A Different Shade of Tea

Josh Kraushaar on how the Tea Party has made the Republican Party more diverse.
As of January, Hawaii will have at least one Asian-American Senator, Mazie Hirono, and had two (Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka) – all Democrats – before Akaka’s retirement at the end of this term and Inouye’s death yesterday. Governor Neil Abercrombie, a white Democrat, will appoint a replacement to serve until a 2014 special election. And of course, President Obama is a Hawaiian-born African-American. But in the 147 Senate seats and Governorships covering the other 49 states, there are:
Five Hispanics (Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Bob Menendez, Susanna Martinez, and Brian Sandoval): four Republicans, one Democrat.
Two African-Americans (Tim Scott and Deval Patrick): one Republican, one Democrat.
Two South Asians (Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley): both Republicans.
Moreover, Jindal, Haley, Scott, Rubio, and Cruz – Republicans all – all represent states of the old Confederacy (Scott defeated Strom Thurmond’s son to win a primary in the district that includes Fort Sumter).
If personnel is policy, the GOP can thank Tea Party insurgents for helping give it a leg up in broadening its appeal.

3 thoughts on “A Different Shade of Tea”

  1. Grasping at straws here and I’m pretty sure you know it. Since the rise of the Tea Party Latinos and Asians have all trended even more Democratic than in the past. A few elected officials is irrelevant.

  2. The GOP should be thanking themselves?
    The Tea Party is the GOP with a name change only. They just don’t want to admit they were huge George W. Bush fans. I can certainly understand why, but (since I’m not a corporate-media celebrity) I don’t have to play along.

  3. The Tea Party has only been working on the Republican Party because the Democrat Party is a lost cause. We don’t like Republicans much better than Democrats because a lot of them have proven themselves to be proponents of a large invasive government.
    We liked George W. Bush because he was better than the alternative. We liked his foreign policy much better than his domestic policy, because he was a statist at heart, as is much of the current Republican Party.

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