Beinart: If only Dems loved minorities like the GOP does...

Peter Beinart has been annoying me for months with his inexplicable calls for the Democrats to start imitating Republicans. If it sounds straight out of the DLC, it's because it is straight out of the DLC. Here's the whiz-bang finale of his latest piece, featured in the WaPo (link above):

"Genuine multiculturalism is not just about race, ethnicity and gender. It's about embracing people whose culture differs from yours, in hopes of finding core principles that you share. Over the past four years, Republicans have done that. Now Democrats must too. [sic]"

Is it just me, or does this statement drip with irony? The reason Republicans are making headway with these groups is that they are employing underhanded tactics to make headway-- like Bush's attempts to con black Americans into thinking that they're being ripped off by Social Security. Which is an utter falsehood. In fact, the GOP is trying to win everyone's votes the only way it knows how-- by finding novel ways to convince people to put robber barons in charge of the country.

If Beinart thinks that the Republicans are worthy of emulation in their present incarnation, he needs a nice, long vacation. If we were the party of unprecedented deficit spending with no oversight, we'd be the liberal party that has been scorned for decades. If we were passing corporatist-friendly, anti-consumer legislation at light speed, we wouldn't be Democrats to begin with.

UPDATE: Hey, Petey-boy. Here's a great example of the GOP's brilliant minority outreach from Raw Story:

“We don’t do Lincoln Day Dinners in South Carolina,” Senator Graham told a Lincoln Day gathering in Tennessee Saturday. “It’s nothing personal, but it takes awhile to get over things.”

According to a Knoxville News Sentinel article published Sunday, Graham entertained an amicable crowd and joked about his predecessor in the Senate, former Sen. Strom Thurmond.

UPDATE: I just heard Beinart interviewed on The Al Franken Show (March 8). Al didn't give him an inch, and frankly, I didn't think that Beinart had a leg to stand on. It sounded suspiciously like a guy with a book to sell (oh, wait-- he is) who insisted that there was more to his proposal than met the eye-- even as he conceded that the GOP is winning minority votes by lying, that Dems are the only people genuinely promoting their well-being, and that we aren't doing anything wrong. We just need to find some method to counteract the right wing's dishonesty. Thanks, but that isn't exactly news, chum. Now how about getting out there and fighting alongside us, instead of trying to write a bestseller?

Criswell predicts.... lukewarm sales.