The US presidential election is over. Following a hard fought election campaign, President Barack Obama was re-elected. Inside the Republican Party, which is also known as the Grand Old Party, people are now calling for a period of reflection as they say that their party is too white, too old and too male.
Outside observers may be happy to add another epithet to that description: too fat.
Too white: More than half of those who voted for Republican candidate Mitt Romney were white. Black Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian-Americans all voted overwhelmingly for Obama.
Too old: Younger voter groups leaned toward Obama, while older voters leaned toward Romney.
Too male: Romney won the male vote and lost the female vote.
Too fat: Romney won among the wealthy “fat cats” and lost among lower-income voters.
As the number of non-white immigrants to the US increases, so is their influence. This is causing some conservative, white, political commentators to complain that white people are gradually becoming a minority in the US.
White people still remain the largest group, but the delicate changes to population structure and to ideological awareness have already punched a hole in the traditional view that the president must be a white person, and that a president running for re-election in times of economic hardship will lose.
As a result of the conservatism of the Republican Party, some Republicans are calling for small government, tax reductions, a shrinking of the social welfare system and protection of traditional values, as well as opposing homosexual rights, abortions and immigration.
The party’s extreme right is made up of the Tea Party, which was so successful two years ago when it made a splash as a representative of angry white men. However, this year the Tea Party has lost its luster.
The liberals within the Democratic Party are leaning toward socialism, big government and tax increases for the wealthy as a way of dealing with the budget crisis. This is an ideology that is more in line with the hopes of many modern voters who ask the government to care for them and to solve any economic problems.
Young voters and housewives are more likely to identify with the Democrats’ tolerance on social and moral issues, and to oppose right-wing religious views. Hispanic Americans are even more focused on a single issue: opposition to the Republicans’ anti-immigration policies.
Obama is not afraid of calling for higher taxes on the wealthy, and while this has earned him the intense dislike of Wall Street, it has gained him the support of the US public.
The structure of the Taiwanese electorate is similar to that of the US, but it yields the opposite results. Hoklo voters, the largest group, are divided, but Hakka voters and recent immigrants are strongly in favor of the too fat, too arrogant and too corrupt Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
They have elected those who are not supportive of Taiwan: a heartless and inept government that only cares for the rich and ignores the disadvantaged.
James Wang is a media commentator.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Weeks into the craze, nobody quite knows what to make of the OpenClaw mania sweeping China, marked by viral photos of retirees lining up for installation events and users gathering in red claw hats. The queues and cosplay inspired by the “raising a lobster” trend make for irresistible China clickbait. However, the West is fixating on the least important part of the story. As a consumer craze, OpenClaw — the AI agent designed to do tasks on a user’s behalf — would likely burn out. Without some developer background, it is too glitchy and technically awkward for true mainstream adoption,
On Monday, a group of bipartisan US senators arrived in Taiwan to support the nation’s special defense bill to counter Chinese threats. At the same time, Beijing announced that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had invited Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) to visit China, a move to make the KMT a pawn in its proxy warfare against Taiwan and the US. Since her inauguration as KMT chair last year, Cheng, widely seen as a pro-China figure, has made no secret of her desire to interact with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and meet with Xi, naming it a
A delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials led by Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is to travel to China tomorrow for a six-day visit to Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing, which might end with a meeting between Cheng and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The trip was announced by Xinhua news agency on Monday last week, which cited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Director Song Tao (宋濤) as saying that Cheng has repeatedly expressed willingness to visit China, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and Xi have extended an invitation. Although some people have been speculating about a potential Xi-Cheng
No state has ever formally recognized the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) as a legal entity. The reason is not a lack of legitimacy — the CTA is a functioning exile government with democratic elections and institutions — but the iron grip of realpolitik. To recognize the CTA would be to challenge the People’s Republic of China’s territorial claims, a step no government has been willing to take given Beijing’s economic leverage and geopolitical weight. Under international law, recognition of governments-in-exile has precedent — from the Polish government during World War II to Kuwait’s exile government in 1990 — but such recognition
RSS