not any superficial (and thereby irrelevant) characteristics, or lazy who-I'd-have-a-beer-with kinds of criteria.
We seemed to have learned that hard-earned lesson in time for the 2008 presidential election. Now hopefully that lesson will stick for a while.
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