Republicans: Fighting Back against Reality

The Republicans have come up with a new strategy recently, and that is to try and get their supporters to avoid the US Census.



On many Progressive Blogs the question has come up, Why?

Why would they pursue a strategy that gets them purposely underrepresented?

It’s all about having something to explain why their views still get airtime.

They are currently the small minority party, 58-40 in the Senate, and only 20% of the American people identify themselves as Republican, yet they get 8 times as much airtime as the Democrats on TV.

Their main newspaper the Weekly Standard has a readership of 80,000 as opposed to The Huffington Post with a viewership of millions. Yet the views expressed in the Weekly Standard get more coverage in the Mainstream Media.

Their big fear is the census will show that their base the WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) are now a minority in the country.

Back in the 80s they had some claim that evangelicals like the Moral Majority should have some say in the country as some 60% of America belonged to White Protestant Churches. (Of course the evangelicals only made up a small percentage of that group, but why let the truth get in the way of a silly argument.)

The latest Poll numbers have Protestants making up approximately 51% of America. 10% of that is made up of Black Churches and for some reason Black tend not to support policies that legalize discrimination.

These poll numbers have been pretty consistent and the number of Protestants in America has been dropping at a rate of almost 1% per year over the last decade.

No one has a crystal ball and can say exactly what percentage the 2010 census will show but even if the amount of Protestants hasn’t slid and the 2010 census shows that the number is 50% plus a small fraction of a percent the Argument that “Christian” policies should be put into effect to please the majority becomes silly when the “majority” is a majority by less than 1%.

It also makes it hard for people like Dobson to demand something because Christians “Meaning only Protestants” are the majority when some branches of Protestants like Unitarians are 100% opposed to what he says. If you take their 2% out of the Protestant mix you are left with 48-49% (not a majority).

After the next census the argument that the Protestant 10 commandments should be taught in school to please the majority won’t hold up as less than 49% of Americans are part of a religion that recognizes the Protestant version. (Catholics and Jews have their own and Unitarians don’t believe god takes time out of his busy schedule to have individual talks with people, therefore no personal delivery of the 10 commandments).

Likewise, Prayer in school is a dead issue.

To counter the fact that the reality is that America no longer has a Protestant majority, they will try to get their base to not be part of the census, that way they can say they were underrepresented.

It’s all a strategy so they can hold their fingers in their ears and say “La-La-La-La I can’t hear you.” For the next 10 years. Instead of adapting to the new reality and embracing the separation of church and state mentioned in the 1st amendment.

I can’t wait to see the strategy for ignoring reality after the 2020 census, when Protestants are expected to be less than 40%.