New Coalitions
By Interesting article on India, Indian-Americans, and the GOP:
Take a close look at the draft platform that Politico discovered on the Republican National Committee’s website on Friday, and you’ll see that the Republican party arguably lavishes more praise on India than on any country mentioned in the document except Israel and Taiwan.
Much going on here. On the one hand, there seems to be a developing (bipartisan) consensus within the United States that India should be viewed as a major strategic partner. This consensus has emerged not just from growing concern about China, but also from frustration with Pakistan. It’s worth noting that there isn’t yet a similar consensus on such a relationship in India. On the US domestic side there seems to be some hope on the neocon right that anti-Islamic sentiment can act as a bridge between the Israeli lobby and the nascent Indian lobby, securing the latter for the GOP. Of course, at this point the bulk of Indian-Americans seem to behave very similar to the bulk of Jewish Americans, voting Democratic by large margins. Elite level coalition builders of this sort seem congenitally incapable of understanding just how goddamn scary mainstream Republican rhetoric is for minority voters.