Obscurity and irrelevance

The last several weeks have been very interesting indeed. But perhaps the most interesting part about it has been watching the United States' Minority Party's reaction to all of it.

Let us begin with the Olympics. The bids for the 2016 Summer Olympics came in several weeks ago, with four cities in the running: Tokyo, Madrid, Rio de Janiero, and Chicago. The day before the votes were cast by the IOC, Barack Obama decided to go and lobby the IOC on behalf of his city of residence. He delivered the usual rousing speech. Despite another impressive oration from the President of the United States (POTUS), the International Olympic Committee responded by ejecting Chicago from the votes in the first round. In the end, the 2016 Summer Olympics went to Samba City: Rio de Janiero. In the words of Bill Maher, "you should have seen it. They were samba-ing in the streets, their breasts were hanging out; and then they found out they'd won the Olympics bid and oh man..."
The response to all of this from the Republican Party was particularly whinging. In a nutshell: They're glad Obama lost the Olympics bid. They're glad to see him fail, they're glad to see a cut in the flesh of the Democrat's Kronos. At long last, they said to themselves, Obama has been shown to be vulnerable. This is where we can hit home at him. The airwaves were flooded with shouts of jubilation and euphoria. The Republicans finally seemed to believe they had defeated him.

Enter Norway, my favourite country in the world. Besides contributing heavily to the UN's budget, effectively running UNICEF, and providing the ultimate argument in favour of democratic socialism, Norway is also responsible for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee for the remaining awards is Swedish, whereas the committee for the Peace Prize is voted on by the Norwegian government. The current government - headed by the Labour Party's Jens Stoltenberg - has a bit of a leftist hint to it (the governing coalition is aptly termed "The Red-Green Block"). Two weeks ago, the committee - including one former Conservative MP, two former Labour MPs, one former Socialist Left MP, and one former Progress MP - awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Hussein Obama. He was awarded it "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" and his work towards "fostering a new climate" in international relations.
I'm not going to go into whether or not Obama deserved the peace prize; enough people have done so with reasoned arguments both for and against. What I instead want to focus on is the Republican reaction to the awarding of the Peace Prize to Barack Obama. The reaction ranged from amusing to frightening. Here's a sampler of some of the most extreme and the most astute:
Senator John McCain: "I think Americans are always pleased when their president is recognized by something on this order".
Rush Limbaugh: "Something has happened here that we all agree with the Taliban and Iran about and that is he doesn't deserve the award...The Nobel gang just suicide-bombed themselves"
William Kristol: "He's liberalism's Gorbachev. He's destined to lose in 2012...I've done as much for peace"
Glenn Beck suggested the prize should go to the Tea Party protestors. He said "an extraordinarily powerful global progressive movement is behind this"
Erick Erickson: "He was picked to meet the Nobel Committee's Affirmative Action Quota"
John Bolton suggested he should turn it down.
Andy McCarthy: "Barack Obama [won] the Yassir Arafat Prize"
Brian Kilmeade wondered whether Obama had delayed troop increases to get the award.
While several have made remarks that are clearly offensive, perhaps the most insane of the reactions comes from the chairman of the RNC: Michael Steele: "the Democrats and their international leftist allies want America made subservient to the agenda of global redistribution and control." Wow. You have to be pretty firmly disconnected from reality in order to blame Obama's win on the Democrats' "international leftist allies". Yes, the Norwegian Nobel Committee leans to the left. Yes, most of the world leans to the left. No, that does not make America the one smart guy in the room. What it means is that the United States has finally started down the long road to catching up with the rest of the world. Yes, the prize may be a little bit premature; but I find Michael Steele's reaction - simply put - to be completely and utterly pathetic.

Indeed, the reaction of the GOP to these two events has shown the increasing disconnect from the rest of the world that the party faces. It is very clear that the world does not side with the criminal policies of George W. Bush and his ilk. It is very clear that most of the world values dialogue and peace, two things that Mr. Bush so utterly lacked and Mr. Obama has demonstrated to possess. But what is perhaps more clear is how completely disconnected from the realities of the United States the Republican Party has become.
To begin, let us take a look at the Tea Party protesters and those like them, the supposed "grass-roots" of the Republican Party. I mentioned several posts ago a frightening set of figures demonstrating how utterly ignorant most Americans are of the rest of the world, and indeed of their own country. Simply through their use of idiocy during their protests ("keep your government hands off my medicare!" comes to mind), we can pretty clearly conclude that most of this ignorant rabble are the ones patrolling the town halls with hitler=obama signs and guns (don't even start me. I've already ranted twice about that, I'm not doing so again).
But even that does not go nearly as far as to simply look at the nature of the Congressional Caucuses within the US Capitol. Let us look first at the Congressional Black Caucus.
Number of Members: 44 (1 Senate, 43 House of Representatives)
Number of Democrats: 44
Number of Republicans: 0

Not a single Republican. Not a single one. All Democrats. There is not a single Black Republican in the entirety of Congress. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is of a similar makeup, with 23 Democrats and 1 Independent. The Republican counterpart - the Congressional Hispanic Conference - has 11 Republicans. In three racial caucuses spanning two large racial minorities, there are 67 Democrats, 11 Republicans, and 1 Independent. Something has happened here; something that is indicative of America as a whole.
Let us look even further. Last week, Al Franken succeeded in passing an amendment that prevents contracted defense companies from having "no lawsuit" clauses for their employees, after a female employee of KBR was gang-raped repeatedly, and then denied the right to sue by a clause in her contract. The vote was 70-30 in the Senate. All thirty against were Republicans. In the words of the outraged Jon Stewart: "I understand we're a divided country, some disagreements on health care. How is ANYONE against this?"
Let's take a look. The pictures of the thirty senators against were posted on a website mocking their stance:
http://www.republicansforrape.org/legislators/

Notice anything?
Relatively monotonous on the skin colour, isn't it? This is because the Republican Party is no longer a party that represents racial minorities, if indeed it ever was. It is a party that is increasingly made up solely of old white men, a party that is increasingly disconnected from the growing racial minorities in America. These minorities will not be so for long. The Hispanic population is growing at an astronomical rate. It is predicted that by 2020, the primary first language of the citizens of Denver (which, ten years ago, was about as white as frightened milk) will be Spanish. The percentage of the vote that is made up by the current Caucasian Republican base will dwindle and dwindle until the GOP fades into obscurity and irrelevance.

Not that that's a bad thing.