Assumptions of Groupthink

Earlier this week the majority leader of the US Senate, democrat Harry Reid of Nevada made a statement about how he could not understand how any Hispanic could be Republican. After being questioned further on the subject Reid’s office sent out a statement clarifying that he meant he couldn’t understand why anyone would ever vote Republican because they are against Teachers, Police, Firemen, Bigfoot, Tinkerbell, Sunshine, Rainbows, etc.

These statements come from the leader of the United States Senate. Ostensively the US Senate is an august body comprised of noble and respected leaders. With a majority leader like Reid the Senate has become even more of a joke than low opinion poll ratings suggest.

On the original statement there have been some liberal commentators agreeing with the sentiment and there have been some conservative and Hispanic commentators refuting the comment and the senator. What is woefully missing from both sides is an ability to allow for the idea that Hispanics are free thinking people and as such, depending on many things come to political stances for many reasons. It is condescending for anyone, even with egocentric good intentions, to assign groupthink to any person or group because of ancestral origin.

Based on similar statements that I have heard throughout my lifetime it seems as though democrats are playing to an audience of certain groups that they assume buy in to this kind of talk. I happen to be Hispanic but my opinion amounts to almost nothing to democrats because I do not share their views on governance. It doesn’t matter how angry that these kind of comments make me because they don’t have my vote anyway. Because of this it appears that this statement was a calculated attempt at strengthening the assumptions of like minded voters. That the assumption is false is of no consequence.

In the clarification statement Reid peddles the tired liberal characterization of the Republican platform. An illustration of this came this week as congress was called back into session to vote on a 26 billion dollar funding of certain public sector jobs. Teachers were to benefit the most but the bill has a poison pill wherein the funds must be spent on expanded spending and on not recovering deficits in state budgets. The funding for the bill came from the roll back in expansion of food stamps to occur from 2013-1015. Democrats like Reid point to initiatives like this to prove that Republicans are against teachers but that just isn’t true. The funding for the food stamps program doesn’t exist yet, it is assumed savings. The gargantuan stimulus bill (targeted and short term) passed early last year still has not been fully spent and the democrat controlled congress would not allow the Republican suggestion to use unused stimulus funds. The Republican stance here was not to spend money that we simply do not have on programs that may not be necessary. It seems that to democrats; every teacher, police and fire fighter jobs must be funded no matter the state of the budget and without proper accounting. Worse yet these three hallowed positions are always used to cover other, less palatable political spending on public sector employment.