@okie,
From okie:
Quote:It is true that many whites in the south harbor pretty strong conservative views in regard to some issues, such as abortion, gay marriage, strong national defense, fiscal responsibility, and all kinds of conservative principles, and so it makes sense that those people will gravitate to the more conservative party over the radical liberal Democratic party. I would not call that a Southern strategy, I would call it a conservative strategy, and I think it works when it is tried.
From wiki:
Quote:In American politics, the Southern strategy refers to a Republican Party (GOP) method of winning Southern states in the years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by exploiting opposition to the cultural upheaval of the 1960s/70s and in reaction to the changing economics of the South. . . While Phillips (Nixon campaign strategist) sought to polarize ethnic voting in general, and not just to win the white South, the South was by far the biggest prize yielded by his approach. . .In 1980 Republican candidate Ronald Reagan's proclaiming support for "states' rights" at his first Southern campaign stop was cited as evidence that the Republican Party was building upon the Southern Strategy again.
Five months ago, Michael Steele acknowledged the existence of the Southern Strategy and analyst Greg Sargent noted:
A lot of people are pointing to a new set of remarks Michael Steele made about the Republican Party and race, in which Steele acknowledged that the GOP hasn’t given African Americans a reason to support the party.
But I think folks are missing the real news in what Steele said. The RNC chairman also appeared to acknowledge that the GOP has had a race-based “southern strategy” for four decades, which is decidedly not a historical interpretation many Republicans agree with.
Steele made his remarks at DePaul University on Tuesday night. He acknowledged that “we haven’t done a very good job” of giving African Americans a reason to vote Republican. That’s actually unremarkable. But here’s what he also said:
“We have lost sight of the historic, integral link between the party and African-Americans,” Steele said. “This party was co-founded by blacks, among them Frederick Douglass. The Republican Party had a hand in forming the NAACP, and yet we have mistreated that relationship. People don’t walk away from parties. Their parties walk away from them.
“For the last 40-plus years we had a ‘Southern Strategy’ that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South. Well, guess what happened in 1992, folks, ‘Bubba’ went back home to the Democratic Party and voted for Bill Clinton.”
I’m not sure this is an interpretation most Republicans would agree with. The standard line is that, yes, Nixon did employ a “southern strategy.” But most Republicans would strongly contest the idea that Reagan tried to use racial division for electoral gain, an idea advanced by liberals who point out that Reagan opened his 1980 presidential campaign in the town where Civil Rights workers were murdered.
Similarly, many Republicans would reject the claim that Republican candidates like George H.W. Bush engaged in a race-based strategy with the Willie Horton ads, or that Bush the Younger or John McCain engaged in subtle race-based appeals.
But here you have the chairman of the Republican National Committee saying, in effect, that liberals are right to have argued that Republicans have used race for political gain for the last four decades. Seems significant.
Finally, just two months ago, Bob Cesca wrote:
Sarah Palin is and was a Southern Strategist.
So it's with considerable hilarity that I read her latest Facebook remarks in which she insisted there isn't a racial component to the various tea party groups.
"I am saddened by the NAACP's claim that patriotic Americans who stand up for the United States of America's Constitutional rights are somehow 'racists,'" Palin wrote in a Facebook note.
"Constitutional" shouldn't be capitalized, but I nitpick Palin's Facebook ghost writer.
Nevertheless,
the NAACP was specifically referencing the obviously racist elements of the tea party, whether it's the tea party's use of Southern Strategy dog whistles to rally white support, or the very overt displays of racism, beginning with the screechy Curious George-wielding freaks outside the Palin rallies during the campaign, or the Birthers, whose whole thing is about race, or the (often misspelled) signs at tea party rallies with the president Photoshopped to look like a witch doctor.
The NAACP, with its resolution this week, wasn't even going as far as I am here in suggesting the tea party is built upon Southern Strategy politics. The members were merely requesting that the tea party denounce the racially-motivated characters within its ranks. I don't think that's such a big deal. But Sarah Palin evidently believes that the people who shouted racial epithets at Congressman Lewis are "patriotic Americans" and "somehow" not racists, when, in fact, they clearly are. These are the people the NAACP asked to be denounced. Why would Sarah Palin have a problem with that?
She also wrote, "...it is foreign to us to consider condemning or condoning anyone's actions based on race or gender." And yet she appears to be both condemning the NAACP's resolution, while condoning, by silence, the racially-motivated aspects of the tea party and, by proxy, the Republicans. Weird.
Maybe it's because those people are her people. As I've mentioned here, those lines of angry white people outside of her rallies expressing inchoate rage at the Democratic -- and possibly "Muslim" -- candidate were more or less unique to her campaign events. They're her base. These are the people with whom she's communicating when she talks about "palling around terrorists" or "spreading the wealth around."
She's communicating with Americans who are predisposed to believing that poor black people have an unfair economic advantage over whites. Somehow. I'd still like to know how that works.
Just today, CNN analyst and, perhaps, the king of all wingnuts, Erick Erickson wrote an extended blog entry about how the Republicans should exploit this bogus Fox News Channel meme about the New Black Panthers. Erickson wrote that the ads should be the new Willie Horton ads. Put another way, Erick Erickson wants to reboot Willie Horton for an all new generation.
Doesn't Erickson know? Is he really this stupid? Or, more appropriately, does he believe his readers are this stupid? T
he Willie Horton ad was a high water mark for Southern Strategy -- for racially exploitative GOP politics. Atwater himself apologized on his death bed for using racial tactics like Willie Horton to divide voters by race. And Erickson wants to give it another whirl while insisting there isn't a racial component to the Republican Party.
Erickson wrapped by mixing some actual honesty with some lying and some denial:
The Democrats will scream racism. Let them. Republicans are not going to pick up significant black support anyway. But here's the thing: everyone but the Democrats will understand this is not racism. This isn't even about race. This is about the judgment of an administration that would rather prosecute Arizona for doing what the feds won't do than prosecuting violent thugs who would deny you and me the right to vote while killing our kids.
Once again, the preemptive "Who...? Me?" denial from a Republican who intends to exploit race, and even admits to the advantages of doing so. "Republicans are not going to pick up significant black support anyway," he wrote. Another red flag indicating the Southern Strategy in process. T
he GOP won't get black support, the strategy goes, so they might as well paint blacks and Mexicans as criminals and baby-killers in order to shore up the frothing, angry, scared, xenophobic white vote.
Remarkably, and despite volumes of documented evidence, including a candid admission by the chairman of the RNC, we constantly hear Sarah Palin, and many other Republicans for that matter, claiming that the Southern Strategy doesn't exist as a central component of the party.
The far-right (and not-so-far-right) totally denies the existence of the Southern Strategy in the face of cold, hard historical fact while also embracing its tactics and language. You'll see the denial throughout the comments below this post, I'm sure (along with accusations that I'm somehow a racist against white people even though I'm, you know, white). This is a faction of Americans whose entire strategic foundation, say nothing of its ideological foundation, is based upon deliberate ignorance of empirical reality, so it's no wonder.
Palin and Erickson might not be racists, but
it's always a good idea to question with great scrutiny the character of anyone who profits from deliberate ignorance and, likewise, anyone who would freely exploits racial hatred for political gain. Unfortunately, these two units are doing pretty well for themselves by engaging in both.
