Half Past the Month

March 13, 2022

GOP’s Diversity Bandwagon

MY LOCAL GOP chairman is jumping on Gov. Eric Holcomb’s “diversity” bandwagon. A meeting this weekend at GOP headquarters here featured two young Republican people of color (POC) telling us what we should be doing to attract more of them. It is a great idea — and futile.

A reporter left the meeting with the idea that the GOP is “rebranding.” Does that mean sifting the political class for people of color who dress and talk like Eric Holcomb and Suzanne Crouch — gender appropriate, of course, and better looking? If so, you should doubt that the numbers from such a strategy will tip any election, which, if we can put aside moral posturing, is the job of a political party.

In any case, there are better ideas. They require the Indiana GOP to stand on its platform, specifically the planks that encourage and reward individual effort and accountability. That separates it from the other political party, the one pandering to racial identity.

The difference is becoming more blurred. In this session of the Legislature, the GOP leadership did its best to confuse what had been any city’s choice to eliminate its tax on business equipment, a progressive tax if there ever was one. In my city, alas, the GOP-controlled council squashed any hope of ever repealing the tax.

So, in the context of this discussion and without calling your uncle the CPA, what does that mean?

• Consider that the tax and cost of equipment is a major factor in a business’s decision where and when to relocate.
• And consider that the suitable areas with the greatest number of black property owners are characterized by low property values because of (you fill in the blank).
• It is a good guess, then, that if the tax on business equipment could be removed, such property would have an advantage, on net and citywide, in attracting new industry and jobs.

Are the diversity evangelists passionate about spreading that word? Does the Statehouse leadership understand the economic barriers government places before people of color or, for that matter, anyone?

And while we are on the general topic, would the POC troupe be willing to go from city to city arguing that in keeping with historic GOP principles all racial and sexual preference in government jobs and contracts be eliminated from municipal codes?

Whatever, there were free donuts. — tcl

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