From now on, the
Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote
and they don't need any more than that...but Republicans would be shortsighted
if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who
register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit
the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that
prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable
arrangement with the local Democrats.
--Kevin Phillips
Interview, New York Times 1970
Kevin Phillips, educated at Harvard is often considered one
of the Republican Party’s wise men. He has written extensively about National
Republican politics. Even if you don’t know the name, many would probably say,
“Oh yeah,” if they saw a picture. He’s been on the chat show circuit for
decades. This does not mean he was not strategically, destructively, cynical.
Nixon, his boss in the 1968 campaign, liked them that way. Haldeman,
Ehrlichman, Colson, were not namby-pamby feel-me, touch-me, guys. They played to win. Hard, ugly, and painful
as the circumstances required.
In 1968 the year Nixon first won, the country was tearing
itself apart—Over race, the rising role of women, Vietnam, cultural changes,
and on and on and on. Race issues were not confined to the South either. Frank
Rizzo ran the Philadelphia Police like a racist paramilitary strike force. A
few years before Nixon’s election, in 1966, Dr. King exposed the deep seeds of
racism in the North when he marched in Chicago, staying for a time in an
apartment in a deep pocket of poverty on the West Side. Race relations in the
city did not improve in the interim. In a Chicago Police raid in December 1969,
BPP leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed.
The slow pace of change, especially in economic terms, after
the landmark Civil Rights legislation of 1964 and 1965, led to riots and
conflagration in cities large and small across the country. It started with
Watts in the summer of 1965 and after that the heat was never below medium
high. Rising frustration with police
brutality led to riots in Detroit in 1967 which resulted in 43 deaths.
African American frustration, especially over issues of
economic justice, often ignited over brutal treatment by the Police in their communities.
It was met with a rising tide of white anger. There was a lot of fatigue and a
lot of, “What do they want now?” Rather than sooth the wounds Republicans found
an electoral wedge.
In 1968 George Wallace ran for President as an unabashed
champion of white anger. He scared the
GOP operators and that made it worse. Outflanked on his right, and determinedly
more committed to the consolidation of power, Nixon, and the Republican Party
hatched and executed a southern strategy designed to separate southern whites
from their traditional allegiance to the Democratic Party while simultaneously
protecting their right flank. Republican campaign rhetoric increasingly skewed
towards defense of “State’s Rights”, long held code for the defense of
segregationists. Whatever other liberal domestic items he succeeded in passing,
and this included the first attempt at federally sanctioned Affirmative Action,
the Southern Strategy assumed a long term demographic tilt in favor of whites,
and sought to exacerbate the racial divide for the benefit of the Republican
Party. The cynicism inherent to the
Southern Strategy was so deep, there was no way it could not hurt the country. Though
gerrymandering and other factors exacerbate the problem, the polarized,
bitterly divided. political crisis in Washington is the bastard child of the
Southern Sttrategy.
The lasting legacy of the Southern Strategy is the Solidly
Republican South. Mississippi, for example, with a population which is over 35%
African American, has not voted Democratic since 1960. In the last election 55%
of its vote went to Romney. The state nominally voted for Kennedy in 1960
(unpledged electors actually carried the electoral college), Goldwater in 1964,
and Wallace in 1968 and has never looked back. Locally, African Americans do
well in areas where they are in the majority in Mississippi, but at the state
level and in national elections not so much.
This is no secret to anyone who really cares to know. The
principle of a racially polarized, but politically unified and Republican Southern electorate was
not brought about because of battles over taxes, government spending, or even
cultural issues, though it’s fair to say God, Guns and Abortion motivate a lot
of folks at the polls today. Racial politics perpetuated willfully, and even
skillfully, by national politicians and their handlers have created the schism.
The sad result has been a cascade of elections where poor Southern whites place
their loyalty in the Republican Party based on the legacy of race. In turn
elected Republicans, go up to Washington and vote for spending cuts which would
really hurt their multi-racially poor states. They go on to support tax cuts
for rich folk, who for the most part don’t live in their state, residing in
much greater numbers in places like New York and California. Ironic, isn’t it?
Though long referred to as a Southern Strategy the cynical
mastery of the racial divide has been played on the national stage with lasting
effect. Willie Horton was not meant to be a bogey man for the redneck Alabama
voter. Alabama was not going to vote for Dukakis anyway. The Horton Campaign was designed to bring
that “Alabama” voter out wherever he lived, even if it was Pennsylvania or
Kansas. The strategy as a political approach worked pretty well. Until now.
All of a sudden, the board shifted. And it turns out that
the racially hostile rhetoric that drove 90% Democratic majorities in the
African American community does not play well with Hispanics, young people, and
an increasing number of suburban whites. Holy Crap, now what do we do?
Well, gosh darn it, we gotta go talk to those people. Hello, Rand Paul. Welcome to Howard University,
perhaps the most prestigious historically black university in the country and
one of the hardest to get into. Even this effort is not really about making a case to African Americans as to the reasons
they should support the GOP. A more reasonable goal, and the one I am sure they
had in mind is showing moderate suburban whites that this new GOP cares. White
sheets are NOT are preferred Saturday night attire.
The well-educated, well-informed, Howard students seemed to
get that perhaps they were just props. Paul went with a speech and talking
points that were so dishonest and over the top patronizing I was surprised the
crowd was respectful as they were. Of course Paul lied about his past
objections to the landmark Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, and he stumbled
over the name of the first African American Republican Senator, Edward Brooke.
He managed to mangle both the first and last name. I might have tripped there
too, but you’d think if he wanted to make some of these points he would have
had a staffer hit Wikipedia. Good thing for Paul he actually wasn’t
specifically speaking to the audience of bright, well informed kids in front of
him.
The highlight for me was the cringe-worthy exchange with the
students over the party affiliation of the founders of the NAACP. This is where
you really get a sense of the size and scope of the problem.
“How many of you—if I’d said, who do you think the founders
of the NAACP are? Do you think they were Democrats or Republicans, would
everybody here know they were all Republicans?”
When the students nodded affirmatively—nearly in unison -- that
yes they did know about the political provenance of the founders of the NAACP
(duh)… Well, it was painful. While I’m sure he wanted to make some other point
his message came across as I don’t you well. Really, I don’t know you at all. I
thought I could come up here and whip some factoids on you, I’m going to go
now. Except he couldn’t. The students did not miss core of Paul’s history
lesson about great African American Republicans--Like Lincoln, for God sakes.
One asked, “Are we discussing the 19th-century Republican Party, or are we
discussing the post-1968 Republican Party of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan? My
question for you is: Which one do you identify with?” Stumble, mumble, stumble,
game over. As I said painful.
There is ample reason for African Americans and anyone
really concerned about the plight of minorities and the poor to challenge the
allegiance shown to the Democratic Party.
If the question is’ “What have you done for me lately”, the answer is
not much. Paul to his credit is proposing a drug policy that would greatly
reduce the blight of the War on Drugs, which has been disproportionately
harmful to people of color since its inception. In addition, an isolationist
Paul would see that far fewer people on the lower rungs of the economic ladder
would be sent off to fight and die for wars of questionable need.
Those two policy standards alone place Paul well outside the
mainstream of his party—especially his suspicions about the use of military
force. In concert these policies will resonate with young people, so I would
not be too dismissive. But in larger sense the parade has already passed Rand
Paul by. The country is on the move on guns, on immigration (where Paul is also
in front of his party) and gay marriage. While Paul is in front of his party,
Americans are far in front of the GOP, far in front. On that last point, gay marriage,
conservatives are threatening to bolt the party if Republicans succumb to
public opinion. I hope they do, a
fracture of that proportion would wreck the party or at least isolate its
reactionary, anti-women, anti-gay, anti-black, anti-immigrant, and I suspect
anti-science, core.
Either way, the Southern strategy is dead. I know the
ugliness of Jeremiah Wright is just two election cycles back, but it seems like
a lifetime ago. Though race will play out in different ways in political
campaigns we will never see a Willie Horton featured nationally again. The
price has gotten too high. Fear of the other is giving way to ever greater
levels of acknowledgement and acceptance of who we actually are.
The dialogue is changed and the coding is much deeper. Guns
are a great example. The gun rights crowd is overwhelmingly white. For all the
images we have seen over these past months people of color are seldom seen in
the gun shops, and non-existent at the NRA type protests. The camouflaged
survivalist, the wild-eyed, Ted Nugent is the poster child of the post Charlton
Heston NRA. That is not a minority friendly image.
What’s really playing out is a deeply held fear from some
who see their country slipping away,
especially since we reelected an African American President named Barrack
Hussein. There are those who make the name a curse, a slander or worse. But for
many of us it is a matter of pride now, a hard won fact that we will fight to
retain and uphold. This is not to suggest that ignorance has been outlawed. The
internet (and Jon Stewart) bring us
fresh examples nearly every day of unalterable bigotry of a lot of Americans. People
have such strange views about homosexuality. Some of the comments are really astounding.
The war on women’s reproductive rights and in larger sense their human rights
is a long way from settled. But I still feel that something has shifted. Increasingly
we see an intolerance of intolerance. As this movement gets bigger and louder,
it will become increasingly clear that while Phillips may have been right about
1968 he was wrong about America.
The King Center in Atlanta
is honoring the 45th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King
with a campaign called "The 50 Days of Nonviolence."
Dr. King’s words have
been very much on my mind. His call to make non-violence a profound commitment--which
includes countering the bitterness in our own hearts and souls-- sort of shook
me from some anger and gloom that had overtaken me. A piece that started out as
a nearly vengeful diatribe against the NRA, and its woeful leader, Wayne La
Pierre, turned into this. This may not
be a statement of love (I am no Dr.King), but it is at least intended as a statement
of hope, and for that I am grateful for the memory of Dr. King.
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