"and hope no one notices"

This is the new GOP outreach. Find black, Jewish (and eventually gay) Republicans, move them up, and hope no one notices that they share none of the political views of their respective groups.

That won’t do. The militant extremist Republicans certainly want their own Party base and vile to notice that a few of them do not look like [R. B. Cheney’s or Judge Baker’s] America. And probably it is OK, even desirable, that swing voters notice the vast sweep of GOP diversity too. It is only incorrigible good guys over whose eyes they would like to pull the wool, but they are only bein’ dumber than usual if they expect to get that: part of being a political good guy is, of course, "dragon watch with unenchanted eye" over the doin’s of the Party of Clarence Thomas.

Mr. Justice Thomas is a much better place to begin the study of GOP tokenism than is Neocomrade Representative E. Cantor. To suppose that George XLI did not want his nominee’s non-WASP features to be noticed would be ridiculous. And similarly with Neocomrade General C. Powell and Neocomrade Secretary Dr. C. Rice (a twofer, tokenwise) and a few other individuals less distinguished.

Such folks of necessity must be few, precisely because "they share none of the political views of their respective groups." Over and above not sharin’ the views that one would expect of them in light of purely zoölogical considerations, the tokens must aggressively repudiate "the views of their respective groups" and do so noticeably, not to say ‘flagrantly’.

The con game is best understood, I believe, from the point of view of the mark or dupe that it is aimed at, who is more or less Archie Bunker, i.e., somebody who looks like the America of DAR and GOP and EiB, but has never got very far on that account and probably never will. The presentable side of the Big Party marketin’ message is "THEY are not all as bad as you think!" But it is the flip side that really matters, even though it cannot often be spelled out, the part where Neocomrade Token says "And let me tell you, as only an insider can, exactly how bad the rest of THEM (of ‘us’) are!"

Given special interests, my own prime example of this sad shtyk is Neocomrade Prof. Dr. Fu’ád ‘Ajamí of the Johns Hopkins University, who establishes (1) that even an Arab and a Muslim can belong to the Party of Grant and Hoover, and, rather more importantly, (2) how really insufferable and impossible (the other) Arabs and Muslims are. Neocomrades Sh. Steele and Th. Sowell play the same hand for African Americans, Neocomradess L. Chávez for Iberian Americans, and there is quite a zoo of self-hatin’ defectors from the ranks of Female Americans.

The whole fandango would make no sense at all if nobody watched the show. What the Big Party hopes to slip by undetected is not the existence and identity of its tokens, but the tendency of its tokenism. It superficially looks as if the militant extremists were reachin’ out when they allow Thomas and Powell and Rice and ‘Ajamí and Sowell and Chávez to carry Party cards "just like anybody else." But the effect, and quite likely the intention, is to keep the Big Party itself lookin’ like America forever: no self-respecting non-WASP is going to sign up with that crew unless she gets something significant in return for declining to share the views of her respective group.

The supply of significant somethin’s for the GOP to hand out to its Pétains and Quislings is pretty limited: only a few can obtain nominations for public office, or acclaim in tertiary education and hack journalism for bein’ that nine-days-wonder, a black (or gay or whatever) Republican. The significance of these rewards is entirely a result of their scarcity, which gives away (as I consider) that the presidin’ GOP geniuses do not seriously expect zillions of humbler folk to walk in the footsteps of Mr. Justice Thomas and Prof. Dr. ‘Ajamí and the rest. It would be nice in their eyes, I suppose, if the lesser brethren and sistern voted Republican on the quislings’ account, but if that was the chief end of the GOP geniuses, they would get rid of the requirement that non-WASP holders of Party cards be twice as militant and extremist about ‘conservatism’ as the rank-and-file base and vile, plus three times as militant and extremist about the supposed deficiencies of whatever lesser breed they personally have broken with and risen above.

The good news, of course, is that if the bozos keep on in that direction, they won’t be winnin’ many future elections. So let us pray that they persevere.

Anyhow, there can be no question of "hope no one notices."

Happy days.