The Muslim vote

Poking fun at fulminating usenet hate-mongers is easy sport -- too easy, really, to provide much amusement. Sometimes, though, the vitriol serves to underscore an important point. Consider, if you will, the following insight from one Herb Suol, noted victim of testosterone poisoning:

Every dumbass liberal, still hasn't gotten it through his thick scull that he is the prime target for the subhuman scum, known to the rest of the world as muslims. I'd like to see all the bleeding heart morons go to Iraq and befriend their muslim friends. Their heads would be coming off in record numbers. Idiiots.

Well. At the risk of seeming like an "idiiot" with an impermeable "scull," I should note that sentiments of this sort have done much to reverse all the courting of the Muslim vote done in the year 2000 by Grover Norquist of the GOP.

American Muslims outnumber Jews, or so I've read. (The numbers have been questioned -- very questionably questioned, in my eyes -- by the American Jewish Committee.) Muslims are thus an increasingly powerful voting bloc -- and a tight election is fought bloc-by-bloc.

So while I decry the racism evinced by Mr. Suol and his ideological compadres, part of me hopes they all continue to spew venom in very public places. American Muslims who have flirted with the idea of voting Republican -- and in the past, many have done just that -- now know just what kind of people are drawn to that party.