The day I’ll vote Republican

Dear Republicans: Take people seriously.

It’s one thing to be a party of limited government, personal responsibility, individual liberty, strong business, and low-taxes. That sounds specific, engaging, and like ideals that most of us could hardly take issue with.

It’s another thing, though, to be a party that believes it’s everyone for themselves.

It’s another thing to only fleetingly acknowledge, seek to discredit, or flat out deny the lived experience, feelings, and conclusions drawn by Americans who are black, brown, Muslim, poor, working class, immigrant, LGBT, sick, incarcerated, pregnant, undocumented, feminist, etc.

It’s one thing to be a party that believes increased government spending rarely leads to the best solution, but it’s another thing to ignore and deny vast swaths of scientific literature in order to appease government-financed special interests.

The GOP cannot remain ignorant of the things that are really happening and the experiences that real people and real families are actually having. When the party mocks the concept of systemic racism and privilege, ideas that any of us would be statistically likely to better feel, understand, and appreciate had we not been born white, a whole lot of non-white Americans actually are offended and they tune out with good reason. That’s the practical cost of not having to worry about being “politically correct.” If the GOP at large can hardly even acknowledge that the experience of being an individual who is black in America is, as a whole, distinct from the experience of being an individual who is white in America (without playfully mocking the developed terminology), we’re dealing with a party that’s simultaneously insensitive and truly ignorant.

Republicans cannot remain vocally apathetic toward LGBT couples’ and their families’ right to share in the institution of marriage for as long as marriage remains a government-sanctioned institution. This is an issue that affects real people and real families, and Republican hopefuls should be seen marching in pride parades, not expressing folksy ambivalence à la, “I believe in traditional marriage, but the court has ruled, and it’s time to move on…” or “What two people do in the privacy of their home is none of my business.” I’d hope that caring about people and their experiences is at the very heart of being a politician.

Listening to, talking about, and acting upon people’s lived experience does not mean turning entire demographics into hopeless victims or others into guilty evildoers. That’s a false narrative, and it’s not even the one that so-called “liberals” are telling. Saying this just makes it easier to feel okay about not needing to take people seriously.

If the only conclusions the GOP can accept are those drawn by angry white men, then any attempt to promote broad-based personal responsibility will be dead on arrival, and whichever candidate best plays to that narrow diversity will win the GOP nomination like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. The so-called “moderates” like Kasich, Bush, and Rubio failed to get further because they neither openly embraced the people I’m talking about nor stood in step with angry white men. Instead they answered to an elite establishment and played tricky political games with their words. Voters aren’t so stupid that they can’t see through hollow attempts to make the party more “visually” diverse, and angry white men aren’t so fifties-racist that they wouldn’t vote for a Cuban-American candidate who basically and primarily still addresses the issues they most value in the way they generally understand and appreciate.

The GOP doesn’t necessarily need to propose the Democrats’ solutions to any of these problems, but they do need to accept the problems with as much gravity as the Democrats seem to.

Even if one accepts the premise that Democrats are simply offering more unsustainable “free stuff” for an increasingly dependent electorate, that sounds to me like a far more palatable evil than a brand that’s known for blowing off so many voices as naive, misguided, lazy, unambitious, comical, whiny, beside-the-point, or “overly-sensitive.” In many ways, to me, the Republican Party has for quite a while seemed to say, “Our life experience is more relevant than yours.”

The day the GOP does a better job than Democrats at struggling with all of us is the day I will vote Republican. If all of this means Republicans need to restructure and form a “Grand New Party” in order to leave its old base behind, then that’s what they should do.