The Republican Plan to Kill Medicare

It was not only angry unemployed rural/under employed, low information whites who voted against their own economic interest when they cast their vote for Donald Trump and other Republicans. Many of the elderly did the same and will likely now face the consequences as Congressional Republicans now feel empowered to move forward on a long held dream: gutting Medicare and turning it into a limited voucher program.  The pipe dream of Republicans is that "increased competition will drive down premium costs" - something that has NOT happened in the regular heath insurance arena.  Faced with suddenly vastly increased medical care costs, many of the elderly will find their so-called golden years turning into nightmare years.  Indeed, Paul Ryan may get his wish at long last of forcing many seniors to live off inadequate resources once they must choose between eating, having heat in the winter or medical care. Meanwhile, Ryan will bloviate about his Catholic values even as he utter betrays the Church's social gospel message and cuts healthcare support in order to fund tax cuts for the very wealthy.  The man, as are his GOP allies, is evil.  As for those who voted Republican, they once again allowed Republican appeals to their racism, religious extremism and/or general bigotry to cut their own throats.  The New York Times looks at the coming GOP effort to end Medicare.  Here are excerpts:

[W]ith Election Day behind them, emboldened House Republicans say they will move forward on a years-old effort to shift Medicare away from its open-ended commitment to pay for medical services and toward a fixed government contribution for each beneficiary.

The idea rarely came up during Mr. Trump’s march toward the White House, but a battle over the future of Medicare could roil Washington during his first year in office, whether he wants it or not.

“Let me say unequivocally to you now: I have fought to protect Medicare for this generation and for future generations,” Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana, a Democrat running for re-election in 2018, said this week in a video message to constituents. “I have opposed efforts to privatize Medicare in the past, and I will oppose any effort to privatize Medicare or turn it into a voucher program in the future.”

For nearly six years, Speaker Paul D. Ryan has championed the new approach, denounced by Democrats as “voucherizing” Medicare. Representative Tom Price of Georgia, the House Budget Committee chairman and a leading candidate to be Mr. Trump’s secretary of health and human services, has also embraced the idea, known as premium support.

And Democrats are relishing the fight and preparing to defend the program, which was created in 1965 as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. They believe that if Mr. Trump chooses to do battle over Medicare, he would squander political capital, as President George W. Bush did with an effort to add private investment accounts to Social Security after his re-election in 2004.

Democrats will “stand firmly and unified” against Mr. Ryan if he tries to “shatter the sacred guarantee that has protected generations of seniors,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader.

Republicans have pressed for premium support since Mr. Ryan first included it in a budget blueprint in 2011. As he envisions it, Medicare beneficiaries would buy health insurance from one of a number of competing plans. The traditional fee-for-service Medicare program would compete directly with plans offered by private insurers like Humana, UnitedHealth Group and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Democrats say that premium support would privatize Medicare, replacing the current government guarantee with skimpy vouchers — “coupon care for seniors.” The fear is that the healthiest seniors would choose private insurance, lured by offers of free health club memberships and other wellness programs, leaving traditional Medicare with sicker, more expensive patients and higher premiums.

“Beneficiaries would have to pay much more to stay in traditional fee-for-service Medicare,” said John K. Gorman, a former Medicare official who is now a consultant to many insurers. “Regular Medicare would become the province of affluent beneficiaries who can buy their way out of” private plans.

“I am terrified of vouchers,” said Kim Ebb, 92, who lives in a retirement community in Bethesda, Md., and has diabetes, atrial fibrillation and irritable bowel syndrome. “You get a fixed amount of money to draw on for your expenses. Then you are on your own.”
Charles R. Drapeau, 64, of East Waterboro, Me., said he was rattled by the Republican plans.

“I’m scared to death,” said Mr. Drapeau, who has multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, and takes a drug that costs more than $10,000 a month. “We don’t know exactly how it will work, but just the fact that they are talking about messing with Medicare, it’s frightening to me.”

Mr. Gorman said that premium support would be “a seismic change” in Medicare and could increase costs for many people in the traditional fee-for-service program, fueling a big increase in enrollment in private Medicare Advantage plans.

The Congressional Budget Office analyzed two of the leading options and found that “most beneficiaries who wished to remain in the fee-for-service program would pay much higher premiums, on average, under either alternative.” At the same time, the budget office said the proposal could slow the growth of Medicare spending if more beneficiaries enrolled in lower-cost private plans.

Consumer advocates express several concerns about premium support. Private plans, under pressure to rein in costs, could respond by creating smaller networks of doctors and hospitals. Such plans would then be less attractive to sicker patients who need more health care services.

“What happens if the voucher doesn’t grow with the cost of health care?” asked Leslie B. Fried, a health lawyer at the National Council on Aging, a service and advocacy group. “Will people have more and more out-of-pocket costs?”

The winners?  The wealthy who receive tax cuts and the insurance companies. The losers?  The average American.  Welcome to the Trump/GOP America. 

Americans Fail Pew Test of Basic Political Knowledge

If you want to know why the Tea Party and Republican Party manage to remain forces in American politics, look no farther than a new  Pew Research Center News IQ survey that found a frightening number of Americans politically ignorant.   Of course, Fox News and the GOP like things that way.  Here are highlights from Politico on the survey findings:

Only one-in-three Americans knows how many women serve on the Supreme Court, but 91 percent can identify Martin Luther King Jr., 47 years after his assassination.

That’s according to the latest Pew Research Center News IQ survey released Tuesday, which tests how well the American public knows the world in words, maps and pictures.

Almost all millennials surveyed — 96 percent — could pick out King from a list of names that included Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson and Thurgood Marshall. Older generations could mostly identify the slain civil-rights leader, as 89 percent of Gen Xers, Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation did.

But millennials apparently aren’t so great at identifying the current party makeup of the Senate. Only 47 percent of respondents aged 18 to 34 were able to do so, compared to 52 percent overall. Those who described themselves as more politically engaged were more likely to know the upper chamber’s composition. (For the record, Republicans hold 54 seats; Democrats 44 seats; and Independents two seats.)

[O]nly 51 percent could recognize Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren from a series of four photos with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.).

Education levels again factored into the responses, but Pew notes that half or more respondents with a high school education answered eight of the quiz’s 12 questions correctly. Among college graduates and post-graduate degree holders, most answered 11 out of 12 correctly.

What if the Republicans Win Control of the Senate?

Next Tuesday will decide which political party controls the United States Senate for the next two years.  I'd be lying if I said I did not want the Democrats to manage to retain control.  Up until now, the Senate has saved the nation from the batshitery of the GOP controlled House of Representatives and, if the GOP takes the control of the Senate, only a presidential veto will stop the worst of the insanity.  A piece in the Washington Post by partners in a Republican political and public affairs research firm somewhat sanely conjectures on what will not be accomplished by the GOP even if the Senate falls to the GOP. Don't expect the GOP base or the political whores of the Christofascists/Tea Party to make such a  rational analysis of what a win of control of the Senate would mean. In fact, a win of the Senate on Tuesday may set the stage for GOP defeats in the future because many in the GOP will close their eyes to the need to change.  Here are column highlights:

[M]ost models are predicting a Republican takeover of the Senate, as well as gains in the House, following Tuesday’s midterm vote.

Such a victory gives the Republican Party a significant opportunity to recast itself in the eyes of voters. But let’s be clear: Winning on Tuesday will not necessarily portend success in 2016. After all, big GOP wins in 1994 and 2010 did not lead to a President Dole or a President Romney in the subsequent elections. In fact, the Republican Party hasn’t managed to string together three successful elections since the 2000-2002-2004 political cycles.

So what does a GOP win in 2014 mean for the coming presidential contest? Let’s start with what it doesn’t mean:

It doesn’t mean we’ve solved the GOP math problem.  Democrats like to accuse Republicans of being bad at science, but in fact we’re really bad at math. Winning in a non-presidential-turnout year, when older and white voters make up a larger percentage of the electorate, should convince no one that we’ve fixed our basic shortfalls with key electoral groups, including minorities and younger voters.

Assuming that the Democrats replicate their 2012 electoral success with minority voters two years from now, and assuming that Hispanics grow as a percentage of the overall electorate, which they will, we calculate that Democrats will already have almost half (24 percent) of the votes they need to win a majority of Americans in 2016. To win 50.1 percent of the popular vote, we estimate, Republicans will need nearly 64 percent of the white vote . . . 

Further, there is little evidence that GOP prospects are improving with younger voters, especially younger women. We can no longer depend on voters 45 and older to carry Republican candidates to victory (Romney won voters 40 and older, but still lost the election.)

It doesn’t mean we’ve solved the GOP map problem.   Republicans can win in red states. Tuesday should bear that out pretty well. But the challenge for the GOP long-term is winning in blue or purple states. Our success in states such as Iowa, Colorado and New Hampshire on Tuesday may indicate that we’re getting back on track. That’s pretty important, because in 2016 we face the “Big Blue Wall” — the 18 states (plus Washington, D.C.) that have gone for the Democratic presidential candidate six elections in a row. They add up to 242 electoral votes, leaving the Democrats needing just 28 of the 183 electoral votes in the 18 toss-up states. 

It doesn’t mean we’ve solved the GOP image problem.  Even though President Obama is significantly less popular than he was two years ago, the GOP is not well positioned to capitalize because our party’s image has also gotten worse since 2012. In the most recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, half of respondents had a negative image of the Republican Party — only the fourth time that has occurred in the past six years. (Reminder to Tuesday’s winners: Threatening impeachment or shutting down the federal government doesn’t endear you to middle America.)

The Coming Generational War in the GOP

click image to enlarge

I've written frequently about the civil war being waged in the Republican Party between the so-called GOP establishment one the one hand and the knuckle dragging, ignorance embracing elements of the Christofascists/Tea Party on the other.  But there is another civil war brewing.  It's the coming war between the libertarian leaning younger generations and the aging, angry elements of the GOP who reject modernity.  Perhaps thankfully, the latter element in the GOP is literally dying off.  But in the meanwhile, the growing division should be setting off alarm bells within the leadership of the GOP.  Andrew Sullivan sums it up well:

Perhaps the most crippling disadvantage the GOP now has is its dependence on seniors for political clout. We know just how divergent today’s generations are – to such an extent that they are effectively foreign countries to each other. 61 percent of Millennials are white, compared with over 80 percent for the pre-boomers – creating an entirely different rite of passage into adulthood. 26 percent are married, compared with 65 percent of pre-boomers and 48 percent of boomers. Millennials have far less trust in institutions, including political parties, and on social issues, Millennials are far more libertarian than their elders: marriage equality is simply a given for them, and legalizing weed a no-brainer.

On current trends, the GOP has close to no chance of winning over this demographic unless it loses its discomfort with non-whites and gays, if it pledges a re-run of George W Bush’s foreign policy, if it keeps championing the war on drugs, or the surveillance state. The widening generational gap between the parties is already unprecedented in modern times. And one segment of the voters is dying, and the other is gaining strength. Unless the GOP manages to find a way to re-brand itself with the next generation, it is facing an existence on life-support – and each pandering message to the Fox News demo will only serve to alienate Millennials.

What will be another interesting dynamic of this conflict will be the choice forced on the GOP: continuing pandering to the Christofascists or lose a majority the younger generation (56% of Republicans under 45 favor marriage equality).  I continue to be amazed that the powers that be in the GOP haven;t crunched the numbers and come to the realization that the Christofascists will be the death of the GOP.

Why Whites Will Abandon the GOP

The Christofascists and inhabitants of Teabagistan believe that all the Republican Party needs to do to win future national elections is to win more white votes.  But other than fanning the flames of racism and religious extremism, the GOP has no plan for moving the nation forward and the hate and bigotry exhibited by the GOP base is seen as increasingly repulsive.  My entire extended family of white former Republicans is but one example that underscores the reality that the victory through winning more white votes is insanity.  A column in The Daily Beast expands upon why the GOP quest for more white votes is not going to save the party from demographic reality.  Here are excerpts:

As you are certainly aware, the new consensus among most Republicans and conservatives is that they don’t need no stinking Latinos . . . . But what’s interesting is this. There’s an assumption embedded in the argument that no one disputes: namely, that whites will always be as conservative as they are now and will always vote Republican in the same numbers they do now. This assumption is wrong. White people—yep, even working-class white people—are going to get less conservative in coming years, so the Republicans’ hopes of building a white-nationalist party will likely be dashed in the future even by white people themselves.

We already know all about the creative-class white voters, the well-educated and higher-income people who have shifted dramatically to the Democratic column over the past generation. Those voters are increasingly lost to the GOP. 

Back in March, the Brookings Institution and the Public Religion Research Institute released a big poll on immigration. Those findings are interesting as far as they go, but the questions and results went beyond that. It’s the first poll I’ve seen that breaks the white working class into four distinct age groups (65-plus, 50 to 64, 30 to 49, 18 to 29) and asks respondents attitudes about a broad range of social issues. And guess what? White working-class millennials are fairly liberal!

White working-class young people back gay marriage to the tune of about 74 percent. Another 60 percent say immigrants strengthen the United States (the totals for all three other age groups are below 40 percent). About 56 percent agree that changes immigrants have brought to their communities are a good thing. Nearly 40 percent agree that gays and lesbians are changing America for the better (more than double the percentages in the other three age groups).

They have different views because they’re different people: only 22 percent of white working-class millennials are evangelical, compared with 32 percent as a whole and 42 percent of seniors. And an amazing 38 percent of the group call themselves religiously unaffiliated.

But the striking differences between their views and those of the three older groups are consistent, they are uniform, and they are pretty vast. 

So let’s hand it to the Republicans. They make the strategic decision to go all 1980s South Africa on us at a time when a sizable and sure-to-be-growing chunk of one of the most Republican-friendly segments of the white vote isn’t going to want that anymore. So, far from the GOP share of the white vote sailing up toward 70 percent as Sean Trende so giddily predicts, it seems just as likely to decrease as we enter the 2020s and see the sprouting of a more liberal (or less conservative) white working class. Finally, the Republican Party will be the party of true equality, having equally alienated every racial and ethnic group in America.

Based on my children and their friends, I believe that the premise of the column is on target.  Not that the Christofascist?Tea Party base of the GOP gives a damn about reality.
 

GOP Lunacy: Winning More White Voters Can Save the Party

The GOP's circular firing squad seems to be continuing unabated as supposed leading lights in the insane element of the GOP continue to argue that all the party needs to do for future victory is win over more white voters.  Never mind that the demographic hand writing is on the wall and never mind that young whites are fleeing the party in droves, repelled by the GOP base's blatant racism and rampant homophobia.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the continuing batshitery:

[T]he argument that Republicans don’t really need to improve their standing much among Latinos to be competitive in national elections is gaining real ground among Republicans — posing a serious threat to immigration reform. The emerging case is that Republicans mainly need to do even better among whites — by doing a better job energizing white supporters and by bringing in more “missing” white voters who might be inclined to vote Republican — thus relieving them of the inconvenient need to alienate their base with anything that might persuade Latinos to give their party a second look.

Today Nate Cohn published what may be the most comprehensive piece yet attempting to debunk this notion, which was perhaps best laid out by Sean Trende the other day. Cohn’s piece is well worth reading in full, but here is the summary version:

1) If Republicans are going to increase their performance among white voters even further, they will have to moderate on social issues in ways that will be discomfiting to the base in any case; Republicans will have to “pick their poison.”

2) The whites-only theory of the case depends on the GOP continuing to improve its standing among whites going forward. While this is currently happening, GOP gains among them are largely regional — focused in the south and in Appalachia. At the same time, Democrats may be gaining among whites outside these regions, which, if it continues, could “cement the Democratic edge in the Electoral College.”
3) The notion that the GOP’s future hopes turn largely on boosting turnout among “missing white voters” who didn’t turn out in 2012 is complicated by the fact that many of these voters might vote Democratic. This could be made even worse by the fact that many missing whites were young voters. Over time, if the next generation of young voters is as liberal as this one, it could push the national white voter further leftward.

Cohn concludes:

Conservatives take solace in the possibility that they could win with gains through whites, presumably on the assumption that the changes needed for gains among non-southern white voters will be less painful than embracing immigration reform. To the extent that this assumption is informed by the view that the GOP is making broad, steady gains among white voters, it is wrong. The GOP has a tough road ahead.

In other words, it seems like an epic gamble. But judging by the GOP’s continuing embrace of hidebound positions on issues that many Republicans themselves recognize a need to evolve upon, it increasingly appears to be a risk the party is prepared to take.

Illinois GOP Chair Refuses to Resign Over His Pro-Gay Marriage Stand

If one wants to see what happens when someone tries to move the Republican Party toward modernity and a departure from obsession with God, guns, racism and gay bashing, one need look no farther than Illinois where state GOP Chairman Pat Brady is facing growing calls for his resignation because he has urged Illinois Republicans to vote for marriage equality.   Like Newt Gingrich - who I personally loathe - Brady sees the future and understands that longer term, the GOP's incessant anti-gay animus is going to harm the GOP's viability.  Outside of knuckle dragging Christofascist circles, more and more Americans now support same sex marriage, particularly younger voters who are replacing the elderly bigots who continue to embrace hate and bigotry not only against gays but minorities in general.  WBEZ has coverage on the raging fire storm.  Here are highlights:

The head of Illinois’ beleaguered Republican Party is staring down a revolt from some state party bosses after he bucked the official GOP line last week and urged state lawmakers to approve same-sex marriage.

State GOP Chairman Pat Brady faces growing calls for his resignation, at a time when some Illinois Republicans are rethinking the party’s image and stance on social issues, following a dismal showing in November’s elections.

Conservative groups and activists pounced on Brady shortly after he released a statement last week offering his “full support” of a bill before the General Assembly that would legalize same-sex marriage.

But now the public demands for his ouster are coming from party leaders themselves.
“Pat Brady is a total disgrace,” said Bobbie Peterson, a Republican state central committeewoman from Beecher, Ill.

“He’s a pretty face for TV. He can speak well. Period,” Peterson said. “But what’s coming out of his mouth is not what the Illinois Republican party is about.”

Brady acknowledges he didn’t reach out to committeemen before speaking out in favor of gay marriage. But he told WBEZ his views are his own, and he spoke up while lawmakers were debating the issue in Springfield. Brady calls the same-sex marriage ban Illinois' “last condoned discrimination."

“If people want to throw me out because I took a stand on an issue of discrimination [as] the chairman of the Republican Party, the party founded by Abraham Lincoln, then that’s – that’s up to them and they’re free to do it,” Brady said. “But I’m not backing down.”

Whatever the outcome, Brady’s timing could not have been worse, according to several party bosses. Brady chimed in just as lawmakers were trying to focus on fiscal issues, such as pension reform, instead of same-sex marriage, said State Sen. Dave Syverson, R-Rockford, who sits on the Republican State Central Committee.

“His role as chairman should be to concentrate on uniting the party, and not dividing the party,” Syverson said, though he doesn't go so far as to ask Brady to step down.

The flap over Brady’s comments comes as many state Republicans are still digesting their rout in the Nov. 6 elections, when the GOP lost its majority in the Illinois congressional delegation, and Democrats won supermajorities in both chambers of the General Assembly.

That has some politicians considering a move to the center on some social issues such as same-sex marriage, said Republican pollster Gregg Durham.

“What some voters perceive as extremism on some of the social issues certainly cost votes in November and will cost votes in the future,” Durham said, referring to young voters and suburban women, two key voting blocs. “And there’s a lot of candidates right now doing soul-searching, looking at some of these issues to say, ‘Where are we really on this stuff?’”

The irony is that some of my former GOP compatriots from the past accuse me of being "angry" - obviously, it is they who are angry - angry that white male and Christianist  privilege is dying - and I can only surmise that they are looking in the mirror when they make these attacks on me.  They can whine and attack me all they want, but I will go on calling out their lies and hypocrisy.

Republicans Face Growing Difficulties In the South And a Shrinking White Vote

The post mortems in the wake of the 2012 elections continue and few of the bode well for the long term prospects of the Republican Party in its current posture as a captive of the Christofascists and their Tea Party cousins.  Indeed, by embracing the Christofascists and the Tea Party, the GOP seems to have largely alienated everyone else.  Add that reality to demographic changes taking place and over the course of time even the reliable South - the GOP's new Confederacy, if you will - may not be a sure bet for the GOP.  Frankly, I don't feel the slightest shred of sympathy for the GOP because years ago, the party made the conscious decision to sell its soul to the far right, especially the Christofascist elements.  After that, moderates and non-religious extremists fled the party with the result being that the party establishment finds itself saddled with escapees of the insane asylum who will not be easily displaced.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at developments in the South that ought to cause GOP party bosses nightmares.  What is especially gratifying is that the GOP prediction that the Democrat embrace of gay marriage would sink the Democrats has blown up in the face of the GPO naysayers. Here are article excerpts:

Election Day in the South told a newer and more surprising story: The nation’s first black president finished more strongly in the region than any other Democratic nominee in three decades, underscoring a fresh challenge for Republicans who rely on Southern whites as their base of national support.

Obama won Virginia and Florida and narrowly missed victory in North Carolina. But he also polled as well in Georgia as any Democrat since Jimmy Carter, grabbed 44 percent of the vote in deep-red South Carolina and just under that in Mississippi — despite doing no substantive campaigning in any of those states.

Much of the post-election analysis has focused on the demographic crisis facing Republicans among Hispanic voters, particularly in Texas. But the results across other parts of the South, where Latinos remain a single-digit minority, point to separate trends among blacks and whites that may also have big implications for the GOP’s future. 

A combination of a growing black population, urban expansion, oceanfront development and in-migration from other regions has opened up increasing opportunities for Democrats in those states. 

In every Southern state except Louisiana, the population of African Americans grew substantially faster than that of whites over the past decade. The growth is fueled by black retirees from the north and rising numbers of young, well-educated blacks in prosperous cities such as Atlanta, Norfolk, Charlotte and Charleston, S.C.

The influx also includes fast-growing, but smaller, Hispanic populations and an infusion of less-conservative outsiders attracted to popular coastal areas. Together, the shifts are making the electoral landscape from Virginia and the Carolinas look increasingly like the swing state of Florida. .  .  .  .  The proportion of white voters in the South is also shrinking.

Prominent conservatives in the region are acutely aware of the danger posed by the trends. “We’ve got to go out and sell our ideas not just to the choir, but the whole church,” said Henry Barbour, a Republican National Committee member from Mississippi and a top Romney fundraiser (and nephew of former governor Haley Barbour). “We’re not going to get 25 percent of the black vote in four years, but we’ve got to figure out which African Americans share our core beliefs.”

But the issues [gay marriage and gay rights] had little apparent impact on Obama’s support within the black community. Black pastors — some of whom had preached against gay marriage in the past — rallied to the president. Romney also hit a number of sour notes with minorities during the campaign, including his apparent suggestion that blacks who support Obama want “more free stuff” from government.

By the closing stage of the campaign, gay marriage had largely disappeared from the conversation among black voters. “We don’t see any of that,” said Tiara Moore, 23, a biology student, after a day of canvassing before the election at historically black Hampton University in Virginia. “They talk about health care and student loans.”

“We were all basically stunned at the results,” Bryant said. “It is very clear that the direction of the Republican Party — the conservative movement — is necessarily going to have to include the changing face of America and address the concerns of minorities, blacks, Latinos, and even younger white women, all young people. . . . It has to happen or we’re going to be insignificant.”

Do not expect the Christofascists to yield to reality.  The GOP made its bed with them and will now have to live with the consequences.  The GOP civil war will be entertaining to watch.

 

How Did the GOP Get So Angry and White?

I've noted many times that in my opinion, the Republican Party has become something very ugly.  Like the Christianist base of the party, the GOP is now best defined by who they hate and the list includes virtually everyone but old, white, heterosexual men - and the repressed white women whom they dominate.  One of the striking things is the thinly veiled racism with permeates the GOP with blacks and other non-white minorities seemly the favor targets of hate and derision.  LGBT citizens are no less despised by the party base.  Anyone who looks different or believes in different This is NOT the Republican Party of its early years or the years following the Civil War when minorities were welcomed and held positions in the party,  A column in The Daily Beast looks at this transformation of the GOP and the likely long term suicide that will ensue if things do not change.  Here are highlights:

"Zero Percent of Blacks for Romney”—Oh, that headline hurts. And the WSJ/NBC poll can’t just be dismissed out of hand as the work of partisan hacks.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that no African-Americans will vote for the Romney-Ryan ticket, just that it will be within the margin of error and along the lines last time, when McCain-Palin somehow managed to score 4 percent of the black vote.

But ’twas not always thus for the GOP. Dust off your history books and you will see Republicans once had a virtual lock on the minority vote—and minority elected officials. The legacy of Lincoln was alive and well until not so long ago. Which makes the retreat of recent decades both unfortunate and ill-timed.

Consider that the first popularly elected African-American senator was a Republican, Ed Brooke from Massachusetts, in 1966. Likewise the first Asian-American senator, Hawaii’s Hiram Fong, who was first elected in the Eisenhower era. The first Native-American senator, Charles Curtis—who went on to be Herbert Hoover’s vice president. The first Hispanic senator, Octaviano Larrazolo, also was a Republican. Ditto the first woman popularly elected to the Senate, Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith.

“The Republican Party was the party that gave hope and inspiration to minorities—and there was a coalition at first,” says Ed Brooke, now 92 and living with his wife, Anne, in Miami. “My father was a Republican. My mother was a Republican. They wouldn't dare be a Democrat. The Democrats were a party opposed to civil rights. The South was all Democratic conservatives. And the African-American community considered them the enemy.”  

The decline of centrist Republicans was one important reason for the decline in the GOP’s diversity over recent decades, according to Brooke. The shift of the party’s political base to the states of the former Confederacy coincided with the rise of social conservatism and states’ rights in what had been the progressive party in the era of Lincoln.

Demographics are destiny, and looking like the party of old white men is not a recipe for Republican success in the future. That’s why this forgotten legacy of diversity should be respected and celebrated, even as the Party of Lincoln has turned into the Party of Reagan. Because these forgotten figures deserve to be remembered by Republicans and all Americans as the pioneers they were.

• Sen. Charles Curtis of Kansas served in the Capitol for most of the first three decades of the 20thCentury. Native-American on his mother’s side, Curtis spent much of his childhood growing up on the Kaw reservation with his grandparents, descendants of Chief White Plume. His presence on the 1928 ticket alongside Herbert Hoover made him the first non-white on a major-party presidential ticket and the first to serve as vice president.

As Republicans gather in Tampa—Florida is a must-win swing state with a sizable minority population—the opportunity and obligation for the party to reach out beyond their white base should be clear. 

Don't hold your breath waiting for today's GOP to reach out for anyone other than white heterosexual males. most of whom will  be over 50 years of age.  The party of Lincoln has become the de facto party of the KKK and other white supremacy groups.  And in my view, it's not a coincidence that this horrific transformation of the GOP has coincided with its take over by the Christianists,