Sandy Banks has an excellent column in today’s L.A. Times about the bubble in which the Republican party resides. Memo to GOP: It’s 2012, there is such a thing as voter diversity, extremists views are frowned upon (understatement), equal rights and voting rights exist, misogyny is not an option, white people are no more American than other people nor are they in any way superior, and young people are smarter and more informed than you think.

In short, ignorance and bigotry are not acceptable:

…GOP pundits: Romney might have won, they say, if he had eased up on illegal immigration and found a running mate who could attract Latinos or draw votes in swing states.

But this is not a matter of fine-tuning the message or rustling up a candidate with brown skin or serviceable Spanish.

The problem is a platform that staked out the far-right fringe on so many issues that it turned off immigrants, women, minorities, single mothers, young people, gays and lesbians.

The images of winners and losers on election night said it all: the Norman Rockwell tableau in Romney’s sullen Boston ballroom versus the kaleidoscopic diversity of Obama’s Chicago victory montage.

The America the Republicans want is not the one we have. [...]

Voters carried those slights and insults to the voting booth, tired of being treated with contempt by a party that doesn’t seem to understand their realities. [...]

… Republicans weren’t beaten only by arithmetic this time. They lost through willful blindness.

Reality has a way of sneaking up on the delusional.

By the way, speaking of voting rights, here’s Reynolds v. Sims (1964):

Undeniably, the Constitution of the United States protects the right of all qualified citizens to vote, in state as well as in federal, elections. A consistent line of decisions by this Court in cases involving attempts to deny or restrict the right of suffrage has made this indelibly clear. It has been repeatedly recognized that all qualified voters have a constitutionally protected right to vote, Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U. S. 651, and to have their votes counted, United States v. Mosley, 238 U. S. 383. In Mosley, the Court stated that it is “as equally unquestionable that the right to have one’s vote counted is as open to protection . . . as the right to put a ballot in a box.” 238 U.S. at 386.

Not only does the Republican party need revamping, so does our voting system. Both are a disgrace.

Please read the entire article by Sandy Banks here.