Conservatives are creating their own electoral enemies. The beating heart of modern conservatism is its visceral appeal to anxieties and fears of white Christians. This is a different statement than saying the beating heart of modern conservatism is white racism or white supremacy. It’s not, or not principally. It is simply white “identity” politics, with all of the pathos and ugliness that implies. And if you don’t believe that, go read some conservative comment threads, or click over to the Drudge Report or Fox News, two outlets with a preternatural sense of the deepest anxieties of the modern conservative base. Look at the ceaseless coverage of the New Black panthers, and voter fraud and immigrants living high on the hog off government welfare, and the absolute frenzy the right whipped up over the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. Once you understand this then you can see that the Republican party’s problems are deeper than, say, Republican opposition to comprehensive immigration reform, or even the far less controversial DREAM Act. That policy opposition is a symptom of the problem, not the cause. The deeper issue is that for conservative politicians and networks and websites there is simply too much to be gained by feeding the sense of persecution and siege that many white Christians feel down to their toes. I’m not sure what is going to shift those incentives, because that insecurity, as an emotional fact is real and isn’t going away.

The direction the GOP/conservative movement has taken in recent years, their contempt (laced with thinly veiled racism) for the President, their leaders’ comments about “the end of the white establishment” and a MILLION more comments/articles/blog posts along those lines, and their dismissal of what they view as “racist identity politics” of people of color — this all creates an atmosphere in which many people of color cannot help but feel uncomfortable and unwelcome, regardless of our personal politics or religious beliefs or motivations.

I’ve had friends, fellow Christians and Catholics, accuse me of playing the race card or contributing to the “over-hyphenization of America” or becoming embittered against white people. I don’t feel that the GOP or its most avid white supporters WANT me in their party (and am increasingly feeling as though conservative Catholics don’t want me in my church) — unless I become one of those people of color who trots out the old line that race is completely unimportant to me personally and our society generally — so, for me, it’s been an easy choice not to go there where I’m neither accepted nor welcomed as the whole person I am.