I had quite a roughing up over at Wiley’s place over a mistake I made in overreaching – I made the comment that all racists are Republican. It’s simply not true, of course. Racists come in many stripes, and as the Obama campaign forges ahead, we’re going to see many manifestations, from both Hillary Clinton and the Republicans. We won’t see overt racist commentary, but more of the subtle, sublime variety, as when Ronald Reagan launched his 1976 campaign for president from Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were famously killed, and when he later coined the phrase “welfare queen” … as if it meant something else.
But I was trying in my clumsy fashion to make a larger point. The Republican Party owes its election success from 1972 forward to one simple factor: The south changed from Democrat to Republican. This trend manifested itself first in 1964, when the deep south voted for Barry Goldwater, one of 27 senatorial opponents of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In 1968, the same states voted for overt racist George Wallace and his American Independent Party, and finally, in 1972, the south went Republican. 1976 could be considered an anomaly, as Jimmy Carter was a southerner and evangelical Christian, and Watergate influenced the outcome. But in 1980 and in every election since, the south has voted solidly Republican.
Outside the south, the country is more or less Democratic, and this was manifest in the 2006 election when, outside the south, the Republicans took a holy beating. A full 42% of their congressional seats now come from the South. And the trend will likely continue – save for effective use of wedge issues, and electronic voting and election fraud, the Republican Party will soon be the party of the south, and not much more.
And it makes sense – this is the party that wants to do away with Medicare and Social Security, that took us into Iraq with no way out, that favors tax cuts for the very wealthiest among us while inflicting onerous payroll taxes on the working classes. It’s not much of a platform, and has only enjoyed the success it has due to their Rovian skill in exploiting wedge issues. I quote from Thomas Frank’s book What’s the Matter With Kansas (but ran across the quote in Paul Krugman’s Conscience of a Liberal – I haven’t read the former):
The trick never ages, the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion, receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make the country strong again, receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors, receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs, receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists, receive Social Security privatization efforts. Vote to strike a blow against elitism, receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEO’s rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.
This year the Republicans, with McCain at the helm, will be giving us a collective wedgie, just as before. But if 2006 is an indication, it’s not working as it once did. Kansas is coming back to the fold.
The deeper question, beyond wedge issues, the one we never speak of except in code, is racism. Is the south racist? Have the Republicans struck a deal with the devil? Predictably, when I broached the subject over at Wiley’s, I got Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell tossed at me, with the implicit point that if two really smart and successful black people are Republican, then the party is not racist. But that’s not what it’s about, and they know it. It’s still about welfare queens, income redistribution, about the large percentage of blacks who are poor and depend on the social safety net. There’s resentment. And this resentment, while existing everywhere, most manifests in those states with the largest percentage of blacks in the population – the south.
Katrina brought it to the surface – we were faced with the spectacle of natural disaster hitting an area with many poor blacks. We saw looting and helplessness and white flight, while blacks congregated in the Louisiana Superdome. We didn’t say it. But it was there in the pictures. These people can’t take care of themselves. They are dependent on us.
I find it all very troubling – like most Americans, I find welfare and handouts to be counterproductive, yet don’t want to go back to the days of private soup kitchens and Jesus as the only hope for the poor. I want to find that magical formula that prevents people from starving without creating dependency while at the same time lifting them up. Blacks have a lot on their plates – racist attitudes are embedded deep within our culture, and are hard to overcome. So-called free markets don’t advance social policies. Liberal guilt hasn’t helped them. Affirmative action creates a backlash.
These are hard questions, and we need skilled leaders to deal with them. I suppose Obama is such a leader – we’ll see. In the meantime, I know that the leaders we need are not members of that party that since 1964 has exploited white resentments of blacks to gain political power. Let the Republicans have the south, while the rest of us try to solve problems rather than exploiting them.
Piece of Mindful 
You said “we’re going to see many manifestations, from both Hillary Clinton and the Republicans”.
I say: Why are you not also saying that there will be more racist comments from Obama and his Pastor? Or is it like always, a one way street when it comes to racist? I hate to disappoint anyone, but there is racist on both sides coming from the blacks and white!
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Just so I don’t get tripped up in your spam filter (because I have two links for you, Mark), I’m going to post twice.
First, you should read Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy. A third of the book is devoted to the “Southernization” of the Republican Party and, by extension, the nation.
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Secondly, hey there goodtimepolitics! Instead of forming a worldview based on media sound bites, why not watch Bill Moyers interview Jeremiah Wright? You’ll be amazed and, hopefully, determined to never again allow people who profit from misinformation to spoon feed news to you.
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Thanks Rebecca – I haven’t read American Theocracy though I’ve read his other stuff. And I’ve got so many books stacked up to read and I am doing so little reading these days that I probably won’t get to it. You know – we’ve got Direct TV and I paid extra for MLB Extra Innings … it’s got my undivided attention.
By the way, the “possibly related posts” above are a new feature of WordPress, one that I don’t much care for, but cannot turn off.
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Yeah, I tried to turn ours (as in 4&20 Blackbirds) off yesterday but it wasn’t among the widgets and extras.
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“Secondly, hey there goodtimepolitics! Instead of forming a worldview based on media sound bites, why not watch Bill Moyers interview Jeremiah Wright? You’ll be amazed and, hopefully, determined to never again allow people who profit from misinformation to spoon feed news to you.”
I saw the interview. Bogus attempt at rehab giving that Moyers did not ask Wright to defend himself or explain himself on anything really where people take offense at, be it where he came off as racist towards different ethnic groups or be it his wacky conspiracy theories. He can just claim context twisted without explanation and we are supposed to take his word for it just because he says so, Moyers says so, and his defenders say so.
NO can do.
Guess what?
Those who point out where Wright went wrong were vindicted when Wright made a clown of himself several days ago and validated everything that people said about his remarks. That they did take what he said in context. That they understood what he meant. All for people to see what he had to say in his entirety.
If people want to say he got “lynched” over this be my guest. Just be sure to add Obama to the names of those you claim are “lynching” Wright, now that Obama said he cannot find anything positive to say about what he called are untrue and outrageous lies Wright threw out about America.
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I find it funny the same people who claim we misunderstand the soundbites have no problem saying those soundbites are truth anyways. So how come people who object to Wright canmot understand the soundbites but those who see those as truth can understand what the soundbites mean? Sounds elitist to me.
And another thing, that is of course, assuming no one has read the whole sermons, that criticize Wright. Another false assumption, not to mention many have studied his church and its ties to the Hamas and NOI among other things.
Finally, the ones who say we need to look beyond the soundbites are the same ones it seems who will demand people lose jobs and careers over soundbites.
Be it John Rocker, Imus, Lott, etc. Yeah, I do think certain folks like them probably deserve it. But then again, I am being consistent. If they were wrong in the soundbites, they were wrong. Too bad defenders of Wright don’t apply the same standards to Wright regarding soundbites.
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You miss the larger point when you allow yourself to be drawn into this sound bite journalism – we are not analyzing Barack Obama or his policies. Do you know where he stands on teh Iraq war, on health care, or on matters of race? I would bet no – only that you have been drawn into the dog fight surrounding a minister who doesn’t even pretend to speak for him.
We Americans are a silly lot. Half of us don’t vote, the other half doesn’t pay attention, but votes.
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Gee, I wish I was one of the elite. Then maybe I could afford to go on vacation more often.
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“I would bet no – only that you have been drawn into the dog fight surrounding a minister who doesn’t even pretend to speak for him.”
Actually, the minister did- twice. That is if they did really disagreed. When asked several times if the two really disagreed on the more controversial statements, in regards to Obama saying that he was wrong, Wright said Obama was just being a typical politician. That is saying alot. It is saying Obama is not being honest about them disagreeing, in order to get votes. So in actuality, Wright did claim that his words, which are what Obama denounced, do speak for Obama but he had to be a politician about it.
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