Where Do Republicans Troll For Votes?

I've been watching this for a long time, so I thought I'd share some observations.

In the past year, I have read a number of articles by Republicans emphasizing that the Democratic party was the party of white supremacists. I admit that used to be the case, at least in part. The "solid south" was dominated by a racist party of white supremacy.

Not all southern democrats were obsessed with race. But those who ran for public office had to make an accommodation with racists. In those days, a southern democrat (all white people were democrats) would describe a particularly hot day by saying "I'm sweatin' like a n****r at a white folks' election." In fact, there were "white folks' elections" at least until 1944 when the US Supreme Court ruled against party primaries that excluded black voters.

The Democratic party "big tent" began to fray in the 1940's. First, President Truman integrated the armed forces by executive order. Then, northern progressive Democrats like Hubert Humphrey began speaking out. This led, at the 1948 Democratic convention, to defection of progressives (former Vice President Wallace's Progressive Party) as well as southern racists (Strom Thurmond and the States' Rights party).

That still didn't lead to Republican victory in the presidential race, but led to a concerted effort by Southern Republicans to recruit southern democrats to their party banner. That move, initiated by the chair of the Virginia republican party had only modest success, but the move expanded. By the time Richard Nixon ran for president, the "southern strategy" had already been underway for a decade.

This "southern strategy" got a boost from Brown v. Board of Education, wherein the US Supreme Court rejected the principle of "separate but equal."

Passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act led to massive defections from the democratic party, as Lyndon Johnson foretold. But it was the right thing.

Even so, the southern democratic party didn't become the minority party in the South until after integration of public schools began to really happen. That's also about the time we first heard widespread alarm at the "failure" of public schools and the creation of private, usually "Christian" "academies" unaffected by Brown.

Until that time, the Republican party had been largely a regional party confined to the North and Midwest and widely understood to favor the interests of northern industrialists and financiers.

How could Republicans become a truly national party? Elementary. Play the race card. In a recently uncovered audio recording of a 1981 interview, Lee Atwater, the Carl Rove of his generation, candidly revealed the strategy:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

There were dangers with this strategy. Many Republicans genuinely relished identification with the party of the Great Emancipator - the party of Abraham Lincoln. But the challenge facing the party was in many respects similar to the challenge that faced the Federalist Party as the electorate expanded: how to get voters from the lower classes when the organizing principle of the party was to further the economic and political interests of the wealthy and powerful?

The answer? Play the race card.

Ronald Reagan did it in 1980 when he opened his campaign for the presidency at a rally in Philadelphia, Mississippi, site of the lynching of three civil rights workers seeking to register blacks to vote. When he attacked "welfare queens," everyone got the message. It was Lee Atwater's message.

More recently, when Mitt Romney inveighed against the "47%" and talked about "moochers" and "dependency," it was the same theme: "the Democrats want to tax you hard-working white workers for the benefit of those lazy, shiftless blacks and hispanics and other aliens."

That was the message. It was heard loud and clear by many of Romney's supporters. It was also heard loud and clear by all citizens of color and other groups (e.g. Jewish citizens) despised by white racists and militant evangelical Christians.

It didn't work, at least for president.

It did work in North Carolina, for state offices. But the resulting victory for voters answering to the racist dog whistle, will work to the detriment of working people across the state.

Well before the election - in fact, last September - Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates focused his gaze on the "welfare queen" idea and how this is becoming a losing proposition for Republicans.  Not only because of racism, though it is clear that African Americans, Hispanics and Oriental Americans have no trouble decoding the racist message of Republican candidates.

Then, too, there's the demography thing.

Political Contributions To Presidential Candidates

Washington Post's Harold Meyerson has put together an analysis of the major groups of contributors to the Obama and Romney campaigns.

The results are very interesting. Meyerson summarizes:

"Obama won overwhelming backing from the most productive and innovative sector of American capitalism. Romney won the backing of finance and casinos, whose contributions to American productivity and well-being are more difficult to discern, and which are industries based on reshuffling resources in games the house almost always wins. Obama, if you will, won the makers; Romney, the takers."

That observation is based on where serious money came from. It is quite a different matter to analyze where the votes came from and why.

I'll save that for later.

Public Opinion

A new survey revealed that 39% of Americans have an opinion about the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan.

Good news that so many are paying attention and giving these weighty issues careful thought, right? As it turns out, they also seem to be following the Panetta-Burns plan. Twenty-five percent of voters either support or oppose Panetta-Burns.

Problem is, there is no Panetta-Burns plan.

By the way, if you are a little hazy on Simpson-Bowles, here  is a good summary.

Buying Representation

On a more local note, at last night's meeting of the Pamlico County Board of Commissioners, the commissioners voted unanimously to hire a lobbyist to represent the county in Raleigh.

Excuse me? Didn't we elect a state senator and a state representative last month to do that very job?

Oh, I forgot. The person we elected as state senator has explained on more than one occasion that he represents all the people of North Carolina, not just those who elected him to represent them. Never mind that this theory of representation seems similar to the theory held by the British Parliament in 1776. We rejected the theory at that time. Have we forgotten?

As for the person we elected to the state house, Ann Holton, chair of the county commissioners, reminded everyone that he has never been elected to any public office and is therefore very inexperienced. That's putting it kindly.

So we have to spend county money to hire a person to do the job.

We never had to do that when we were represented by Alice Underhill.

Republicans Are Nuts

Maybe I should amend the title: Some Republicans are Nuts. Rick Santorum, for example.

Today's headline:

Senate rejects treaty to protect disabled around the world

 The article: here.

As far as I can tell (it's just a guess), Santorum is afraid some black helicopter is going to swoop in from UN headquarters and take his tin foil hat away.

Jon Kyl seems to oppose it on the theory that some of the signatories are bad people and won't comply, even though they have signed. 

It is embarrassing to the country and should be embarrassing to the Republican Party that 38 senators voted against an international version of Senator Bob Dole's signature accomplishment, the ADA.

 Update: A Washington Post op-ed explains why the 38 Republicans who voted against the international treaty to protect the disabled were not only wrong (nuts), but also cowardly. They tried to hide their votes not only from constituents but also from Senator Dole, to whom many had promised support. They knew it was nuts, but were afraid to oppose the crazies. Does that make then "chicken nuts?"

Bruce Bartlett On Republican Extortion

Eminent Republican Bruce Bartlett (senior policy adviser in Reagan and Bush I administrations, staffer for Congressmen Kemp and Ron Paul) has this to say about the real fiscal cliff:

"Much of what passes for fiscal-cliff concern is actually anxiety about whether Republicans in Congress will force a default on the nation’s debt in pursuit of their radical agenda."

Bartlett goes on to explain:

"In short, the debt limit is a hostage that Republicans are willing to kill or maim in pursuit of their agenda. They have made this clear ever since the debt ceiling debate in 2011, in which the Treasury came very close to defaulting on the debt." In Bartlett's view (and mine) " the debt limit is nuts. It serves no useful purpose to allow members of Congress to vote for vast cuts in taxation and increases in spending and then tell the Treasury it is not permitted to sell bonds to cover the deficits Congress created. To my knowledge, no other nation has such a screwy system."

Bartlett's solution: "when faced with an extortion demand from a political party that no longer feels bound by the historical norms of conduct, the president must be willing to do what has to be done." In other words, ignore the debt limit.

Who Benefits And Who Pays: Fiscal Cliff Version

At last, House Republicans have made a counteroffer to the President's proposal. That's the good news. The bad news is that they still speak in vague generalities. Hard to score those.

http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/fiscal-cliff-the-rs-counteroffer/

It was already clear that the proposal intends to reduce federal assistance to states for safety net programs. Republicans also want to do away with deductibility of state and local taxes. Just incidentally, this would hurt blue states in particular. So pay careful attention.

http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/the-states-of-things-to-come/

Republican Extortion

Now it's out in the open. House Speaker John Boehner promises to hold the national economy and the welfare of millions of Americans hostage to the selfish benefit of the top 1% (or less) of earners. Those who, in fact, have been siphoning off the majority of national income from increased productivity for forty years.

Here is the promise.

I have addressed this issue before here. And here. And here. And here.

By the way, a good way to "get our financial house in order" might be to pay our bills rather than default on them. All that raising the debt ceiling does is to allow the Treasury to pay our bills.