On CNN’s website, prolific on-air e-mail reader Jack Cafferty offers one of the least substantive critiques of the Republican Party of this campaign season. Cafferty’s remarkable triumph of miserable political analysis begins with the following claim: the Republicans have demonstrated their irrelevance by nominating a white man to be president. From there, the blathering rapidly gains momentum:
… It is entirely fitting that the headliner for this masquerade [the convention] is a feeble looking 72-year-old white guy who doesn’t know how many homes he owns. …
In a way, the perfect storm of a rapidly changing population — old white people aren’t going to be in the majority very much longer (and isn’t that who most of the Republicans are?) — has combined with the total abdication of principles, Republican or otherwise, of arguably the worst president in the nation’s history to mark the beginning of the end of the Republican Party as we know it. …
Blacks and Hispanics feel they have a real stake in things — and as their numbers continue to grow as a percentage of the population, their voice will only get louder. The march of the next generation is underway and the older generation has no choice but to eventually get out of the way. …
Of course, this rant about “old white people” is rather odd coming from Cafferty, CNN’s grumpiest, er, Caucasian senior citizen (as of last December 14th). But the greater irony is that, for all their charges regarding alleged intolerance among Republicans, the most overt race-baiting during this campaign season has consistently come from the Republicans’ most vocal opponents. Cafferty’s insinuation that the Republicans should feel threatened by rising voting percentages among minorities is simply the latest example of this trend.
Still, Cafferty earns special attention because his piece is, arguably, the most impressively ill informed. For starters, he completely ignores that–with the presidential race a dead heat and three nights of the Republican convention still to come– the Republican Party isn’t irrelevant. He also demonstrates profound ignorance of U.S. population statistics when he writes that “old white people aren’t going to be in the majority very much longer.” And then there’s Cafferty’s incredible failure to mention the nomination of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for vice-president–a marathon-running 44-year-old mother who seriously challenges his characterization of the GOP as a party of “feeble looking” men.
Again, Cafferty works for CNN, which should mean that–in addition to the e-mails he receives in response to his softball on-air questions–he has access to all the latest polling data and campaign announcements. Yet this latest screed begs a question that CNN viewers have probably asked themselves repeatedly: did Cafferty get the memo?
