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Man Up, America!
By Graydon Carter
December 2010
Graydon Carter

Photograph by Nigel Parry.

Well, anger certainly continues to be all the rage in the corridors of American politics. Not to mention American corridors in general. Polls taken prior to the November midterm election indicated that a surprising number of Obama voters said they were going to vote Republican this time and an equally surprising number of McCain supporters said they would be backing Democratic candidates. What that is about, God knows. The general anti-Obama rage out there is palpable. But it’s no more virulent than the anti-Bush sentiment that has pervaded the country for much of the past decade—although this being America, there’s an attendant hatred for Obama that has more to do with race than anything else. What makes today’s fury more worrying is the fact that angry right-wing extremists tend to carry guns in disproportionate numbers to their liberal counterparts.

A distinguished colleague of mine likens the wiggy mood of the nation to that of a hormonal teenager. What do you call an electorate that seems prone to acting out irrationally, is full of inchoate rage, and is constantly throwing fits and tantrums? You call it teenaged. Is voting for a deranged Tea Party candidate such as Christine O’Donnell, who has no demonstrable talent for lawmaking, or much else, so different from shouting “Whatever!” and slamming the bedroom door? Is moaning that Obama doesn’t emote enough or get sufficiently angry so different from screaming, “You don’t understand!!!”

What headline writers a generation or two ago called the Silent Majority has become the Angry Majority. And we should have seen this coming. Both Bush and Obama, believing that their elections gave them mandates for seismic change, yanked the nation away from the center, which Bill Clinton, despite the morass of his personal life, knew was the place to be. Thanks to these dramatic political lurches—and aided by the exponential magnification of the Internet and the seething blogosphere, and with the martinets at the command center at Fox News marshaling forces—the fringe has achieved considerable purchase on the middle ground. Indeed, the fringe has almost become mainstream.

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In New Mexico, Susana Martinez was elected as the nation's first female Hispanic governor. Nikki Haley, whose parents were born in India, will be the first woman governor in South Carolina, and Brian Sandoval became Nevada's first Hispanic governor.

Insurance company owner Tim Scott will be the first black Republican congressman from South Carolina since Reconstruction, after easily winning in his conservative district.

In Florida, military veteran Allen West outfought a two-term Democrat to win his House race. He is the first black Republican elected to Congress from Florida since a former slave served two terms in the 1870s. (The last black Republican in Congress was J.C. Watts of Oklahoma. He left office in 2003.)

In Texas, Bill Flores snatched a seat from Democratic Rep. Chet Edwards, who had served 20 years in Congress, and Francisco Canseco beat 11-year veteran Ciro Rodriguez. Jamie Herrera became the first Latino congressman from Washington state.

Terri Sewell became the first black woman elected to Congress in Alabama.

Fourteen black Republicans were on House ballots nationwide, almost double the number in 2008.

Marco Rubio, a Republican and Cuban-American, won a Senate seat in Florida. He will replace the retiring Mel Martinez, another conservative Cuban.

Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

I think the Vanity Fair piece was trying to say that the GOP has elected a diverse group of persons this year --
which , of course, was never a surprise to me .. but the media seems to believe that the GOP is just a bunch
of angry, white men.