Rogue Slayer Law Student Lawyer with Snark Movie Fan

With the countdown to the Republican National Convention down to less than 20 days, the official RNC website is proclaiming Delegate Diversity in a large banner section across the top of the page. The banner is an aerial shot of the Statue of Liberty, with the text: "Delegate Diversity - The most diverse group of delegates in party history." So I went ahead and clicked where indicated, so I could find out more.

On the Diversity page, they have lots of statistics showing how greatly increased the percentage of minority delegates is. Lots of favorable, astounding numbers in bold to draw your attention to the facts that:

• This year's minority representation is up 70% from the 2000 convention.
• African-American delegates are up 65%.
• Asian-American delegates are up 40%.
• The open process (compared to the Democrats "quota" process) has generated an increase that is four times the increase the Democrats had.

Well shit, you must be thinking. I guess those Republicans are a more open lot than I thought! But let's take a closer look. They're comparing percentage increases, not percentage of overall numbers. The total percentages of delegates: 17% of the Republican delegates are minorities. The 70% increase stems from the 2000 convention having only a 10% representation. In comparison, the 2004 Democratic minority delegates comprised about 40% of the total.

So, yahoo for the Republicans bringing the number of minority (and we're not talking GLBT here, either) delegates up to a whole 17% from the dismal 10% number four years ago. Way to go.


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