GOP hatchet man and media pundit Pat Buchanan recently quipped that the GOP is a "heavily white party." It's not a heavily white party, it's virtually an exclusively white party; Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele notwithstanding. And Buchanan did much to make sure that the GOP got that way and stays that way. The checklist of Buchanan's blunt speak racially charged barbs, insults and inflammatory pitches to unreconstruted bigots during the past two decades can fill up a book. In fact it fills up two books, the State of Emergency and Death of the West.
Buchanan damned multiculturalism, railed against affirmative action as blatant discrimination against whites, lambasted Republicans for pandering to the NAACP, applauded those who called Martin Luther King, Jr. a "fraud" and a "demogouge" and in 1969 he opposed the federal holiday for King. Three decades later he hadn't softened his take on King one bit. He's called him a "divisive" figure.
Buchanan waded into the fight to keep the Confederate flag flying high on state capitols in the South. To him the flag is an honorable symbol of the South's noble fight in the Civil War for self determination, states rights, and to protect cultural differences (Slavery=cultural differences?) Buchanan also has no qualms about appearing on the aptly named The Political Cesspool radio talk show, a show less charitably described as an on air forum to fan and spew white supremacist views.
This is the kooky Buchanan stuff and it can easily be shrugged off as the rants of a fringe political hack and media bloviator to stoke controversy to peddle his books and inflate his on screen presence. But Buchanan and company played a big and insidious part in crafting, tweaking, and honing the GOP's Southern Strategy. The GOP used this to rule national politics for four decades. The strategy was simple; say and do as little as possible about civil rights, talk God, country and patriotism, use racially tinged code words and furiously court white males. The goal was to win elections by openly and subtly pandering to Southern white fears of black political domination. Buchanan even warned that tainting the strategy by pitching the GOP to minority voters would amount to political sepaku.
The race tinged strategy was the magic gateway to the White House for Republican Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Reagan and Bush Sr. and Bush. The key as every Republican president since Nixon has known and in some cases unabashedly said, was to maintain near-solid backing from white Southern males. They have been the staunchest Republican loyalists. Bush grabbed more than 60 percent of the white male vote nationally in 2004. In the South, he got more than 70 percent of their vote. Without the South's unyielding backing in 2000, Democratic Presidential contender Al Gore would have easily won the White House, and the Florida vote debacle would have been a meaningless sideshow. In 2004, Bush swept Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in every one of the states of the Old Confederacy and three out of four of the Border States. This insured another Bush White House.
The strategy didn't work in 2008, but not because it's totally outdated. Despite the heavy chains of Bush domestic and foreign policy bungling and incompetence, the deep voter disgust with the lies, corruption, and negativity of the GOP, a failed, flawed, financial and human cost draining war, and an economy sinking faster than a lead balloon, Republican GOP presidential candidate John McCain was still competitive with President Obama for much of the 2008 presidential campaign. The only thing that prevented the election from being a total rout of McCain was the solid majority backing he got from white males in the Deep South, farm belt, and the heartland states. Nationally, McCain won a clear majority of the white vote.
The widespread popularity and voter approval of Obama in the months since the election hasn't totally changed that. A recent NYT Times/CBS Poll showed that blacks still are overwhelmingly Obama's strongest backers. The defection of Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter to the Democrats, the continued shooting themselves in the foot, and deconstruction of the GOP and the phenomenal success of Obama have only sharpened the political lines.
Buchanan knows that. His heavy white party quip drew the headlines, but he was careful not to knock the party for being a white man's party. Buchanan and the Southern Strategy adherents still pine away that the party can regain its fighting form of the past, and it can't do that by pandering to minorities. That's hopeless anyway given the iron grip that Obama and the Democrats have on black and minority voters. But as long as the GOP has its grip on the millions that made and kept the GOP a heavily white party, it's far from dead as a party.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com
Thank you, Pat. Thank you ever so much.
The Republicans of dignity are gone. The Republicans of conscience are all gone. There isn't an Everett Dirkson or an Elliot Richardson or a Dwight Eisenhower among them anymore.
I'm watching these ignorant, bigoted, conspiracy minded, rednecks and peckerwoods arming their doublewides to hold off Herr Comrad Hussein Obama. What a fitting end for the party that loves the rich.
Torture is un-lawful, Un-Constitutional and against US signed International Treaties, but is subject to/ superceded by fear and the FEAR BASED "HIGHER" MORAL AUTHORITY, RULE... They as a collective group really do NOT Believe in the USA and "America"... Their "GOD" is a fear based GOD... Their Religion is fear based... Their loyalty is to fear and more what they do is based in fear, including their belief in doing business...
They truly do NOT grasp that America is a Belief in Constitution, Rule of Law, Bill of Rights, etc... Is America Perfect??? Not if Perfect is an absolute end results, but (yes!) if Perfection is an ongoing process of improvement, about the journey, not the destination... Has our Fear laden Mind reacted badly at times and violated, or not enforced our Constitutional and Rule of Law... Absolutely! Yet we grow stronger when we Love and support our Constitution, not our FEARS...
Obama mostly pauses and Responds, NOT Reacts, is why I believe he got elected...
Try reading the Audacity of Hope for more explanation - it actually makes sense...
Just curious.. How do you feel about LGBT people? Do you support their rights and aspirations? I think the biggest test of a person's character is their ability to see the other's point of view, and to stand for the rights of others who are different, rather than just their own.
That's why I can't stand these whiny wingers from the south. Low character.
Rather than shut him up, we need to let him talk and clearly state his ideas -- and undergo the withering responses from scientists, anthropologists and other thoroughly educated people who know the facts about human origins, relationships and races.
I realize that wouldn't necessarily move the truly and willfully ignorant (see Creationism) but it would put a lot of correct information in prominent places where impressionable people, especially the young, can see and read it.
Misunderstandings are at the root on many conflicts, and they are best avoided by open discussion, no matter how painful or upsetting.
It was a very disturbing revelation to me when I learned that much of the early wealth of my country was built on slavery, that Thomas Jefferson took sexual advantage of a female slave, that George Washington was both a slaveholder and racist, that European Americans committed vast crimes against the indigenous people that lived here -- I could go on --- but in the end these facts and others created understanding. I'm very happy I no longer believe in the plaster-saint version of my country taught to me in school.
None of this changes the fact that the US' ideals of liberty and the worth of the individual were and are valid, or makes me an "America hater.' Our nation is composed of people, with typical human weaknesses and faults.
Actually, makes me prouder and happier about us, because most of us of all races are trying to live up to those ideals. Realism increases our chance of success, so we should talk.
"You'll never believe it!" Pat said. "I was responsible for the winning run!"
"Really? How'd you do that?"
"I dropped the ball."