TNC Breaks It Down

Ta-Nehisi Coates has a great post up on his blog expounding on why he is a liberal/Democrat. The whole thing is worth the read but I wanted to excerpt just a piece and then I will follow up on his points.

I keep thinking about the big things that have always kept me from being a conservative--the knee-jerk worship of a past that branded me half a man, the elevation of the loud imbeciles who think science teachers should be using the Bible, the toleration and baiting of bigots who cloaked themselves in the garb of "States Rights," and now run under the garb of "protecting marriage." The common demonator here is an unreflective veneration of what was, a belief that tradition, no matter how backwards, can heal all. Thus it's only right, that Steele, Gingrich and Limbaugh make up the leadership.

It's not that I think liberals are without flaw, but to argue that our most strident members should be our public face, would seem silly. As Ross intimates, if most liberals thought it was good idea for Howard Zinn Randall Robinson, or Noam Chomsky to be a spokesperson for the Democratic Party, I'd think we'd all gone insane. If Democratic politicians were scared to disagree with Keith Olberman or Michael Moore, I'd be a man without a home.

But these guys think that they are America. They delude themselves with that "center-right nation" analysis, and then mask their losses by claiming they didn't really lose. They think the problem is their wardrobe, their slang, their hairstyle. This what black folks call Project-Bougie or--more aptly put--just plain trifling. The GOP is out shopping for a new dining set, a new couch, a flat-screen--anything to make the crib look a little more inviting. Meanwhile the water bill is two months past due. The lights are off. And the eviction notice is in the mail.

This is without a doubt the position of many if not most black people in this country when it comes to picking a political party. Republicans don't seem to understand that harking back to their good old days were bad old days for most of us. They do it so much that you can't help but feel like they think the old way of doing things is preferrable to what we have now. Maybe in their world thats true, but us minorities generally feel like having the right to vote, not being discriminated against in the work place and being able to dine where we want to are some advances that we would rather keep. Its also apparent now with the Rush Limbaugh two step they are doing that the Republican leadership has absolutely no back bone and not a hint of any courage. Now to the last point, and maybe the most important, these days Republicans just don't get that they are talking at us instead of to us. While they are screaming about earmarks and deficits, real people are struggling every single day and we don't hear a thing out of their camp explaining how what they want to do will help us right now. Unless and until the Republican Party gets their collective heads out of their asses and realize that preaching to their base is going to continue their downfall they have absolutely no chance of returning from the wilderness. I am not in the business of giving them advice but I do believe that just having one viable political party in this country is asking for trouble. At some point someone in the GOP is going to have to open their eyes and recognize that yesterday is gone and that its time to start living in today.