The Proverbial Rug

Bruce Bartlett responds to my post on his book:

Matt's reaction is exactly what I expected from the left. Since the history cannot be denied they will sweep it under the rug as old news--and boring news at that. But considering the recent flap about Reagan's Philadelphia, Mississippi speech in 1980, I don't think liberals can dismiss my argument without also dismissing their own efforts to use 27 year old speeches to damn the Republican Party for racism. They can't have it both ways. Either history matters or it doesn't.

No, no, no! I don't think the history should be swept under the rug at all. What I think is that the history reflects well on present members of the Democratic Party. The political views of the Southern Democrats were unconscionably evil, and the corrupt bargain national Democratic Party figures struck with them was a terrible thing. But in a series of intense political battles, the Democratic Party eventually broke decisively with that heritage, prompting breakaway segregationist campaigns in 1948 and 1968 and eventually leading the bulk of the white supremacist constituency to drift to the Republican Party.

The significance of the history of race in America -- and of the centrality of the Democrats' corrupt bargain with white supremacy to American political history -- really shouldn't be minimized. But what it shows is that the Democratic Party's decision to embrace the civil rights movement and the Republican Party's decision to embrace opposition to civil rights has been integral to the Republican Party's political successes toward the end of the 20th century.

Comments

I think the difference can be expressed thusly: Every single Republican wants to claim that he is the heir to Ronald Reagan, while not a single Democrat wants anything to do with Orval Faubus.

Posted by Boots Day | December 24, 2007 4:52 PM

From his Scandinavian perch Bruce Bartlett needs to revisit American history and the South's unique role as well as its shifting political allegiances. The very Southerners who voted Democratic during the New Deal started voting Republican with the rise of Goldwater and then Reagan. They're the same people (many of them my relatives). Matt is right, of course, and Bartlett is willfully misreading his argument, or else he's thick as mud.

Posted by BryklynLibrul | December 24, 2007 4:55 PM

Bartell's is among the most disgusting and disingenuous acts of political misdirection in recent memory. He is asking Americans to ignore the Republican Party's racist present and instead focus on the Democratic Party's racist past.

For more details, see:
"Misdirection: Bartlett Ignores GOP's Racist Present for Dems' Racist Past."

By the way, the transformation of Southern Democrats into Southern Republicans is apparently the only theory of evolution conservatives believe.

Posted by Furious | December 24, 2007 5:00 PM

"Matt's reaction is exactly what I expected from the left."

Always a National Review moron, writing on race to incite racism. Brucie the Right teaching us all of racism, how white of Brucie.

Posted by Jennifer | December 24, 2007 5:02 PM

Very well said, Boots Day. You nail it exactly.

Posted by Kyle | December 24, 2007 5:05 PM

Heh. Poor Bruce Bartlett. The more he excoriates the Democratic Party for its racist past that it abandoned, the more he castigates, by implication, the present-day Republican Party, which has picked up the mantle of race-baiting that the Democrats discarded.

Posted by Joel | December 24, 2007 5:07 PM

"Either history matters or it doesn't".

Um, I agree. Yes, it really does matter that the Republican party betrayed their founding ideology and became the party of reaction and Dixiecrat racism.

Posted by MattF | December 24, 2007 5:10 PM

I would ad that Barack Obama's candidacy is testing the Democrats' current progressivism on race issues. When you have Billy Shaheen dropping the "drug dealer" poison pill into the political dialogue, you see the operation of the "first Black President" changing its tune when seriously threatened by a credible African American candidate. And then there are the not so-subtle attmept to tie his African name and heritage to a muslim thology. Even "roll the dice" is a subtle way of saying, "Hey guys....he's Black....he'll never win!" Should Hillary win the nomination by playing either to racism or more subtlely, fears of racism impairing electability, look to see a fault line develop in the Democratic party over issues of race that had previously been papered over. A Bloomberg candidacy in the wake of a Hillary nomination, might just lead to disaffection of a this core dem voting block and electoral disaster for Hillary in the fall. The past hisotries of the democratic party on race is, of course, interesting...but I have a feeling a new chapter is about to be written should Hillary win the nomination.

Posted by RKA | December 24, 2007 5:15 PM

There are decent comebacks out there. Not "Well dang, I was on the wrong side of this all along" good, but at least "Huh, ok, I guess I can see that" ones. This was not one of them.

Posted by Senescent | December 24, 2007 5:18 PM

Opposition to civil rights law - at least as envisioned by progressives - is not the same thing as opposition to civil rights. Regardless of how much you want to believe otherwise, Matt, some of us are neither racists nor fans of activist government.

Posted by James Robertson | December 24, 2007 5:27 PM

As Paul Krugman has said, the political success of the Republican party since 1968 can be traced to one thing: Southern white men voting Republican.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XhvG_fD0HA

Or as LBJ put it to Bill Moyers immediately after the Voting Rights Act of 1965: "Bill, I've just handed the South to the Republicans for fifty years, certainly for the rest of our lifetimes." It's 42 years later, and the South is more Republican than ever. Bill Moyers is still alive, but he won't be when the South starts voting Democrat, if it ever does.
http://www.the-ridges.net/lbj.html

Posted by blah2 | December 24, 2007 5:30 PM

Only a moron would accept the following logic: all Southerners are racists and all Southerners are Republicans, therefore all Republicans are racists. Yet many of those who write on this subject implicitly make exactly this connection.

I think Democrats deserve credit for breaking with their long and deep history of racism in the 1960s and I say so in my book. But in the process, Democratic racism somehow got airbrushed from the national consciousness and magically attached to the Republicans.

The history is what the history is and if people want to dismiss Democratic racism as old news that is irrelevant to current political and policy issues, that is their prerogative. But if they are going to play the game that Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert and other Democratic partisans play of saying that the slightest evidence of Republican racism is a hanging offense, no matter how long ago it occured, then they must answer for their own party's crimes, which are vastly worse.

Posted by Bruce Bartlett | December 24, 2007 5:35 PM

There is nothing 'magical' about how racism got attached to the Republicans. It came along like a miasma when you all embraced Strom Thurmond et al. Your attempt to pretend that there was no causal factor involved is pathetic. Racism is part of the Republican party because when the Democrats broke with their racists, the Republicans were there to give them a home in exchange for votes. The reason that the past racism of Democrats has been largely forgiven is that Democrats have expelled racists from their party; Republicans need only do the same to achieve the same forgiveness.

But the case of Trent Lott suggests that you lot aren't really ready to make that sacrifice. Democrats lost more than one Presidential election because of their unwillingness to ignore the racists in their own ranks. Republicans will likely give those wins back when you finally join the rest of us in abandoning your coded racist appeals.

Posted by NBarnes | December 24, 2007 5:43 PM

eventually leading the bulk of the white supremacist constituency to drift to the Republican Party

Where's the evidence?

Perhaps Matthew can point me to a poll that shows, you know, women voted one way, and blacks another, and white suprecists a third?

Posted by Al | December 24, 2007 5:44 PM

It came along like a miasma when you all embraced Strom Thurmond et al.

And Democrats embraced Robert Byrd. I guess that means that the 2007 Democrat Party is filled with racists.

Posted by Al | December 24, 2007 5:46 PM

Mr. Bartlett -

I refer you to the Godfather, Lee Atwater:

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn’t have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he’s campaigned on since 1964… and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster…

Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps…?

Atwater: 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 forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.' [4][5][6]

Karl Rove conducted a blatently racist campaign in South Carolina in a desperate and successful attempt to get George Bush to win the South Carolina primary by basically shouting "N!99er N!99er". You cannot deny that. George Wallace style racist appeals are still very much part of the Republican playbook.

Posted by calipygian | December 24, 2007 5:47 PM

Bruce Said,
"But in the process, Democratic racism somehow got airbrushed from the national consciousness and magically attached to the Republicans."

Could that magic have something to do with the majority of the racist democrats in the south _becoming_ republicans? That would explain quite a lot of it, wouldn't it? Since it's true that also helps.

Posted by Matt (not the famous one) | December 24, 2007 5:57 PM

Call Bruce Bartlett disingenuous. Call Bruce Bartlett willing to distort. Call Bruce Bartlett unfamiliar with history. By all means, be polite.

Bruce Bartlett is a liar, Matt. He knows every point you made, indeed it is hard-wired into his political makeup. He knows Southern Democrats stampeded to the Nixon GOP in the wake of the Civil Rights Act. He knows Ronald Reagan cemented their support for his party through subtle (but not that subtle) acts of symbolism and code. He knows the GOP fought the Martin Luther King holiday to pimp to these people, that Gingrich and others periodically grumbled about getting rid of the Civil Rights Act for the same reason, and he knows all the rest of the dirty, sordid story.

He knows. David Brooks knows, too. We might all wish such men are merely deluded, that their decency compels them to truly believe the contemporary GOP is an alliance between Chamber of Commerce types, people who keep a copy of Burke at bedside, and some humble Christians. It isn't. They know it isn't. They're liars, Matt. Treating their remarks with respect only enables them. Happy holidays.

Posted by KC45s | December 24, 2007 6:01 PM

What republican racist present?

What horseshit!

The racism I see is Dems using thugs like Al Sharpton to intimidate and rig (selective) election recounts

You must be kidding me

Posted by Jozef | December 24, 2007 6:03 PM

A Bloomberg candidacy in the wake of a Hillary nomination, might just lead to disaffection of a this core dem voting block and electoral disaster for Hillary in the fall.

What happens if the presidential race looks like this:

Hillary
Bloomberg
Ron Paul
Rudy or Romney or Huckabee

Obviously, no one gets a majority of voters, but can anyone get anything even near an electoral majority?

Posted by Shinyk | December 24, 2007 6:21 PM

"Only a moron ..."

Oh my!

"... Democratic racism somehow got airbrushed from the national consciousness ..."

Haven't we been over this? The Democrats' racist past is taught in the history books. What Mr. Bartlett means, but can't say, is that people don't hold the Dems' racist past against them. He can't say this because the response is so obvious: there's no reason for people to do so, given the Dems' nonracist immediate past and nonracist present.

"... if they are going to play the game that Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert and other Democratic partisans play of saying that the slightest evidence of Republican racism is a hanging offense, no matter how long ago it occured, then," etc.

As someone has pointed out, 27 years ago is not the same as 90 years ago. As someone else has pointed out, Reagan followed up his dog-whistle campaigning with genuinely pro-racist policies. As a third person has pointed out, Reagan is held up as the inspiration of just about every Republican now holding or seeking office. How many of them have criticized the Reagan administration for its support of racists?

For my part, I'll point out that very few writers would drop by a comments section just to show that he cannot follow or effectively respond to an opposing argument. Mr. Bartlett is special.

Posted by Kyle | December 24, 2007 6:26 PM

As a smokescreen, Bartlett's argument above is literally pathetic. It has not escaped the notice of most people (including most remaining white Southern racists) that the GOP (including such faux moderates as Specter and Gordon Smith) is STILL defending the racism of such Southern stalwarts of their party as Lott, Helms and Thurmond -- while the Dems stopped defending any remaining racists in their prty a long time ago. Byrd (whose racism in his early life was horrifying) is praised only AFTER he dumped it; even such abominations as George Wallace and Orval Faubus, in order to remain Democrats, finally ended up ditching their official racism instead. Nor has the GOP managed to steel itself yet to admit that St. Ronald sometimes made appeals to racism.

As for Jozef above: while I have no tolerance for the continuing willingness of Democratic candidates to kiss Al Sharpton's ample backside either, the only recent example I can think of of an election swayed by a "rigged recount" was that little business in 2000 Florida in which several thousand non-criminal black voters were disenfranchised by an erroneous database of state felons -- with the whole thing damn near happening again in 2004, had it not been for the Miami Herald's heroic efforts to expose it. (I AM happy to say that Republican Gov. Crist seems determined to clean up all of dear old Jeb's repulsive little tricks in that regard. There actually are some honest Republicans, conspicuously not including Bartlett or Jozef.)

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | December 24, 2007 6:27 PM

I'll add that it's doubly bizarre that Barlett is still solemnly denying that there is still a large pro-racist element in today's GOP -- unlike today's Democrats -- after Kristol, Krauthammer and George Will all forcefully pointed that fact out in the immediate wake of Trent Lott's immortal tribute to Thurmond. (See the Washington Post articles and columns of the time.)

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | December 24, 2007 6:31 PM

He knows the GOP fought the Martin Luther King holiday to pimp to these people....

A lot of people oppose the MLK holiday simply because they believe King was half-leader, half-scum. The most overrated man in US history.

King was a plagarist, siphoned funds from the SLCC for his personal drug, alcohol, and prostitution vices. He beat women, worked with more violent radical blacks to play "good negro, bad negro" on cities to get his wishes. He became an ardent defender of letting the Soviet gains in the Cold War stand forever, lest "Peace" be jeopardized by Communism's fall. Much of his material was ghostwritten by Stanley Levinson and other NYC communists, men who also served as Kings financiers and attorney advisors. J. Edgar Hoover called King a "1st Class sexual degenerate", one of the 5 worst he'd ever seen.

What the FBI has on King is so bad that the King Family, Black Caucus, and liberal Dems persuaded the FBI to put it all under lock and key away from historians and scholars for 55 years - an unprecidented action for a deceased historical American leader.

And no guarantee the FBI info will ever be released as King has now become Holy Saint Martin to his followers, dissing him is prohibited in schools in the manner dissing the Prophet is prohibited to Muslims, and a national Monument arises to honor the only American (or sacred cow) worthy of his own national holiday.

Posted by Chris Ford | December 24, 2007 6:42 PM

I'll add that it's doubly bizarre that Barlett is still solemnly denying that there is still a large pro-racist element in today's GOP -- unlike today's Democrats -- after Kristol, Krauthammer and George Will all forcefully pointed that fact out in the immediate wake of Trent Lott's immortal tribute to Thurmond...

Bruce, I would not agree that there is a "large pro-racist element" in the GOP. Where? What evidence is there of such an element?

OTOH, which party routinely marches with Hezbollah and Hamas supporters in the U.S., the most virulent and genocidal racists on the face of the Earth?

Posted by Doug | December 24, 2007 6:42 PM

I'll add that it's doubly bizarre that Barlett is still solemnly denying that there is still a large pro-racist element in today's GOP -- unlike today's Democrats

What an odd statement. The Democrats have had no problems running three out and out racists in their last two Presidential primaries. In 2004, they had Al Sharpton join the stage with Kerry and Clark and the rest. And this year, they have Biden and Dodd join Clinton and Obama and the others. And we all know that Sharpton, Biden and Dodd are just flat out racists. I mean, listen to Dodd's praise of Klansman Byrd. Or Biden's repeated racists statements. And nothing needs be said about Sharpton's racism. And yet all three are major players in the Democratic party.

As far as I can tell, the present Democrat party is far more racist than the present Republican party. The Republicans don't run racists in their primaries; Democrats do.

Unfortunately, anyone who associates with modern day Democrat party is just an apologist for racism.

Posted by Al | December 24, 2007 6:44 PM

When Matt, and the left in general, is willing to recognize that

-- they embrace known racists like Robert Byrd
-- they embrace (and fear offending) race baiting anti-semites like Al Sharpton
-- they embrace (and fear offending) race baiting anti-semites like Jesse Jackson

Then perhaps they can stand on principle and call out the Republicans for atrocities like Trent Lott (who was, at least, removed from the leadership). Until then, excuse me while I fail to take anything a Democrat says about racism seriously. Certainly the Republican party silently approved of the Dixiecrat migration to their side. That doesn't mean that Democrats have fixed their own house (see above). It simply means that Democrats have been able to pretend that they've fixed their own house, with the active help of the media.

Posted by James Robertson | December 24, 2007 6:48 PM

Lott (who was, at least, removed from the leadership)

Huh, I thought he was the Minority Whip before retiring.

Posted by Matt Weiner | December 24, 2007 6:52 PM

He was removed as leader, and then started climbing back up before retiring. I personally stopped donating money to the party when Lott wasn't forced out of office; it was my belief that he had no place in the party.

Posted by James Robertson | December 24, 2007 6:59 PM

"...SILENTLY approved of the Dixiecrat migration to their side"? Please.

"We ought to go hunting where the ducks are" -- Barry Goldwater, 1964.

The Southern Strategy (in which the GOP followed Barry's suggestion faithfully for decades -- and, as the frantic defenses of Lott show, still hasn't completely abandoned it).

Lee Atwater's testimony above.

As for Dodd and Biden being "racists": I eagerly await Al's evidence on that point (especially given that George Will, in his recent columns, has praised the two of them as being by far the best qualified and most intellectually honest Democratic Presidential candidates). And as for "routinely marching with Hezbollah and Hamas supporters": would Doug mind naming any significant Democratic political candidate for anything who has done that, or who has even uttered one word of praise of any Palestinian who favors the abolition of Israel? Especially given the party's enduring key reliance on Jews (85% of whom voted for Kerry)?

The GOP's defenders, I see from this thread, have definitely entered the Black Knight stage of their attempted defense of the party's current behavior.

Posted by BruceMoomaw | December 24, 2007 6:59 PM

James:
Opposition to civil rights law - at least as envisioned by progressives - is not the same thing as opposition to civil rights. Regardless of how much you want to believe otherwise, Matt, some of us are neither racists nor fans of activist government.

It doesn't make you a racist. It allies you with racists. It ties you to them, forces you and your party to make concessions to them in order to get votes, raise money, and pass legislation. It causes you either to craft the GOP-friendly civil rights bills that you assert your party is dying to pass differently or to scrap them altogether, to keep the racist money and votes coming. It's your party's deal with the devil. I am not surprised you avoid contemplating this.

Posted by Daddy Love | December 24, 2007 7:01 PM

Maybe a conservative Republican could explain this kind of thing, concerning the Civil Rights Commission?

Before the changes, the agency had planned to evaluate a White House budget request for civil rights enforcement, the adequacy of college financial aid for minorities, and whether the US Census Bureau undercounts minorities, keeping nonwhite areas from their fair share of political apportionment and spending. After the appointments, the commission canceled the projects.

Instead, the commission has put out a series of reports concluding that there is little educational benefit to integrating elementary and secondary schools, calling for closer scrutiny of programs that help minorities gain admission to top law schools, and urging the government to look for ways to replace policies that help minority-owned businesses win contracts with race-neutral alternatives.

Liberal media bias?

Posted by RSA | December 24, 2007 7:01 PM

This is an area where my ignorance is formidable, but isn't the Republican side of the equation quite a bit more complex? Grant and Theodore Roosevelt probably look better than any other presidents between 1865 and 1945, but Hayes and McKinley not so good? I seem to recall the TR met quite a lot of opposition from fellow Republicans who were afraid of alienating the Southern racist establishment.

And I have no idea how significantly racist democratic candidates like Winfield Scott Hancock or Al Smith actually were -- I accept that they shared general racist assumptions of their time, but were they Bilbo's or Klansmen?? Woody Wilson's pathetic record I know all about.

Excoriation not necessary, more facts would be welcome.

Posted by Gene O'Grady | December 24, 2007 7:27 PM

It doesn't make you a racist.

I don't think that's true. Maybe big L libertarians could plausibly make an argument against activist government and few Paulite Republicans. I throw the bullshit flag on someone who still supports the Republicans after they tapped everyones phones, put on the most expensive war anyone has ever seen, started dragging people out of their beds and torturing them and then sits around and tells me they are opposed to civil rights legislation on principled, limited government grounds. Obviously, this a principle you can not only jetisson when needed but do a big happy dance on it's grave at times.

Posted by Ed Marshall | December 24, 2007 7:29 PM

Bruce, I would not agree that there is a "large pro-racist element" in the GOP. Where? What evidence is there of such an element?

For an answer to your question, Doug, simply read the comment directly above yours by Chris Ford. That is your modern Southern white Republican, Mr. Bartlett. That is who the Republicans courted, and the Democrats "deserted" through the late 60's, 70's and 80's. You're welcome to him.

Posted by Pug | December 24, 2007 7:32 PM

@Ed Marshall - To see how attached Republicans are to the issue of limited government and "states rights", just look to the Bush EPA which limited California's attempt to legislate new CAFE standards which 16 states (and a sizable portion of the National population BTW) would have adopted.

Limited government and states rights means whatever the Republicans want it to mean and not one bit more.

Posted by calipygian | December 24, 2007 7:36 PM

@Pug -

You're right. They can have him. And they will have him as the Republican Party becomes a regional Southern party with little bearing on national policy for a generation after the 2008 election.

Bartlett's bleatings are the dying gasps of a racist conservative movement that has run out of steam. Read "American Theocracy" by one of the founders of that movement, Kevin Phillips. He had enough sense to bail before wasting time rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. So much for Karl Rove's "permanent majority".

Posted by calipygian | December 24, 2007 7:41 PM

Does anyone else find this talk of "embracing" a bit facile? Ditto the bizarre obsession with the distant past of the Democratic Party. Perhaps liberals ought to abandon the Democratic Party since it is forever tarnished and reconstitute the Whigs?

If I might be so bold as to summarize the debate, it seems that the claim people are interested in is,

(R) The current Republican party advances racist policies in order to maintain the support of a racist constituency.

And the argument that folks like Krugman offer for (R) has three premises:
1. The GOP actively courted racist southern voters beginning in the 1960s and proceeding at least through Reagan in the 1980s.
2. The GOP did this, in part, by opposing Civil Rights legislation during the same time period.
3. There is no reason to suppose that the practices of (1) and (2) stopped between Reagan and now, and indeed the popularity of Reagan and the recent behavior of some southern Republicans (e.g. Lott and Thurmond) are reasons (albeit defeasible ones) to think that it does continue.

So Krugman & co. are not casting aspersions just for the sake of tarring their enemies; they are making an argument that the Republican Party is racist right now, an argument that happens to be historical. The analogous claim (which is maybe what Bartlett is interested in?) that the Democratic Party is racist seems clearly false: even though the Democratic clearly supported racist policies in the past, there is a very good reason to believe that this practice has not continued... namely the behavior of the Democratic Party for the past 40 years! Thus while Krugman's historical musings have a point, Bartlett's amount to little more than the tedious fact that Barack Obama and Jefferson Davis are members of the same political party. Bartlett's mistake, it seems, is to think that Krugman's history has as niggling a purpose as his own.

Posted by KW | December 24, 2007 8:35 PM

Well put KW. It's the trivialization of history for partisan purposes to which Bruce Bartlett is well suited.

And only those who are trained to practice it, and to understand it, continue to use it as a technique in their argument.

Posted by Marshall Hunt | December 24, 2007 8:46 PM

Well put KW. It's the trivialization of history for partisan purposes to which Bruce Bartlett is well suited.

And only those who are trained to practice it, and to understand it, continue to use it as a technique in their argument.

Posted by Marshall Hunt | December 24, 2007 8:48 PM

Pardon me if I find the oppositional nature of the analysis a bit of an airbrushing too. Do you really think that if Democrats win the White House and build on majorities in both houses of Congress, we're going to see the kind of politics that will truly transform this country into a just, equal-opportunity society, both racially and economically?

I just don't see it. To do so would require a reversal of income stratification, a public education system that doesn't consistently fail in poor and minority neighborhoods, and a criminal justice system that doesn't target minorities, to name just a few. Edwards *might* get us there, but it would be a miracle if he did, considering who would be lined up on the other side of all of those issues.

That isn't to say that electing a Democrat president wouldn't be a vast improvement over what we've got now, and I pray to the Gods that it happens. But to say that the Democratic Party isn't actively racist shouldn't be the end of the question, if you're a true progressive. It's only the beginning.

Posted by clb72 | December 24, 2007 8:51 PM

I don't mind the attacks on Bartlett's thesis or its relevance to anything going on today. But I don't like the attacks on his integrity. Bruce Bartlett has deliberately gotten himself expelled from the Republican welfare system. That, folks, takes moral courage--a desire to do the right thing without regard to the consequences.

Now I suppose it's possible to have moral courage without much integrity otherwise. Not likely, but possible. But one thing I've learned as a lawyer--don't assume lack of integrity on the other side until proven. (But, of course, verify.) We might have hit the stage where we can assume no integrity on the part of the general run-of-the-mill Republican puppet.

But Bruce Bartlett is not a generic Republican puppet. He deserves the presumption of integrity. Attack his ideas, but lay off his integrity--at least until you have some evidence stronger than your disagreement with his thesis. It may be silly (I think it is), but it doesn't justify personal attacks.

Posted by Joe S. | December 24, 2007 9:01 PM

If Bartlett is so interested in examining history, how about something relevant to today and to the Republican party's agenda. Maybe he could write a book about how great the Lochner era was.

Posted by Steve V | December 24, 2007 9:01 PM

Mr. Ford...

I find your copycatting from the Stormfront sponsered site martinlutherking.org to be amusingly juvenile. I get a laugh out of how the site starts out on a hackneyed warning about Communists confiscate guns when they take over before they launch the warped screed about Dr. King.

Don't change the subject, Mr. Ford. The issue is the willingness of Republicans to embrace racist positions, including for example, Georgia's half-assed attempt at re-instituting a Poll Tax, and to pander to not-so-coded issues like Confederate Flags on official buildings.

The Democrats have walked away from this ugly history, and Republicans have rushed to carry this dirty bag of un-American hatred; simply for the votes.

Disgusting.

Posted by boilerman10 | December 24, 2007 9:18 PM

Can anyone tell me why anyone reads the National Review again?

It's a simple question for a simple mind.

And this simple mind can discern that without the racist, homophobic, xenophobic, theocratic base the Republicans would get about 30% of the vote. Which is still profoundly sad.

All this is assuming the electorate was informed. Which ain't gonna happen given our Corporate Media Gods.

Just deal with it: Another empire circling the drain in the water of its own hubris. And "we" deserve it.

It is painful to watch unfold.

Posted by John O | December 24, 2007 9:30 PM

"I throw the bullshit flag on someone who still supports the Republicans after they tapped everyones phones, put on the most expensive war anyone has ever seen, started dragging people out of their beds and torturing them and then sits around and tells me they are opposed to civil rights legislation on principled, limited government grounds"

Gee, then anyone after Wilson's administration, or FDR's, should have been embarrassed to be a Democrat. Amazingly, that wasn't the case, even given their multiple atrocities against civil rights - far worse than anything people talk about now.

As to the person that tried to smear by association - the Democrats have plenty of ugly fellow travelers as well - many of the anti-Israel folks are complete anti-semites (and nearly all are on the left), the "free Mumia" crowd is all on the left... etc.

If we want to go toe to toe with ugly allies, I think the lists are about equally ugly.

Posted by James Robertson | December 24, 2007 9:33 PM

Joe S.,

I don't care if BB disagress about any particular GOP talking point. C'mon. Anyone who could write what is referenced here is a Major League hack.

Matt is right: Bartlett is hiding behind some serious intellectual wankitude.

Posted by John O | December 24, 2007 9:35 PM

Mr. Joe S.

Mr. Bartlett's integrity flew the coop long ago. particularly when he began boostering Mr. Bush's fiasco in Iraq.

I believe Mr. Bartlett could, by legal precedent, be investigated for complicity in war crimes for his actions in the Bush White House, and is possibly guilty on prima facie grounds alone.

However, the integrity angle is a mirror trick. Mr. Bartlett wishes to redirect criticism of GOP pandering to racism back onto the Democrats. That sounds like partisan sniping to me, but that isn't important. What is important is that Mr. Bartlett got called on his deceptions.

Posted by boilerman10 | December 24, 2007 9:35 PM

"... Democratic racism somehow got airbrushed from the national consciousness and magically attached to the Republicans ..."

There is nothing magical about it. The Democratic Party changed, and began supporting civil rights legislation. The Republicans chose to appeal to the displaced racists and began opposing civil rights legislation. Matt's post is right on the money.

Posted by synykyl | December 24, 2007 9:38 PM

I am so tired of this. Why are there so many sadistic assholes posting here? Go down to the stockyards. Omaha! Ring bells, sing songs, blow horns, beat gongs! Slit throats and suck blood! You'll get 72-odd virgins. Okay, they may be calves, but . . . .

Posted by Henderstock | December 24, 2007 9:39 PM

yeah that "Free Mumia" crowd really has a lot of pull in our libtard camp. And, tell me again, who are these anti-Semites you speak of? Or are you just throwing stuff out there hoping it will stick?

Posted by handy | December 24, 2007 9:40 PM

Gee, then anyone after Wilson's administration, or FDR's, should have been embarrassed to be a Democrat. Amazingly, that wasn't the case, even given their multiple atrocities against civil rights - far worse than anything people talk about now.

I'm going to use really small words here, I was talking about the Bush administration and small governance.

Everyone who voted for Wilson is dead. There might be five people kicking around that voted for FDR still around. Do you understand the difference?

Posted by Ed Marshall | December 24, 2007 9:51 PM

How many current Republican members of Congress are African American? The answer is ZERO. Does that fact make the Republican Party racist? No, but it sure provides fodder for why there is a strong belief among many people that, at a minimum, Republicans pander to racist views.

Posted by Mark F. | December 24, 2007 9:53 PM

When conservative whites who made the switch from D to R sometime in the late sixties say stuff like "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me" exactly what the fuck do you think they're talking about?

Posted by Rjl | December 24, 2007 10:42 PM

I feel no need to defend the racist Democrats of the past. It wasn't the liberals that were racist. by the same token, Republicans don't really get to brag about Lincoln. Lincoln was the most liberal president we've ever had. If the Republicans want to reform themselves as the party of liberalism, they can tout Lincoln again. Hell, if they're serious about liberalism, I'll join up and gladly bring a shovel to the party to bury the centrist Democrats.

Conservative in America means "white guys on top." Whether you're a conservative Republican or a conservative Democrat, being conservative means maintaining that power structure.

Posted by MikeJ | December 24, 2007 10:42 PM

When conservative whites who made the switch from D to R sometime in the late sixties say stuff like "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me" exactly what the fuck do you think they're talking about?

Posted by Rjl | December 24, 2007 10:42 PM

Mr. Bartlett:
Please, please name one person who is implicitly making the argument that "all Southerners are racists and all Southerners are Republicans, therefore all Republicans are racists." That's a laughable strawman that any honorable writer would be loathe to put forth.

Posted by doggril | December 24, 2007 11:09 PM

Al Sharpton couldn't even get the majority of votes of African-American primary voters in 2004. Jesse Jackson hasn't been viable as a major political force for decades. If the Democratic Party was really so racist, why would the majority of black, Latino, Asian and Jewish voters vote Democratic? Are they too stupid to recognize racism? Are you telling me the party of torturing innocent Arabs and Muslims and kicking out the Mexicans isn't racist? That the party that actually had a number of their members vote against renewing the Voting Rights Act isn't the more racist party? Look at FoxNews and how they assume that all Arabs and Muslims are evil.

"OTOH, which party routinely marches with Hezbollah and Hamas supporters in the U.S., the most virulent and genocidal racists on the face of the Earth?

Posted by Doug | December 24, 2007 6:42 PM"

Name me one major Democrat who has marched with either organization. Also, the most genocidal racists on the face of the Earth are probably the governments of Sudan and Burma, who are actually committing genocide. The Burmese government in the late 1990's hired a PR and marketing firm based in DC to help clean up their image in the world. That firm is owned and run by one of Bush's friends.

Posted by Reality Man | December 24, 2007 11:10 PM

Bruce Bartlett says "...all Southerners are racists and all Southerners are Republicans, therefore all Republicans are racists."

Ridiculous - no one is saying this - what they are saying is that the Republican party is now the one that looks after the interests of racists, and the racist vote is largely what has provided them with the margin of victory in some recent elections.

Posted by skeptonomist | December 24, 2007 11:28 PM

Some of Bruce Bartlett's best friends have black friends.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | December 24, 2007 11:50 PM

Any time I see someone trying to claim the Democrats are the haven of racists, I know I'm seeing someone who is so sheltered as to be almost certainly a college student.

The immigration issue alone, never mind the persistent lies about voter fraud, makes it more than clear that the current GOP embraces racist beliefs and ideology. There is simply nothing equivalent on the Democratic side. Nothing.

And the more you ramble on about Al Sharpton and anti-semites, the more obvious it becomes where the racists lie and how much they have invested in this foolish, hateful, un-American strategy. They know they are stuck with it, so they are distracting from it any way they can.

This will really be writ large in the movement of Hispanics away from their social conservative drift towards the GOP. You can't wave away with these statistics without calling them stupid, which really doesn't do much for the argument.

Posted by Dog Whistler | December 25, 2007 12:14 AM

Myself and my other 1 billion black friends of Bruce Bartlett know that Nelson Mandela did everything he could to stop Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and P.W. Botha from helping teh black people !!!!!111!

Posted by Douglas Watts | December 25, 2007 12:45 AM

Is Bartlett serious in his posted response here? Only HE believes that "...Democratic racism somehow got airbrushed from the national consciousness and magically attached to the Republicans." There was nothing magical about it. The modern Republican Party--as Krugman et al. have documented and as Reagan's Philadelphia campaign kick-off exemplified--has worked hard to achieve its solid hold on the bigot vote. Lee Atwater anyone? Atwater admitted and apologized for the GOP's grand racism strategy.

Evidence of the ever expanding racial politics of the GOP is clearly before Bartlett in the immigrant-bashing by GOP Congresspeople and candidates, not to mention the anti-Islamic rhetoric of same, but perhaps anything beyond black-white racism is simply beyond his ability to see, much less acknowledge. Giuiliani owes his career to stirring up racial hatred. But Bartlett says it's all a Dem problem. Bizarre reasoning.

Posted by W Action | December 25, 2007 1:05 AM

Perhaps Mr. Bartlett could read some of those old issues of National Review from the 50's concerning segregation and then talk to us about the Democrats support of racism. Or is he proposing that the National Review was a leftist magazine back then?

Posted by Col Bat Guano | December 25, 2007 1:41 AM

The boggling thing is that Bartlett is not a kneejerk internet troll like Al, but someone who was once a significant spokesman and even policymaker for the Republican Party. And not only that, he recently showed himself to be remarkably less dishonest and stupid than the average Republican spokesperson.

30% of Americans (the Movement Republicans) are members of an insane, ignorant cult. That passionately intense 30% of the country controls the US government. Bartlett is one of the most rational members of that 30%, and that's the problem we're facing. We're in very serious trouble --and by "we" I mean "everyone on the face of the earth today".

Bartlett's argument doesn't have any plausibility at all. It fails the simplest historical tests -- e.g., the question "So what did Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms do, Uncle Bruce?" His book is nothing but inane, implausible, dishonest, stupid, demagogic nonsense. His silly responses are worse than the book.

But he's the best the Republicans have to offer. The very best, and I'm not kidding about that.

Posted by John Emerson | December 25, 2007 2:10 AM

"I think the difference can be expressed thusly: Every single Republican wants to claim that he is the heir to Ronald Reagan, while not a single Democrat wants anything to do with Orval Faubus.

Posted by Boots Day"

Boots ol' boy. YOU MISSED THE POINT.

Posted by cal1942 | December 25, 2007 3:30 AM

Oh really, Cal1942. And what is the point?

Posted by John Emerson | December 25, 2007 3:35 AM

"Matt is right, of course, and Bartlett is willfully misreading his argument, or else he's thick as mud.

Posted by BryklynLibrul"

Both. Thick as mud and just plain dishonest as is anyone else who pulls that stunt.

Johnson and national Democrats knew exactly what would happen following passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Following the vote Johnson said to an aide something like 'well we've lost the south for a generation' - Off the mark of course, it's been two generations and counting and there's really no end in sight.

Knowingly giving up a significant number of future electoral votes, future Senators and future Reps to do the right thing was an act of courage that's almost never recognized.

Posted by cal1942 | December 25, 2007 3:49 AM

"magically attached to the Republicans....

Bruce Bartlett"

"magically" Mr. Bartlett? Hardly. The 'Southern Strategy' betrays everything you say.

You are a virtual symbol of the cynical dishonesty that characterizes today's Republican party.

Posted by cal1942 | December 25, 2007 4:05 AM

"Oh really, Cal1942. And what is the point?

Posted by John Emerson"

The 'point' is that Democrats admit to Orval Faubus but, by their acts, have repudiated him.

It would serve the nation if Republicans repudiated Ronald Reagan.

Posted by cal1942 | December 25, 2007 4:16 AM

"And Democrats embraced Robert Byrd. I guess that means that the 2007 Democrat Party is filled with racists.

Posted by Al"

OK Al here it is. Robert Byrd present has repudiated the Robert Byrd of the past. Robert Byrd present gets highest marks from the NAACP.

Try to keep up Al.

You might also want to try a little bit of civility. It's Democratic party.

Posted by cal1942 | December 25, 2007 4:23 AM

What I see that Bartlett has written is the standard wingnut response when they lose an argument (it's usually Clinton did it too...) What I see is that Bartlett has conceded the point about Republican appeals to racism and is trying to show that Democrats did it too (Brooks and others were just denying it before). Yes, he is right that there are some Democrats that make me cringe, but the Civil Rights Act is the dividing line of history here. What are the actions of each party in regards to that legislation and since then?

Also, I agree it is intellectually dishonest to take the example of what one person does and apply it to a whole group of people. The problem, as many pointed out above, is that Republicans still call themselves "the party of Reagan."

Posted by Unstable Isotope | December 25, 2007 6:57 AM

What I see that Bartlett has written is the standard wingnut response when they lose an argument (it's usually Clinton did it too...) What I see is that Bartlett has conceded the point about Republican appeals to racism and is trying to show that Democrats did it too (Brooks and others were just denying it before). Yes, he is right that there are some Democrats that make me cringe, but the Civil Rights Act is the dividing line of history here. What are the actions of each party in regards to that legislation and since then?

Also, I agree it is intellectually dishonest to take the example of what one person does and apply it to a whole group of people. The problem, as many pointed out above, is that Republicans still call themselves "the party of Reagan."

Posted by Unstable Isotope | December 25, 2007 7:01 AM

@Unstable Isotope: substitute the phrase "welfare queen driving her Cadillac to the welfare office to pick up her check and strapping young buck buying his T-Bones with food stamps" for "Reagan" and you got it right.

Posted by calipygian | December 25, 2007 7:11 AM

Republicans don't pander to racists. They pander to stupid people, because only stupid people will support policies that hurt their own interests, such as tax cuts for the rich, wars of conquest, war-profiteering and de-regulation of business. Racists are a subset of stupid people, thus the GOP must pander to them. It's nothing personal, nothing to do with ideology -- it's just business, all about the benjamins.

Posted by hellslittlestangel | December 25, 2007 7:13 AM

Since Mr. Bartlett is so fond of historical political roots, let him (and Mitt's devoted followers) remember that one of the founding platforms of the Republican Party in 1856 was to destroy Brigham Young and Mormonism root and branch. So much pressure was applied that the Democratic Buchanon Admin (in one of its only decisive moves) sent a military expedition to Utah, whereupon the whole Salt Lake gang swore allegiance to the US and agreed to stand down on enforcement of Mormon orthodoxy.

If one wants to play the guilt by history card forcefully, one could easily find their party losing its most solid support in Utah, Idaho, etc.

Just sayin'.

Posted by twit | December 25, 2007 8:27 AM

@twit - Just so that even the thick headed Mr. Bartlett can understand what you are saying, you are saying that the Republican Party was founded on a platform of genocide against what is today among their most stalwart supporters?

It can't be!

Posted by calipygian | December 25, 2007 9:08 AM

I have lived all of my life in the South (less 2 years in Italy) and I grew up a Republican. All of the racists I knew were Democrats, and I never wanted any part of that. It took my daughter turning 18 to make me re-examine my position and realize that I had been voting for the wrong people, nationally, for too long. So now I am a Democrat, somewhat ashamed of how unaware I was of the changes that had begun in the 60s and were a done deal by 1980.

Posted by Richard H. Davis | December 25, 2007 9:26 AM

What every conservative in this thread seems to want to ignore is that a vast majority of black americans think the republican is explicitly racist.

Like MikeJ, I don't feel the need to defend the behavior of democrats from before my father was born in the mid 1940s. I don't feel the need to apoligize for things robert byrd has already apoligized for in the most profuse and recurring manner possible. Unlike republicans, I can see the difference between Byrd and his apology and Trent Lott praising Thurmond for his racist behavior, attitudes and presidental run.

There are reasons why such an overwhelming percentage of black americans vote for Democrats. One reason is that they believe that the republican party is racist. All the columns and pseudo-history by conservatives won't change the daily experience of black americans - which is that many of the southern white men who control the republican party consider non-white people to be lesser humans.

I have black friends who wont go to entire states again because of racist incidents that have happened to them. If Bruce wants to ignore this, he can.

Posted by mickslam | December 25, 2007 10:31 AM

A lot of people oppose the MLK holiday simply because they believe King was half-leader, half-scum. The most overrated man in US history.

Damn, Saint Reagan and his boys said exactly the same things about Nelson Mandela to justify the administration position on 'Constructive Engagement' with apartheid, including calling Mandela a communist. Talk about coincidence!

Posted by BDH | December 25, 2007 10:44 AM

I am a non-white American, and every racist incident I've experienced has come from a conservative. I know this is just one person's experience, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

Posted by dai | December 25, 2007 10:45 AM

Twit has a point about the Mormons and Republicans in 1856, but on the other hand when Lincoln was asked by some pushy type what he "proposed" to do about the Mormons he replied "I propose to leave them alone."

Well put, exemplary in fact.

Posted by Gene O'Grady | December 25, 2007 11:41 AM

Mr Bartlett:

Trying to tell me that enthusiastic Republicans don't have a pretty strong tendency to despise minorities of all sorts is like trying to tell me that water doesn't fall out of the sky sometimes.

It's not something I learned from some website, or TV, or the radio. We all see this first-hand on a regular basis with the conservatives that we interact with. Most of them genuinely delight in telling you how much they hate other races.

In regards to this matter, absolutely nothing you could ever say in an article or on TV or on the radio or on the Internet will have the slightest impact on me until you change that fact.

Posted by Chris | December 25, 2007 12:04 PM

The amazing thing is that the Republican party and Dixiecrat/segregationists did not get together sooner. If anything, it shows us that an uninformed electorate has been around for years. If you think of it, the racists Southern whites were voting for Dems in the 1950/1960 period, right before 1964. And do you want to know why….Lincoln. Seriously, these people held a grudge for close to 100 years against the Republicans, and are doing the same thing to Dems all because “gasp” laws were put into place to actually try to make society more equitable for minorities.

As for Bruce, deep down he knows all of this is true. And for people like Bruce, and other more moderate Republicans, they are ashamed that they have to get into bed and service this block of voters in order to push through their policies. So each morning, when he gets out of bed, and pays the money at the end of the table, he walks outside and tries, deep down, to convince himself that what just happened never occurred. Sure – he was in the same room, but, hey, that is just a coincidence. And what about the fact that Dems used to visit that room? Sure, they are outside protesting the fact that the room even exists now, but what about 100 years ago?

Bruce is trying to cleanse his own internal struggles with this issue through the use of “moral relativism”. Of course, the irony is that Republicans rail against “moral relativism” every campaign cycle as one of the causes of our cultural collapse. But remember, “moral relativism” is only applies when it comes to gay marriage, recreational drug use, and freedom of religion.

Posted by Brad | December 25, 2007 12:08 PM

So the implication here is that in the 20th century the party that embraces the racists wins control of the federal government. The Dems made the pact with the Devil until the 1960s when things started to shift, then the Republicans made the same pact and took control of most everything for 30 years.

Huh.

Posted by Nathan | December 25, 2007 12:29 PM

Nathan:

Actually - it makes perfect sense when you have an electoral system that:

(a) Allocates political power to smaller states disproportionately compared to the actual population.

(b) Have a winner take all system, negating the ability of political coalitions to develop.

You then get a situation where a sizeable, single-issue/cause group can weigh heavy on elections. As such, this means that the entire South is currently Republican. As such, the Democrats are (and Republicans were before 1964) always starting behind the 8-ball. Additionally, it means that Republicans, as long as they keep this block moderately convinced there is no other viable alternative, only need to focus on a few other states and can ignore others altogether. Dems on the other hand, must always win California and New York. They cannot lose either one. As such, it always puts the Dems on the defensive.

Posted by Brad | December 25, 2007 1:05 PM

As an addendum to the above response to Nate, the nature of our current electoral system makes me wonder why Republicans do not just nominate a California Republican every cycle. It would almost guarantee a Republican victory.

Posted by Brad | December 25, 2007 1:09 PM

Boots Day: Every single Republican wants to claim that he is the heir to Ronald Reagan, while not a single Democrat wants anything to do with Orval Faubus.

Ex-Democrat Ronald Reagan was the heir of Orval Faubus.

James Robertson: Gee, then anyone after Wilson's administration, or FDR's, should have been embarrassed to be a Democrat.

Yeah, God knows one would be embarrassed to have supported FDR, who defeated Hitler and Hirohito.

As for Woodrow Wilson, as a Democrat I'll say that if Wilson were President today, acting as he did, I'd be so embarrassed to be a Democrat today that I'd abandon the Democratic party today. And if I were a Republican, and if George W. Bush were President today, acting as he did, I'd be so embarrassed to be a Republican today that I'd abandon the Republican party today.

So when I vote next November, it will be easy to decide! If I arrive at the polling booth by foot or car or subway or taxicab, I'll vote Democratic; but if I arrive by Time Machine, I'll vote Republican, and then visit the nearest stockbroker and go long on IBM.

Posted by W. Kiernan | December 25, 2007 1:12 PM

@Brad - Two words: Pete Wilson. And no, I'm not wondering where that asshole is now.

The only California style Republicans that would be viable nationally are the Ahhhhh-nold types that go over about as well as a Huckabee at a Club for Growth meeting among the hard core Republican party types.

Posted by calipygian | December 25, 2007 1:17 PM

Merry Christmas all. This thread touches a nerve with me, as I think Dems have for a long time been getting away with deliberately twisting history to make themselves look better on historical matters of race (no surprise there). The larger problem here is that they are dishonestly mischaracterizing Republican history on race to do it. They are trying to rewrite history in a rather ugly attempt to smear Republicans. It's a pernicious lie, and it doesn't take extensive research of history to demonstrate it as such.

Matt and his angry mob of supporters on this site have asserted that after the 1964 civil rights act and the Democrats' subsequent repudiation of segrationist policies, that all/most of those Dem racists subsequently bolted to the Repub side. Yet neither Matt nor his supporters provide any evidence of this. Two words: "Yellow Dog", but more on that later.

In point of fact, Republicans in 1964 voted in significantly higher margins than Dems for the passage of the Civil Rights act, and they voted in larger majorities than Dems for the voting rights act in 1965 the next year.

Repubs had been doing what they could since reconstruction for black civil rights, but Dems had traditionally blocked and fillibustered these efforts. Repub sponsored bills on civil rights (1957, 1960 as examples) were defeated by Dems. Anti-lynching legislation had been fillibustered by Dems.

And far from the post mid-60's racist stampede to the Republican party as Matt and his followers suggest, the south didn't swing majority Republican in Presidential elections until 1972 (after Wallace). In 1968, Texas was one of the few states in that election to vote Democrat in a landslide national Republican victory.

In the South, I'm almost certain that Dems dominated state legislatures and governships up until the 1994 Republican takedown in Congress. Is this really the "stampede" to the Republican party that you guys want to hang your hat on? The deal is, once civil rights legislation was passed and enforced, it became clear that the racist vote was just a relatively small, but vocal group of fools. Younger southerners registering to vote had no allegiance to the Dem party and began to drift toward Republicans, who preached a strong message of nation defense and 2nd amendment rights, two issues particularly important in the South.

The soucthern racists from the late sixties who had historically had a home in the Democratic party, they continued to vote Dem as 'Yellow dog' Democrats, hard core Dem supporters just like their racist pappies. You see, at that time the Republican party was the party of carpetbaggers and 'nigra lovers'. In fact, the Senate's only black at that time was a Republican (Edward Brooke, R-MA). And it needs to be stated again, the civil rights act and voting rights acts of the mid-60's passed with a larger percentage of Republicans voting for them than Dems. How does that fit with the historical narrative being pushed by the left?

The facts don't jive very well at all with the "racists fled to the Republican party" lie which Dems have pushed for so long. But you know what they say about 'repeat a lie often enough'..

What screwed the pooch for Republicans was Goldwater coming out against it in 1964. He angered many Republican of the time in doing so. He didn't think that Civil rights bill realistic, and he was wrong. This is particularly ironic, given that Goldwater was a strong civil rights advocate himself, having forced the AZ national guard to integrate before integration became mandatory in our national armed forced. He had also voted for the 1957 and 1960 civil rights bills which Dems overrode Republicans to reject.

I think I've made a strong case here in refutation of what Matt and his supporters have asserted. The lefts gets angrily defensive because they, by and large, feel wedded to the idea that they are the morally superior annointed ones. Just look at the narrative being pushed here. The noble Dems courageously stood alone to fight racism. What about Repub majorities who voted in larger percentages for the civil rights acts? And what about the Republican track record on civil rights vs Dems just prior to that period? Crickets chirping

Leftist give smear merchants like Krugman and others on their side a free pass, because they're smearing Republicans.

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 25, 2007 1:32 PM

Nathan: So the implication here is that in the 20th century the party that embraces the racists wins control of the federal government. The Dems made the pact with the Devil until the 1960s when things started to shift, then the Republicans made the same pact and took control of most everything for 30 years.

Between 1900 and 1960 Republicans occupied the White House for 32 years (53%), and Democrats for 28 years (47%). Between 1960 and next year, Republicans will have occupied the White House for 28 years (58%) and Democrats for 20 years (42%). So the racist "deal with the Devil" ("pact between devils"?) could account for only a 5% gain, and in order to give the Devil of racism even that much due you'd have to overlook the Great Depression and World War II as causes for the Democratic sweep from '33 through '53.

Posted by W. Kiernan | December 25, 2007 1:34 PM

I'd like to take this opportunity to personally insult the majority of posters on this thread. What we see here is not even the attempt at reasoned argument, but the emotional, frightened responses of adolescents who have had their fragile self-respect pricked.

The Party of Senator Robert Byrd and Reverend Al Sharpton cannot bear to contemplate that their self-image - of saintly crusaders fighting against evil Republican racists - is entirely false. See Thomas Sowell's book Vision of the Annointed; The Politics of Self-Congratulation for details.

The posters above - most of them - are more focused on preening in front of mirror than in solving problems and helping people.

Posted by Brian | December 25, 2007 1:46 PM

@Brian - Right, Brian. And Al Sharpton and Robert Byrd forced George Bush at gunpoint to run a robo-poll in South Carolina before the 2000 Primary asking Republican voters if they would vote for John McCain knowing that he had a black child. And it was Al SHarpton putting on the white face and disguising himself as a Republican to purge the Florida voting rolls of black voters.

Right.

Posted by calipygian | December 25, 2007 1:59 PM

As someone who usually votes Democrat but has no great affection for the party per se, I'm all in favor of honest discussion of both parties' complicated and not at all pretty relationships to racism and the political pandering thereto. Nobody really has much business claiming a historical high moral ground here. It may well be true that enough time has passed that there are a lot of Americans who don't know or understand the story of the Dixiecrats, and that's too bad; but if so, it's not so much because of "revisionist" history (I learned the Dixiecrat history in high school) as because a lot of Americans don't know much about history, PERIOD. So Krugman et al are trying to educate/remind people about Republican racist pandering, and Bartlett et al want to say "But what about YOUR racist pandering?", which is fair enough and everybody ought to know all of it.

But what Bartlett maybe doesn't appreciate or glides over too easily is that for someone like me -- 38 years old, became politically aware in the Reagan era -- my entire political life has been marked by Republican coded slurs about "welfare queens" and "inner cities" that has played to very thinly veiled racism. So knowing about past Democratic racist pandering is valuable, but the lesson it teaches me is, you need to speak up against it, whichever party it comes from -- not try to minimize or rationalize it because somebody else did it too.

Posted by gen x white guy | December 25, 2007 2:13 PM

Re: J. Edgar Hoover called King a "1st Class sexual degenerate", one of the 5 worst he'd ever seen.

Pun intended, I suppose, but Mr "Dress up in women's undies" Hoover was a pot calling the kettle black. I find it incredible anyone would post, as serious content, any comment made by the old closet case about someone else's sex life.

Posted by Jonf | December 25, 2007 2:17 PM

EruditeHillbilly:

You make some terrific Republican points which, ironically, end-up proving our point. For example, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Republican support for it. Your point does not contradict what Matt and others are saying. The reason that Democratic support in 1964 was so low, was because at that time, the National Democratic party had a deal with the proverbial devil, by aligning or at least not openly refuting the racist Southern Dixiecrats. So of course more Republicans in 1964 voted in favor of the bill as a % of their potential vote – but if you take away the Dixiecrat vote, a MUCH higher percentage of non-Dixiecrat Dems voted in favor of the bill.

And – that bill spurred the re-alignment of the Dixiecrats with the Republicans which was finally solidified in the 1980’s. I agree with your point, that in 1964, there was a strong Democratic opposition to the bill, but this came from the very group which Republicans have now embraced and attract through the use of “code words”.

Posted by Brad | December 25, 2007 2:25 PM

It is sadly funny to see wingnuts try and whitewash their embrace of and reaped electoral fruits of their "southern strategy". It is quite a chore to drag the distant past forward in time to mitigate their recent and current sins with long past and reckoned with dem sins. And as for poetic justice their "southern strategy" that has fueled their equally dubious "conservative movement to permanent majority" is now coming full circle to bite them in the ass.

2006 was the beginning of blowback in the form of ever deepening blue for the NE, upper midwest and eventually the interior west. America is rejecting the politics of fear and bigotry championed by southern ideology. After a few more election cycles Republicans will be a deep south local minority party. What goes 'round comes 'round when you ride with the Devil.

Posted by nightjar | December 25, 2007 2:34 PM

"And – that bill spurred the re-alignment of the Dixiecrats with the Republicans which was finally solidified in the 1980’s"

My problem with this assertion, assuming you mean Dixiecrat = racist, is that neither you nor Matt or anyone else here has demonstrated that these same racists moved to the Republican party. My personal (admittedly anecdotal) observations are that they remained Dem. In fact, these are exactly the kind of folks used when the "yellow dog Democrat" phrase was coined. Remember, the Republican in the 60's were considered 'nigra lovers' by the racist Southern Dems at that time.

Initial claims on this thread were that after the Dems noble standup against segregation, that after that point, the racists stampeded to the Repubs. Brad backpeddles on this timeline considerably, putting the transition for the racists to move to the Repub party in the 80's, 15 - 20 years after the voting rights act!

If you want to make an argument, please try to get your facts and your timelines consistent.

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 25, 2007 2:49 PM

The Emerging Republican Majority (1969) by now-apostate Kevin Phillips documents the reason why there was an emerging Republican majority in the late 60s. May want to check that out, Hillbilly.

Posted by calipygian | December 25, 2007 3:01 PM

"Republicans in 1964 voted in significantly higher margins than Dems for the passage of the Civil Rights act, and they voted in larger majorities than Dems for the voting rights act in 1965 the next year."
Ah, yes, the margins game. It's easy to rack up percentages when your numbers are so much smaller. Here are the numbers:

* Democratic Party: 153-96 (64%-39%)
* Republican Party: 138-34 (80%-20%)

The Senate version:

* Democratic Party: 46-22 (68%-32%)
* Republican Party: 27-6 (82%-18%)

Note, please, that the Democrats provided 46 votes of the 60 needed for passage. The Republicans only had 33 seats.

So yes, thanks to the moderate Northern Republicans for their votes, but the Democrats weren't too shabby either, and all the Southern Democrats Subsequently went Republican.

I also notice you made no mention of *why* the 1964 Voting Rights Act and 1965 Civil Rights Act were even coming up for a vote--because they were strongly supported by a Democratic President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who stood up in a national address to Congress and said "WE shall overcome."

(And yes, LBJ had a somewhat checkered past, but I'm not interested in discussing it unless you've read Robert Caro's "Master of the Senate," which documents that, although LBJ was not a saint, *he* was the guy who convinced Southern Democrats to support a civil rights bill in 1957. Weak as all get out, but he got it through.

And--oh yeah--EH or other Repubs--if you're still around--does the name Hubert Humphrey ring a bill? Back when he was mayor of Minneapolis, he delivered a *ringing* speech at the 1948 Presidential convention in favor of integration, a speech that helped re-deliver the Presidency to Harry Truman (who, by the way, integrated the armed forces).
Do you by any chance have any stirring pro-integration, or pro-civil rights speeches to point at in any of *your* Presidential conventions? No? Didn't think so.

By the way, EruditeHillbilly, got any response to your most important strategist's (Lee Atwater) quote upthread? The one with all the racial slurs in it? more to the point, can you point to ANY Republicans who denounced him or called for him to be fired? No? Curious that. This is of course in the 80s. The 1980s.

"the south didn't swing majority Republican in Presidential elections until 1972 (after Wallace)."
Ya know, it's funny you should mention that one. There's a great book by Richard Reeves that documents how Richard Nixon was sending a whole lot of cash to George Wallace's brother to get Wallace's endorsement in 1972--so he could get those Southern racist votes. (The plane never made it there, but Nixon got 'em anyway.)

Your party wins elections by pandering to racists. (Final question: if the Republican party has no problems with race, what was Ken Mehlman apologizing for in his 2004 speech at the NAACP?)

Posted by Greg M. | December 25, 2007 3:13 PM

ehillbilly

"yellow dog democrat" was first termed in the late 19th century in my home state of Kentucky. It's use faded out by the 50's but the basic premise remained that southerners were hard core democrat voters. It's the whole point of the argument. This religious voting for democrats by southern democrats[SD} began ending after the '65 CRA was signed. Many of the southern segregationist SD began switching to repub registration and voting repub [ with great encouragement from national repub leaders]. But most remained "legacy dems" in name only and began voting repub in national elections and eventually statewide elections. The few dem dixiecrat lawmakers who stuck around with some loyalty to dems eventually lost their minds, such as Zell "RWNJ" Miller. Even today there is a dwindling number "legacy dems" who would vote for a yellow dog rather than a democrat. I guess they'd be Red Dog something or other.

Posted by nightjar | December 25, 2007 3:34 PM

Was exchanging comments with a Southern Elephant-man once and after the tired old "the Democratic Party left my grandfather before he left them" I answered: "Yeah, my parents stayed Democrats because they weren't threatened by the Civil Rights Act." Never heard another peep. I was alive when these shits ran loose during the '64 election warning about Lyndon. When we went to the polls in '66 they were all running as Republicans. Don't tell me the Party of Lincoln didn't crawl into bed with Klansmen. I saw them first-hand snuggling up to their good legs. Quite frankly right now there are not any Republicans as I knew them. Had some respect for the old guys that really were for freedom and kept a watchful eye on government intrusions into a citizen's privacy but there are NONE of those guys left - just a few lying sacks that call themselves libertarian when what they really want is to pay no taxes. Jesse looked into Governor Wallace's heart and saw that he had changed. Republicans have no hearts and will never change. They must be eradicated. No need for pogroms however when the truth is to Republicans as bug-spray is to cockroaches. Just give 'em hell every chance you get and we'll (meaning everyday human people) will triumph.

Posted by Terrier | December 25, 2007 3:35 PM

Only a moron would accept the following logic: all Southerners are racists and all Southerners are Republicans, therefore all Republicans are racists. Yet many of those who write on this subject implicitly make exactly this connection.

And only a political whore would toss out that straw man, perhaps in a nod to the place of The Wizard of Oz on the schedules.

Last time I checked, the GOP still had voter suppression of minority districts as part of its election playbook. But hey, there's the grave of William Fulbright for you to dance on in, just to see if it distracts us.

A hack writes flack. Quel surprise.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 25, 2007 3:44 PM

Many of the southern segregationist SD began switching to repub registration and voting repub [ with great encouragement from national repub leaders].

Citation? Evidence? Can you leftists provide anything to back of this assertion which is accepted without question in leftist circles?

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 25, 2007 4:18 PM

Weren't the largest race riots in the 70's in the Boston area?

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 25, 2007 4:22 PM

EruditeHillbilly,

In point of fact, Republicans in 1964 voted in significantly higher margins than Dems for the passage of the Civil Rights act, and they voted in larger majorities than Dems for the voting rights act in 1965 the next year.

This would be a convincing argument if one examined the data only at the highest level. But, as they say, the devil is in the details and his Repub horns were showing even at this early date. You can see them if you break down the party vote by geographic region.

You are correct in stating that the congressional Repubs voted for civil rights in larger majorities than the Democrats. Here are the numbers:

The original House version:
• Democratic Party: 153-96 (64%-39%)
• Republican Party: 138-34 (80%-20%)
The Senate version:
• Democratic Party: 46-22 (68%-32%)
• Republican Party: 27-6 (82%-18%)
The Senate version, voted on by the House:
• Democratic Party: 153-91 (63%-37%)
• Republican Party: 136-35 (80%-20%)

However, if one considers that some of those Democratic votes were cast by the racists themselves (i.e. conservative southern racists), looking at the details by geographic region paints a different picture:

The original House version:
• Southern Democrats: 7-87 (7%-93%)
• Southern Republicans: 0-10 (0%-100%)
• Northern Democrats: 145-9 (94%-6%)
• Northern Republicans: 138-24 (85%-15%)
The Senate version:
• Southern Democrats: 1-20 (5%-95%) (only Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas voted in favor)
• Southern Republicans: 0-1 (0%-100%) (this was Senator John Tower of Texas)
• Northern Democrats: 45-1 (98%-2%) (only Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia opposed the measure)
• Northern Republicans: 27-5 (84%-16%) (Senators Bourke Hickenlooper of Iowa, Barry Goldwater of Arizona, Edwin L. Mechem of New Mexico, Milward L. Simpson of Wyoming, and Norris H. Cotton of New Hampshire opposed the measure)

As everyone can see, not a single southern Repub voted for civil rights. Furthermore, Northern Democrats voted in favor by a greater majority than did Northern Repubs. Kinda shoots down your whole argument doesn’t it.

Also, LBJ won the 1964 election by the largest popular margin at that time in the 20th century. Clearly the vast majority of Democrats were on board with the civil rights agenda.

* Numbers from wikipedia civil rights act of 1964.

Posted by Itchy Brother | December 25, 2007 4:22 PM

What happened after 1964 was that the Democratic Party of Kennedy and Roosevelt, which commanded some loyalty and was broadly pro-American and pro-strong defense, quickly degenerated into the party of anti-Americanism, rioting in Chicago, spitting on veterans, and surrendering to the Communists in Viet Nam.

You don't get to run a national disaster like McGovern in 1972 and then wonder why Southerners trended Republican. McGovern didn't exactly carry that many states in New England, either.

I know it's important to your pathetic sense of self-worth to look down your noses at southerners. But you don't understand them, and they are not nearly as racist as you think they are. (If they were, liberals wouldn't have to fabricate so many racist incidents on college campuses.)

What the south really is is pro-America and pro-military. There is a strong tradition of military service throughout the south. When liberals and radical Democrats began showing up on television and news reports calling soldiers and marines "baby-killers" and spitting on veterans returning from Viet Nam, southerners rightly recognized those as lies, and turned away in revulsion.

Ronald Reagan grasped that, and called for Americans to take pride in our armed services again, and take pride in our role as a positive force for good and freedom in history.

It was that that southerners responded to. Some of them were racists, naturally. Most weren't.

But the left's failure to grasp that their anti-American, anti-military rhetoric coming from their radicals (and increasingly, their leadership in congress) is damaging is one of their chief obstacles to building a lasting majority and regaining the White House.

Of course, some bonehead is probably going to write in saying "but we AREN'T a force for good, Bushco is guilty of war crimes, and we're fighting a racist genocidal war and our troops ARE rapists and baby-killers. Thus proving my point.

If they don't do it here, the morons at Daily Kos or Democratic Underground will take care of it for you.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 25, 2007 4:32 PM

@Hillbilly -

Here is an interview with Richard Nixon's strategist and populizer of the term "The Southern Strategy", Republican apostate Kevin Phillips:

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."

Posted by calipygian | December 25, 2007 4:36 PM

What the south really is is pro-America and pro-military. There is a strong tradition of military service throughout the south.

I guess that love of America is what accounts for the flying of that symbol of slavery, rebellion and treason, The stars and bars, in many areas of the South. A symbol which I regard on a par with a swastika. Until the South repudiates the Civil War, the stars and bars and their "heritage", they cannot be counted as true patriotic Americans.

Posted by calipygian | December 25, 2007 4:40 PM

Wow. Not ten minutes elapses before someone writes in to prove my point. The "Stars and Bars" is on par with a swastika?

For bonus points, dollars to donuts this guy doesn't even know what the "stars and bars" is.

Feh. No wonder you dolts lose elections.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 25, 2007 4:50 PM

Are you defending the rebel flag, Jason? Are you really trying to tell me that heritage is the reason why people are flying this flag? Especially since the North Virginia army's battle flag wasn't flown across the south until the 1960's when the civil rights movement took off.
I guess all those black people who vote 90% Democratic don't know anything about the stars and bars, do we?
Oh, and you might want to look at the election results from 2006 cause Democrats did take back the house and senate, so I guess you're the dolt who can't read election results.

Posted by D. | December 25, 2007 4:57 PM

Oh, and you might want to look at the election results from 2006 cause Democrats did take back the house and senate, so I guess you're the dolt who can't read election results.

Well in all fairness to his point, with St. Harry and Pelosi in charge, it sure feels like the Republicans won in '06. Apparently even a Dem win on paper is a Repub win in truth.

Posted by handy | December 25, 2007 4:59 PM

Some fly it because of heritage. Others because it pisses off twits like cal. Still others because they watched Dukes of Hazzard as kids and they think it looks cool on a truck.

The more you look for the bigoted boogieman under every rock, the more you look like a bigot yourself.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 25, 2007 5:02 PM

Shorter Jason: it's offensive to associate the Confederate flag with racism, but it's completely appropriate to associate opposing pointless wars with hating your country.

Pass the smelling salts please.

Posted by Barbar | December 25, 2007 5:08 PM

The more you look for the bigoted boogieman under every rock, the more you look like a bigot yourself.

I've lived in the South, and bigoted boogiemen aren't living under rocks. In fact, throwing a rock, you're bound to hit one quite easily.

But I'll just trust you're right about the Confederate Flag, its symbolism largely innocent and even passe. I'm sure in a few years time even white hoods and nooses will meet a similar fate, and all the uppity folks offended by such ought to rightly be rebuked similarly for their sensitivity and paranoia.

Posted by handy | December 25, 2007 5:12 PM

stars and bars, confederate battle flag, the stainless flag, the confederate naval jack, whatever it is, flag of the army of northern virginia, not matter how you slice it, it's all treason and its all a hangin' offense.

Posted by calipygian | December 25, 2007 5:15 PM

Hypocritical Democrats. It's almost as bad as when you hear Angela Merkel blathering about human rights. Didn't she gas six million jews?

Posted by Typical Wingnut | December 25, 2007 5:33 PM

Each of you continue to prove my point:

"What happened after 1964 was that the Democratic Party of Kennedy and Roosevelt, which commanded some loyalty and was broadly pro-American and pro-strong defense, quickly degenerated into the party of anti-Americanism, rioting in Chicago, spitting on veterans, and surrendering to the Communists in Viet Nam."

Now, I have some southern friends who've taken bullets for this country. I don't question their patriotism nor their loyalty to this country. I hold it beyond question. Apparently Cal thinks he can gauge it by a decal on the back of a pickup truck. There's a word for that attitude: Bigotry.

You've equated the symbol of the Army of Northern Virginia with naziism. Now, most rational people rightly recognize that as stupid and absurd. I simply take it as just more evidence that you are too blinded by your own ideology to grasp politics in the south as it is, rather than as you so desperately want it to be.

Oh. You stated that the display of Confederate symbology is treason and a hangin' offense. It is neither. But if you want to go ahead and repeal the 1rst amendment, go ahead and make it part of the Democratic platform. It will fit right in with the rest of your PC activism on college campuses, and at least you can be honest about something. For once.

You don't get to sit around and equate Robert E. Lee with Hermann Goering, and then turn around and wonder why southerners don't want to vote northern liberals into office. No, it's not because southerners are racist. It's because arrogant Yankee liberals who are so blockheaded they can't draw a moral discernment between the display of a Confederate naval ensign and a swastika are dumbasses.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 25, 2007 5:34 PM

Jason you show a lot of nerve by trying to whitewash the racist history of the south and claim that the stars and bars doesn't represent a yearning for white supremacy.
We equate the stars and bars with the swastika because of the lynchings, bombings, discrimination --economically and politically -- on black people that southern state govt actively encouraged. The fear of having you and your family dragged out of your bed in the middle of the night and killed led a lot of people to flee to the north, (family members of mine included.)

Oh and your southern friends who served in the military, did any of them include black people, cause, you know, they served too and were discriminated against while fighting and dying for their country.
So, I'm sorry if liberals aren't fighting to get these racists votes by discriminating against other american citizens. If you really want to end the discussion of southern racism then southerners should fight to purge racism from acceptable political discourse.

Posted by D. | December 25, 2007 6:10 PM

I'm not whitewashing a thing, D. I'm just calling attention to the fact that the Democrats' lack of appeal in southern states has a lot more to do with their own history of spitting on veterans, badmouthing the military and surrendering to the North Vietnamese in the 70s and to the Mujahedeen today than it does with racism.

Why are you trying to whitewash the negative behavior of radical and mainstream democrats that continues to this day? I mean, when Dick Durbin is comparing Iraq war soldiers to Nazis and Khmer Rouge goons on the floor of congress, you're not going to win a lot of votes among the corps of cadets at Texas A&M.

The Democrats have limited appeal in the south. And you don't have to look to any history of racism to understand why.

The reason why is the unpatriotic behavior of Democrats from 1967-present.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 25, 2007 6:21 PM

Jason is just trying to restore civility to political discourse, you stupid anti-American hippy losers.

Posted by Barbar | December 25, 2007 6:23 PM

Excuse me, Jason, but I am a Yankee. I am a Democrat. And I have been active duty enlisted for 19 years, six months. I have served extended tours in three combat zones. Reading Dick Durbin's remarks, I find them, not only appropriate, but patriotic in the truest sense of the word: someone who sees the country they love committing a tremendous wrong and desiring to see their beloved country right the wrong. Unlike the region that committed a tremendous wrong and then committed a slightly worse wrong in order to keep comitting their immoral crime and then continues to celebrate all of that perversion as "heritage". I'd be very, very careful who you call "unpatriotic".

Posted by calipygian | December 25, 2007 6:34 PM

Here's a clue: I notice Democrats don't poll very well in Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska and Idaho, either. Obviously, Republicans can't win there by appealing to the antebellum glory days of the South. Yet Democrats routinely get their asses handed to them there.

Maybe the next time you compare American soldiers with Khmer Rouge thugs, or spit on a returning veteran - whether literally or rhetorically - or when you're pushing for a constitutional right to partial birth abortion, or badmouthing people who go to church as "poor, uneducated and easy to command," you can take a moment to reflect on why.

All these things cost you votes both in the south and west.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 25, 2007 6:34 PM

Calypigian at 4:40 pm:

"Until the South repudiates the Civil War, the stars and bars and their "heritage", they cannot be counted as true patriotic Americans."

Calypigian at 6:34 pm:

"I'd be very, very careful who you call "unpatriotic". "

ROFL!!!

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 25, 2007 6:40 PM

I don't see the contradiction

Posted by calipygian | December 25, 2007 6:44 PM

Actually Jason, Democrats do extremely well in the south among BLACK VOTERS. So when you say Dems don't do well in the south, you mean they don't do well with southern whites. Again, this is not rocket science why Black voters who were republicans 100 years ago have switched in mass to the Democratic party, the former party of the KKK. It's because the GOP has welcomed those dixiecrats into their beloved hearts, as several people have shown with quotes from Atwater and Phillips who were GOP stalwarts.

Jason, your basic argument seems to be that it's ok to ignore racism in the GOP as long as they remain pro-military but there is no reason the GOP can't be anti-racism and pro-military unless they don't want to disavow racism.

Posted by D. | December 25, 2007 6:46 PM

Hey Jason, how did you like it when Tom DeLay refused to support Bill Clinton's war in the Balkans? The Republicans sure have paid for that bit of treason electorally, haven't they?

By the way, we lost 38,876 fewer casualties in that war than in one of our current fiascos.

http://www.majorityleader.gov/in_the_news/press_releases/index.cfm?pressReleaseID=76

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/8/17/144732/740

Posted by goethean | December 25, 2007 6:57 PM

“I rise today to state that no defense funds should be used for ground forces in Kosovo unless authorized by Congress.” Tom DeLay (R-TX) Floor Statement, 4/15/99

Posted by goethean | December 25, 2007 6:59 PM

Correct my casualty figure above to 28,661

http://icasualties.org/oif/

Posted by goethean | December 25, 2007 7:01 PM

Jason, your basic argument seems to be that it's ok to ignore racism in the GOP as long as they remain pro-military

Take a close look Matt Yglesias, these are your ideological brethren. You don't have to cherry pick to see that MOST on your side, certainly the overwhelming number of those leftists posting here, don't care about facts or logic.. when they have their talking points ripped to shreds as they have had here.

1. Demonstrably no "stampede" over to the Republicans in the South in general after the mid 1960's as was claimed

2. There are compelling arguments that those in the south that did switch over to Republicans did so as a result of the increased leftist radicalism and anti-military and anti-2nd amendments stance of the Dem party

3. Republicans supported the civil rights bills of 1957, 1960, 1964, and the voting rights act of 1965 in significantly higher percentages than Dems

4. Prior to that, Dems had a history of fillibustering anti-lynching legislation sponsored by the 'nigra loving' Republicans of that time

No, after losing the argument, leftists just change the subject and willfully mischaracterize the other side . Again, not cherry-picking. Most on your side are doing it here.

A cheer to Johnson, JFK, and Humphrey. But Republicans want to know what took you Dem racists so long to wake up?

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 25, 2007 7:24 PM

"Citation? Evidence? Can you leftists provide anything to back of this assertion which is accepted without question in leftist circles?

Posted by EruditeHillbilly"

For wingnuts living under a rock. From a horses mouth.

RNC Chief to Say It Was 'Wrong' to Exploit Racial Conflict for Votes - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR2005071302342.html

Posted by nightjar | December 25, 2007 7:30 PM

Tom Delay? The Balkans?

Did you have a red herring milkshake for breakfast or something?

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 25, 2007 7:40 PM

RNC Chief to Say It Was 'Wrong' to Exploit Racial Conflict for Votes

that's another lie. From your linked article:

"By the '70s and into the '80s and '90s, the Democratic Party solidified its gains in the African American community, and we Republicans did not effectively reach out," Mehlman says in his prepared text. "Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."

He said it was wrong not to "reach out" to black Americans, assuming that the black vote was a lost cause. Tell me, is it similarly "wrong" for Dems not to reach out to the Southern voters and trying to benefit politically from bigotry and polarization? Because Matt Y. approvingly linked to an article in which Dems said they were going to do just that.

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 25, 2007 7:41 PM

"Here's a clue: I notice Democrats don't poll very well in Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska and Idaho, either."

Care to guess the percentage of minority voters in those states? That'd be a "clue".

Jason, the point is not that everyone in the South is a racist, or that there are not other issues that drive the conservative base there. It's that the Republican Party deliberately courts a certain element in the South to expand and solidify its base.

Posted by Grover Gardner | December 25, 2007 7:42 PM

3. Republicans supported the civil rights bills of 1957, 1960, 1964, and the voting rights act of 1965 in significantly higher percentages than Dems

4. Prior to that, Dems had a history of fillibustering anti-lynching legislation sponsored by the 'nigra loving' Republicans of that time

Everybody knows this. That's because the racists were on the Dems' side then. Now they're on yours. Whether you find this something to be proud of or not is up to you.

Posted by goethean | December 25, 2007 7:42 PM

Care to guess the percentage of minority voters in those states? That'd be a "clue".

Yes, whites are inherently racist, right? What else could possibly be your point with that bigoted statement?

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 25, 2007 7:46 PM

"He said it was wrong not to 'reach out' to black Americans, assuming that the black vote was a lost cause."

No, that's NOT what he said. Let's review it again:

"Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or TRYING TO BENEFIT POLITICALLY FROM RACIAL POLARIZATION. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."

Posted by Grover Gardner | December 25, 2007 7:48 PM

"Yes, whites are inherently racist, right? What else could possibly be your point with that bigoted statement?"

Pointing out a lack of minority voters who tend to support the Democratic Party is not bigotry. OTOH, if you think there aren't racial divides to be exploited in those states, you're a fool.

Posted by Grover Gardner | December 25, 2007 7:54 PM

No, that's NOT what he said

I quoted him verbatim in context. Whenever someone like you twists words to change meaning when the full quote was provided.. you know that person is being dishonest as hell.

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 25, 2007 7:58 PM

Are you really wasted, hillbilly?

Cause if so, no foul, check back tomorrorw, and we'll try it over.

If you are really that damn dumb and thick, just get yourself a head protector and godspeed.

Posted by Ed Marshall | December 25, 2007 8:02 PM

Everybody knows this. That's because the racists were on the Dems' side then. Now they're on yours

Where has it been established, outside of the voices in your head, that those "Yellow Dog Democrats" did anything else besides continue to vote Dem after the mid to late 1960's?

Of course, you're making it up to justify a hateful baseless smear. Whether or not you're proud of that is up to you.

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 25, 2007 8:02 PM

Yes, you quoted him verbatim--and completely ignored what he said. Ken Mehlman, Keven Phillips, Lee Atwater--these and other Republicans are on record as stating that there was a deliberate GOP policy of of race-baiting and polarization. It wasn't about "not reaching out." The goal was to encourage racial divisiveness and fear as a way of solidifying that portion of their base.

Posted by Grover Gardner | December 25, 2007 8:05 PM

"Where has it been established, outside of the voices in your head, that those 'Yellow Dog Democrats' did anything else besides continue to vote Dem after the mid to late 1960's?"

Yellow Dog Dems didn't vote Democratic because they supported the Democrats. I think that's pretty well established.

Posted by Grover Gardner | December 25, 2007 8:12 PM

Where has it been established, outside of the voices in your head, that those "Yellow Dog Democrats" did anything else besides continue to vote Dem after the mid to late 1960's?

BECAUSE THERE WAS A VOTE AND THEY COUNTED THE THINGS!!!!

Posted by Ed Marshall | December 25, 2007 8:12 PM

these and other Republicans are on record as stating that there was a deliberate GOP policy of of race-baiting and polarization.

You're twisting words to change meaning. Again. "Race baiting" and class warfare, which Dems do as standard operating procedure, was NEVER mentioned in that Mehlmen quote. You're adding those words yourself to make "your side" look better.

Posted by EruditeHillibilly | December 25, 2007 8:12 PM

"He said it was wrong not to "reach out" to black Americans, assuming that the black vote was a lost cause. Tell me, is it similarly "wrong" for Dems not to reach out to the Southern voters and trying to benefit politically from bigotry and polarization? Because Matt Y. approvingly linked to an article in which Dems said they were going to do just that"

I got to hand it to you Ehillbilly. The above is about the most exquisite example of pure wingnuttia I've ever read. You transform Mehlman's confession of repub race baiting for votes and turn it into an affirmation of wingnut good will that wipes clean the slate of Mehlman's broader point. Talk about making lemonade out of lemons.

And then to top it off, you conclude dems are the real race baiters for offering blacks a seat in a party that makes an honest effort at giving them a voice.

Absoltely priceless.

Posted by nightjar | December 25, 2007 8:15 PM

"'Race baiting' and class warfare, which Dems do as standard operating procedure, was NEVER mentioned in that Mehlmen quote."

What would you call "trying to benefit politically from racial polarization" anything except exactly what it is--race baiting? And who said anything about "class warfare"? You're flailing around here.

Posted by Grover Gardner | December 25, 2007 8:17 PM

Yellow Dog Dems didn't vote Democratic because they supported the Democrats. I think that's pretty well established.

They voted Dem because in their twisted minds, the Republicans were the party of Lincoln, and Lincoln freed the slaves.. and besides that, the YDogs considered the Repubs to have too many 'nigra lovers' to earn their vote

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 25, 2007 8:19 PM

Ah, Jason and EHill are Christmas trolls, forced to man the trolling desk while the full-timers take the day off. They don't even get holiday pay, because the GOP doesn't believe in that sort of thing.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 25, 2007 8:21 PM

Do EHill and others really imagine that there is more than one American party (except the Constitution party et al.) in which racists feel comfortable and welcome? I don't think many racists seriously consider supporting the Democratic party. (And please don't give me Al Sharpton; a sometimes race-baiting activist with no constituency is not equivalent to the direct and systematic racism of Republican *elected officials*, nor do intemperate comments by the relatively powerless equal the voter suppression, segregation and, you know, racist policy enacted by Republicans)

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 25, 2007 9:13 PM

You know maybe we were always a stupid people, and I'm back-forecasting a golden age of enlightenment, but I don't think we were always this stupid.

Hillbilly's drivel is so ahistoric (and bleedingly obviously so) that it can only be pushed if one assumes that people are incredibly ignorant and incapable of using logic. I swear we are destroying ourselves.

This is his thesis (and it took me a minute to open the snake jaws of grasping stupidity to understand this). The South was full of racist, nasty, democrats. Then came the civil rights movement. These creatures would never vote for the party of Lincoln, they are all still democrats. Someone (this doesn't make any sense, I have no idea who this could be) suddenly became the majority in Arkansas and started voting republican because (?). Completely tangently, these republicans that no racists were voting for were strong supporters of segregation on a principled state's right stance (the exact same position the old dixiecrats had).

Posted by Ed Marshall | December 25, 2007 9:32 PM

Someone (this doesn't make any sense, I have no idea who this could be) suddenly became the majority in Arkansas and started voting republican because (?).

Or the alternative, more truthful interpretation of what I wrote - First, racists at that time didn't add up to nearly as big a voting block as Dems feared. Second, about that same time civil rights legislation was being enacted in the mid-60's, large segments of the Dem party began to embrace the anti-military movement along with other more leftist radical ideologies. The Dems moved hard toward the Jane Fonda wing of the ideological spectrum, and as a result * gasp * Southerners, and most other Americans judging by 1968 and 1972 landslide Repub presidential victories, were turned off by this newfound Dem liberalism and weakneed approach toward national defense. Yet simpletons on this thread attribute the move away from the Dem party to be totally a result of white racism (Repubs being most guilty of course). Clueless as ever

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 25, 2007 10:33 PM

I'm just calling attention to the fact that the Democrats' lack of appeal in southern states has a lot more to do with their own history of spitting on veterans, badmouthing the military and surrendering to the North Vietnamese in the 70s and to the Mujahedeen today than it does with racism. - Jason of Stone Neighborhood

Admittedly, Republicans' greater eagerness, since Goldwater and Nixon, to slaughter brown-skinned people in the Far East and Mideast, as well as oppressing them at home, has won them votes in the south.

Posted by brooksfoe | December 25, 2007 10:35 PM

Oh yeah, and also the fact that there was no "sudden" change in Southern voting patterns toward the Republican party after Dems and Repubs voted for the 64 Civil rights act. This has been asserted by Matt Y and repeated as they were told to think by virtually all of his knuckle dragging groupies posting here. But it's simply not true.

The south didn't begin to vote Republican in national elections until 72, and the southern statehouse and governships stayed mostly Democrat until the mid-90's or later. But facts don't matter to the left, because as long as they "feel" something is true, that's all that counts

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 25, 2007 10:40 PM

Admittedly, Republicans' greater eagerness, since Goldwater and Nixon, to slaughter brown-skinned people in the Far East and Mideast, as well as oppressing them at home, has won them votes in the south.

I think that post encapsulates leftist "thought" about the matter as succinctly as we could hope to see. No doubt you don't see yourselves as the hateful bigots that you truly are.. oh no, you see yourselves through funhouse mirror lenses as enlightened truth-tellers speaking truth to power.

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 25, 2007 10:49 PM

Just pathetic how the right-wingers here are trying to ignore the facts. Who do they think they're fooling?

The south didn't begin to vote Republican in national elections until 72

In 68, all the south except for Texas voted Republican or American Independent (Wallace, the pro-segregation candidate).

Posted by fp | December 25, 2007 11:23 PM

Jason said:
"I notice Democrats don't poll very well in Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska and Idaho, either. "

I notice you skipped Utah, home of the Mormon church which theologically equated being black with being cast aside by god.

As to Montana, they have a democratically controlled legislature, a democrat governor, 2 democrats as senators, and a republican congressman.

The mountain states are a totally different situation than the former southern states. The only issue that has damaged democrats in the mountain states has been gun control, and that is pretty much an issue that the national party has abandoned.

The fact is that the republican party has actively been running as against minorities for some time now, and as a result has picked up the racist vote. The code words about "welfare queens", "special rights", and the like are merely how they communicate it without being overtly racist.

The democrats lost in 73 due to the dirty tricks campaign of nixon, his pandering to the southern racists regarding state's rights, and the refusal of the democrats to seat a bloc of delegates at the convention in Chicago. The resulting furor and riots in the streets of chicago (caused by Daly's police pounding heads) pretty much finished any chance a genuine decorated combat veteran was going to be elected to the white house.

Finally, it was good old Richard Nixon who surrendered to the North vietnamese, if you hadn't remembered. He had full control over the military from 1968 until he left office in disgrace in 1973. Congress did not mandate he leave. This whole "stab in the back" theory of why we were unsuccessful in vietnam is already cropping up in explaining the debacle in Iraq.
Just remember the germans made the same claim in 1920 to explain their losses in ww1.

Posted by Luther t. Garcia | December 25, 2007 11:33 PM

EruditeHillbilly needs to be a hell of a lot more erudite. In 1956, the South was still far more Democratic than the rest of the country. In 1960, it split about evenly between JFK and Nixon, like the rest of the country -- the shift being due to Southern revulsion at Kennedy's Catholicism. In 1964 -- before Vietnam, and in direct response to the fact that the Dems finally came out as a pro-civil rights party while the GOP under Goldwater firmly came out AGAINST it for the first time -- the Nonsouth voted 64% for LBJ, while the South voted only 52% for him. (That's when, and why, Thurmond and Helms explicity said they switched, E.H. Remember? That's also why Goldwater won by landslide margins in the core Deep South, while running much weaker in the border Southern states. He got an incredible 87% in Mississippi, and I assure you that it wasn't because of Vietnam War demonstrators.)

1968, with Wallace, produced a 3-way split in the South; but Humphrey got only 31%, and Nixon would have beaten him 60-40 or more in the South in a 2-way race. (And 1968 was NOT a "nationwide Republican landslide"; it was one of the closest races in US history, with Humphrey actually edging Nixon outside the South. Texas did surprise everyone by going for Humphrey -- but it did so only 41-40, and only because Wallace bled most of his 19% off Nixon's statewide vote.) McGovern -- like LBJ -- ran about 12 points weaker in the South than in the Nonsouth. Since then, the gap has been about the same between Southern and Nonsouthern whites as it was in 1964.

As for the delayed effect in the GOP takeover of Congress: that was because -- and only because -- of the fact that Democratic lawmakers played up their huge amount of seniority and the goodies it could provide for their districts, which is why most Southern Democratic members of Congress got replaced by Republicans when -- and only when -- they finally retired (which, by the way, also happened in disproportionate amounts in 1994, contributing to the Democrats' national woes in that election).

Yes, Virginia; whether you like it or not, white racism played a massive role in the post-1964 swing toward the GOP, and still accounts for part of it. (Consider the crazy 2002 fight over Georgia's Confederate flag.) There were other factors mixed in, of course -- I suspect that Carter's perceived incompetence and the economic collapse that occurred during his term played a bigger role in the nation as a whole than any revulsion toward Vietnam War opponents. And nowadays fundamentalism plays a massive role in the South's rejection of Democrats; the region has to a considerable degree replaced racial bigotry with religious bigotry.

Posted by BruceMoomaw | December 25, 2007 11:34 PM

Wow. That was pretty convincing.

Presumably one should also note that blacks gave Eisenhower 30% of their vote; the black vote didn't become overwhelmingly Democratic until Kennedy and LBJ. So the percentage of southern whites who were voting GOP must have shifted even more sharply than the overall percentage of southerners, since southern blacks were shifting more Democratic.

And also, presumably, a lot more blacks were voting in the South after the Voting Rights Act was passed in '65. So again, southern whites must have been shifting Republican even more than the overall vote percentages show.

Posted by brooksfoe | December 26, 2007 12:14 AM

Hillbilly, you're just bizarrely resistant to facts. Democrats won 10 out of 15 Southern states in the 64 Presidential election, 4 out of 15 in 68 (with many going to the segregationist Wallace), and 0 out of 15 in 72. Since then, Democrats have won at most only a small minority of Southern states in any Presidential election.

With that said, the Republican appeal to racism is far less poisonous than the Dixiecrat segregationists were. The Republicans have participated, even if reluctantly, in the general national progress away from acceptable racism.

The problem with the Repubs now is more red-baiting than racism. They aren't a small government party, they're a pro-war, subsidy for the rich party.

Posted by mq | December 26, 2007 12:18 AM

The south didn't begin to vote Republican in national elections until 72

I get it -- you're playing games by ignoring the Wallace candidacy in 68. As you well know, that was the way station for southern whites migrating to the Republican party.

Posted by mq | December 26, 2007 12:22 AM

Luther,

Democrats can win elections in the Western states, so long as they bear little resemblance to the current Democrat "leadership." Legislators in Montana and Utah don't run as liberals.

If Democrats are polling so well in Utah, then when why did Bush carry the state in 2004, 71%-29%? When was the last time a Democrat presidential nominee carried the state? I'll make it easy: 1964. But only because of the JFK sympathy vote (suckers!!!!!). Utah went for Nixon in 1960, and strongly for Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. Libs have NEVER polled well in Utah. But you can run as a Democrat on local issues and do ok. You always could. So long as you didn't badmouth the military.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 26, 2007 12:38 AM

Me at 4:32 pm:

"But the left's failure to grasp that their anti-American, anti-military rhetoric coming from their radicals (and increasingly, their leadership in congress) is damaging is one of their chief obstacles to building a lasting majority and regaining the White House.

Of course, some bonehead is probably going to write in saying "but we AREN'T a force for good, Bushco is guilty of war crimes, and we're fighting a racist genocidal war and our troops ARE rapists and baby-killers. Thus proving my point."

brooksfoe at 10:35pm:

"Admittedly, Republicans' greater eagerness, since Goldwater and Nixon, to slaughter brown-skinned people in the Far East and Mideast, as well as oppressing them at home, has won them votes in the south."

ROFL!!!

Right on schedule.

You morons are too predictable.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 26, 2007 12:44 AM

Bruce Bartlett would have us believe he's never heard of the "Southern Strategy", or Willie Horton, or the deliberate disenfranchisement of minorities in Florida in 2000 by Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, or the "McCain has a black baby" push-poll the Bush campaign pulled in South Carolina in 2000.

I really don't care for having my intelligence insulted in such a condescending manner.

Furthermore, Bruce Bartlett is the coward who knew Bush was a disaster for the country in 2004, yet worked to get him elected and then after the election, cowardly wrote a "Wow, Bush is not very good for the US but I kept my mouth shut because I put party before country" book in order to jump on the anti-Bush bandwagon.

Every single fucking time I feel like being civil towards Republicans, I read shit like this. They don't deserve civility; the party needs to be either humbled at the polls for the next 20 to 30 years until sane, patriotic folks take it back, or else permanently destroyed.

Fuck you, Bruce Bartlett, you cowardly fucking asshole. We are not as stupid and gullible as your voters are.

Posted by r€nato | December 26, 2007 1:13 AM

I don't mind the attacks on Bartlett's thesis or its relevance to anything going on today. But I don't like the attacks on his integrity. Bruce Bartlett has deliberately gotten himself expelled from the Republican welfare system. That, folks, takes moral courage--a desire to do the right thing without regard to the consequences.

The time for courage was in 2004 when Bartlett felt that Bush was a disaster for both the country and for conservatism.

Instead Bartlett chose to help elect Bush.

He's a coward. Fuck him with the proverbial rusty chainsaw.

Posted by r€nato | December 26, 2007 1:19 AM

The reality is that in the 1960's the Democrats decided that they could do without the southern racist vote. Since the 1970's the Republicans have relied on the racist vote to win. As we move into the modern era it becomes obvious that the racist vote is no longer enough to keep the Republicans above water. 911 gave the Republicans a what looked like a respite but ultimately what is just more rope.

Posted by gibbon1 | December 26, 2007 1:51 AM

This discussion/argument makes no sense. Is anyone, at all, anywhere, seriously arguing Dems are the wonderous non-racist American party? At the same time, can anyone look at mainline GOP views on immigration and the "war on terror" and not see a fear of racial difference?

The Dems aren't perfect, but at (the very) least they don't make underhanded race fearmongering the CORE of their election strategy. It's not much, but in the chose between two parties, one definitely looks better than the other.

Posted by bwunderlick | December 26, 2007 2:38 AM

Can the righties stop bringing up the fake "spitting in returning soldiers faces" B.S. that always comes up? Do any of you who spout that nonsense actually believe it happened??

It's fiction. When soldiers returned home from Vietnam (as in other wars or deployments), they came home via a military base. So now we are to assume that military bases allowed a bunch of "Anti-American, Anti-Military hippies" on to their bases??? Just any American can stroll onto a military base and do whatever they damn well please, right? Whatever.

Cut the crap. At least get some new talking points... most of these are moldy.

I had to convince my Repub uncle the other day that the top welfare receivers in America today are single WHITE women and not the black, inner-city "welfare queens" he had come to assume were 'sponging' off American taxpayers' money. It's hard for some to break the falsehoods in their own brain!

He also had no response to my argument concerning Corporate Welfare and how much money we throw THAT direction rather than in the PEOPLE'S direction. He has a small business that was put out by a larger corporation too, so you would figure he'd key into something there. It's hard to break...

Posted by JLaw87 | December 26, 2007 4:47 AM

While Jason Van Steenwyk has been known to suck balls when he is not busy sodomizing straw men, he has always done so in a very patriotic and totally manly way.

Posted by Gforce | December 26, 2007 5:28 AM

To a Martian political reporter watching the Democratic and Republican debates it would be self evident before the candidates opened their mouths that one party was satisfied with representing voters of only one party and sex, and that one party aspired to represent voters of various colors and sexes.

That Mr. Bartlett seems unaware of this fact does not speak well for his powers of observation.

Posted by Michael Thomas | December 26, 2007 7:25 AM

Bruce Bartlett has deliberately gotten himself expelled from the Republican welfare system. That, folks, takes moral courage--a desire to do the right thing without regard to the consequences.

In which case, this book is his attempt to crawl back in. Which makes him an even bigger whore.

It is, of course, an implicitly racist book, because its underlying premise is that minority voters are just plain dumb to support the Democrats.

Like I said, it's another book-length troll. Perhaps it didn't take as long to write as the Doughpus Magnum, but it's of that ilk.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 26, 2007 9:53 AM

Jason Van Steenwyk: spitting on veterans

Ah, nostalgia! Ha ha, Jason, you're so cute.

Posted by W. Kiernan | December 26, 2007 10:20 AM

Wow. Are these rightwankers in serious denial or what? How can anyone deny that Republicans use racism in their election strategy?

Spin, spin, spin.

(we used to call that lying)

Posted by davis13 | December 26, 2007 11:09 AM

How can anyone deny that the unpatriotic actions and rhetoric of the radical Democrats and their badmouthing of churchgoers and veterans costs them votes in the south and west?

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 26, 2007 11:14 AM

Ok, opposing to policy, like war, is not the same as bad-mouthing veterans. The spitting-on-veterans canard was, as Shafer has shown at Slate, a right-wing myth. Right wingers think that the fact that America is committing arms abroad, and Americans are serving, means that it is unpatriotic to feel that that is the wrong thing to do. That is absurd; I don't remember DeLay being called unpatriotic or anti-soldier for refusing to support military action in the former Yugoslavia.

Jason, why is it that supporting policies you like is patriotic, having another view is unpatriotic? (Especially confusing since the liberal views are so much more in line with America's Enlightenment founding and traditions.)

(Get ready for a whole lot of historical revisionism and charges of "liberal bias.")

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 11:55 AM

oops: opposition to policy.

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 12:01 PM

You are correct: Policy opposition is not the same as bad-mouthing troops and veterans. Why are you trying to conflate the two? I'm speaking specifically of the latter and its deleterious effect on Democratic appeal in the south and west.

Oh, and Shafer's article in Slate, based on Lembke's work was crap, and Shafer got his ass handed to him. (I have a couple of tries at posting the exact links, which are being held for approval for some reason), I'll wait on Yglesias to approve them and there will be a number of links proving that it happened. In the process, Lembke is exposed as a hack who can't even use basic research tools. Shafer is even less credible than that.

And your using Delay as an example is just stupid. Delay opposed action in Yugoslavia for a variety of reasons, not least of which was because it served no critical national security interest to do so. The point, however, is that unlike Dick Durbin, he did so without comparing U.S. soldiers to Khmer Rouge, and unlike John Kerry, he didn't accuse US soldiers of "terrorizing women and children in the dead of night."

Dick cost democrat votes in the south and west with his inane ranting. John Kerry didn't carry a single southern state. Hell, the Democrats chose to run the ONE Viet Nam veteran in the whole frigging country who alienates Viet Nam veterans.

Nice one.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 26, 2007 12:03 PM

Jason--bashing of churchgoers? I'd love an example of that. I seem to remember the relatively un-churched Reagan trouncing the very churchy Carter, who wasn't going around bashing his co-religionists. I don't think Reagan marshalled the pro-churchgoer sentiment against Carter. I do wonder what he was getting at with "young bucks" and "welfare queens" and Philadelphia, Miss., though. Couldn't have been actively courting racist sentiment, right?

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 12:04 PM

Jesusland.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 26, 2007 12:10 PM

"How can anyone deny that the unpatriotic actions and rhetoric of the radical Democrats and their badmouthing of churchgoers and veterans costs them votes in the south and west?"

I can deny it. And will. You Republicans are real good at pulling fast ones on people. "Bait and switch" should be your motto.

I see what you are. I think rightwanker apologists like you have redefined everything.

Like truth. Like patriotism. Honor. Human rights. Torture. Habeas corpus. Basically everything that makes our country special and the "shining city on the hill". But you lie about that too.

Using religion to mindfuck the faith-based in our population for votes is no virtue and certainly nothing new. Republicans are real good at it but that doesn't mean they are right in doing so. You know, Bush 41 fired Rove because he knew what would happen if the party embraced the culture war strategy. It would tear us apart. But that's the 51% election strategy. Mission accomplished.

"You hate the troops!" is about as ridiculous a claim as has ever been spewed from a rightwankers mouth. Sacrificing our military and damned near breaking it for political and financial ambitions isn't "supporting the troops". You use them as props for elections. That's it. You question the patriotism of any veteran who isn't a Republican. Veterans from infantry to generals have been speaking out AGAINST Republican policies and it drives you crazy. THEY are the patriots. You, who would sacrifice the Constitution in your quest for absolute political domination, are the domestic enemy we were warned about.

I have voted Republican many times in the past, including Bob Michael, Ray LaHood, Governor Ryan, Mayor Carver, ect, ect. Unless there is a fundamental change in the party, and I don't think that'll happen, I'll never vote Republican again.

Accountability and personal responsibility were cornerstones of the Contract for America. That was sheit-canned as soon as they were elected. It was all a phony Trojan horse so they could cash in, get away with countless felonies and get their permanent majority.

Finally, Republicans using 9/11 as a political tool, a weapon, is the lowest thing I have ever seen in my entire life. Standing on the bodies of the victims, even after Bush saying no one should use 9/11 for political purposes, was/is just disgusting. I will never, ever forget that. I hope you CSers crash and burn in the next elections as a warning to the generations that follow that they shouldn't respect or copy your disgusting, divisive techniques.

You are a pack of liars, profiteers and opportunists.

Posted by davis13 | December 26, 2007 12:37 PM

Shorter Jason: IOKIYAR

Posted by handy | December 26, 2007 12:49 PM

How can anyone deny that the unpatriotic actions and rhetoric of the radical Democrats and their badmouthing of churchgoers and veterans costs them votes in the south and west?

Like this: "you're full of shit."

Easy, no?

Now deny that you're full of shit. You have nothing but tired wingnut talking points. And you're a sad little holiday troll, here only to remind us that while Al and the other regular trolls are hacks, they're not low-rent hacks.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 26, 2007 12:58 PM

This doesn't seem to be an issue on which it's possible to change people's minds, but hope springs eternal.

Clearly (to me, at least) the Civil Rights Act put the racist vote up for grabs. That is the real import of the Wallace candidacy: that the Democrats had broken with their corrupt bargain. The Republicans took advantage of the available "racism dividend", and this was the basis of Nixon's southern strategy. Now, I view this as amoral opportunism on the part of the party rather than out and out racism, but that doesn't make it any less despicable.

Moving into the laste 70s and early 80s, however, as hillbilly and others have noted, it becomes a more complex mix of factors. The crime wave of the 70s, the (mostly wrong) perception of the Democrats as feckless on defense issues, and a general disilusionment with the Democratic Party's Great Society programs does much more to explain Reagan's election than any coded appeals to racism.

And despite its nastiness, there was a serious and correct policy argument behind the whole "welfare queens" schtick. When Bill Clinton passed welfare reform, it did more to improve the situation of poor children, and of poor communities, than any other policy in the past quarter century.

It would be dishonest to pretend that Republicans haven't ever used racism for electoral gain. But their electoral success since the late 70s can be traced to the failure of several (well-meaning but unsuccessful) Democratic initiatives (public housing and crime control being the most glaring) as well as the success of the less nice but more effective Republican alternatives (welfare reform, harsher law enforcement). Racism, at least in recent decades has been an incidental dirty trick, or even a liability, not a driver of Republican success.

Posted by heedless | December 26, 2007 1:16 PM

Heeless says;

"Racism, at least in recent decades has been an incidental dirty trick, or even a liability, not a driver of Republican success."

Yes, there heedless, you've put your finger on the wingnut button of truth. 200 years of slavery plus 100 years of brutal segregation was all just an "incidental dirty trick" and innocent repubs just picked them up off the ash heap of history for a little dirty political tricksterism of their own.
No liability here, just good ole American opportunism.

You get today's award for slippery wingnuttery heedless.

Posted by nightjar | December 26, 2007 2:06 PM

nightjar, you're right. The problem is that most of these right-wingers don't really understand how racism works in America. Dukakis was leading by 14 points after the 88 convention. Remember the Willie Horton ad? Many right-wingers don't think that was racist, because Dukakis presided over a furlough system, a prisoner was released, he killed again. But of course the ad *also* said "the Duke lets scary black people kill your white women."

Juries are a great example. No jury member goes around in klan robes, the vast majority would never consider themselves racist. But they find themselves more angered when a black person kills a whilte person than vice versa, and more likely to apply the death penalty. That's the racism that the Republicans owe their success to. They blatantly paint the Democratic party as the party of "others", whereas they are the party of "real Americans." What do those real Americans look like? In general, pretty pale.

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 2:14 PM

"And your using Delay as an example is just stupid. Delay opposed action in Yugoslavia for a variety of reasons, not least of which was because it served no critical national security interest to do so. The point, however, is that unlike Dick Durbin, he did so without comparing U.S. soldiers to Khmer Rouge, and unlike John Kerry, he didn't accuse US soldiers of "terrorizing women and children in the dead of night"

More wingnut bullshit. Durbin was comparing Gitmo and other BUSH torture chambers [not US soldiers} to some of histories torturers. The only difference being in degrees of brutality. It is people like you Jason, who run to hide behind the troops when your exposed for the cretins you are.

And Kerry's remark was to illuminate the policy of frequent door to door searches as hurting the cause of winning the hearts and minds of average Iraqi's.

For you to claim Durbin or Kerry were blaming the troops in their comments is a black lie, and you know it.

American is onto yours and your party's crap and will speak their collective minds with next years election.

Posted by nightjar | December 26, 2007 2:25 PM

davis13:

Number of 12:37 pm

Number of paragraphs: 10.

Number of wild accusations: I don't bother counting.

Number of germaine facts: Zero.

But actually - unwittingly, - you prove my point by badmouthing churchgoers.

To wit: "Using religion to mindfuck the faith-based in our population for votes is no virtue and certainly nothing new."

The faith-based are not mind-fucked. At least, no more so than the democrat-party faithful. It tells me a lot about you that you think they are, however.

As for the rest of you, well, when all you have are ad hominems and insults, I guess your argument collapses.

I thought Willie Horton was absolutely a legitimate issue. Dukakis messed up, big time. Fair game. Al Gore thought so, too. He's the one who raised the Willie Horton issue first. It wasn't the Bush campaign.

I guess Al Gore is a racist in your world?

Anyway, are you done with your temper tantrum?

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 26, 2007 3:14 PM

Jesus, I really expect such stupidity from Chris Ford, but I actually thought that Bruce Bartlett was reasonably intelligent. His responses in the comments sections on MY's posts have been the sort of thing I'd expect in the comments of Confederate Yankee or Dan Riehl's blog.

Posted by Gus | December 26, 2007 3:29 PM

I suspect that if I were Bruce Bartlett and watched my party piss away all the gains it made with Latino voters and, to a much lesser degree, blacks, I would feel the need to come up with some way of obscuring the issue and try to distract everyone from the fact that Republicans really have a problem with race.

And this book would be a good, disingenuous start.

Being an essentially honest person, I wouldn't be able to do it, but Bartlett can make a Nietzscheistic journey "beyond good and evil" and take on the task.

Bruce, Matt knows your book is bullshit, I know it's bullshit, and you know it's bullshit. What we also know is that if you keep repeating that bullshit and get a lot of your dishonest right-wing friends to repeat that same bullshit, it will slowly gain credibility-- unless we take every opportunity to expose you for the bullshitting, lying opportunist that you are.

Posted by Tyro | December 26, 2007 3:38 PM

Willie Horton---first, raising the issue isn't racist. Raising the issue in a manner designed to play to people's worse instincts and stoke their worst fears is. So no, Gore was not a racist. Bush and Atwater shamelessly appealed to racist sentiment, though.

Secondly, not that I want to fight a 10-year-old battle, but Dukakis didn't mess up. He didn't wake up one day and decide to free Horton. He was governor at a time when MA had a furlough programme. That's it. As opposed to, say, Huckabee, who gullibly believed a conversion story and personally applied pressure to get a racist freed, who then struck again.

As for laughing at churchgoers, you seem to be willfully misrepresenting a commenter's words. He didn't say the religious are mind-fucked (and certainly doesn't think Carter and other religious Democrats are mind fucked). He said that the Republicans USE, cynically employ, religion in order to mindfuck the faith based. Also, that poster, as far as I know, isn't a Democratic official, advertiser, pollster, campaigner, etc., so, to paraphrase, even if it were true that he called the religious "mind-fucked", it would be irrelevant, that is, it wouldn't prove your point.

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 4:16 PM

Good god. You radical rightwingers are all the same. Loyalty to the party above all.

Point out how you have redefined patriotism, honor, human rights, torture and even habeas corpus and you lie. What I said was the truth whether you acknowledge it or not.

[[["But actually - unwittingly, - you prove my point by badmouthing churchgoers.

To wit: "Using religion to mindfuck the faith-based in our population for votes is no virtue and certainly nothing new."

The faith-based are not mind-fucked. At least, no more so than the democrat-party faithful. It tells me a lot about you that you think they are, however."]]]

You know nothing. I was an evangelical for years in the early 80s before you zealots hijacked the movement. I have the greatest respect for the late Billy Graham but none for his piece of shit, war mongering, Muslim hating son Franklin. I KNOW what the movement used to be. About Christ. Now it's all about money, political power and which zealot preacher can breed the most hatred among the base for their political enemies. I know the type very well. My brother is one. For years his pastors have been fomenting hatred of everyone who doesn't fit into their "ideal" image of a "real" 'mercan. Homosexuals, Muslims, liberals, Mexicans, blacks, independent women, the French, lol, you name it. Now even libertarians like Ron Paul are targeted. Your party hates them all. Portrays most of them as less than human. Easier to target that way I suppose. The faith-based have most certainly been manipulated by the party. And religious manipulation is evil whether it's done by the radical Islamic clerics or James Dobson.

When you can talk even Christians into torturing, contrary to decades if not hundreds of years of hard earned lessons of basic human decency, that isn't a mindfuck and a half?

Rhetorical question.

No rightwinger seems to remember Reagan talking about the USSR, torture and human rights violations. Total amnesia. But I remember. And I remind you people of it all the time. Pisses you off and makes you lie.

By the way Jason, before y'all start screeching GODLESS LEEBRAL DEMONRAT!!!! I am not a liberal, a Democrat or anything even close to it. I am one of the moderates, the libertarian gun rights supporters, the people who hated what happened at Ruby Ridge and Waco. I am one of the fiscal conservative sane people you have driven away. Now I vote straight Democrat for the most part to counter what has been done to us, especially since 9/11. I hate what you've turned our country into under Bush's banner of fear and hatred and I'm not likely to ever forget it. What you've done is a crime and I hope you all pay the price.

And you are most definitely full of shit.

Posted by davis13 | December 26, 2007 4:23 PM

shorter davis13:

GODLESS LEEBRAL DEMONRAT!!1!!!!

Posted by Jason's sockpuppet | December 26, 2007 4:54 PM

Ahhh yes, GLDS.

Godless Leebral Demonrat Syndrome. lol.

Posted by davis13 | December 26, 2007 5:13 PM

Davis13, 4:23 pm

Number of paragraphs: 11.

Number of relevant facts: 0

Argument by invective is not argument.

By the way, for someone who calls himself a Christian, you sure spend a lot of energy looking down your nose at people and hating them.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 26, 2007 5:17 PM

By Jason Van Steenwyk at 5:17

Argument by invective is not argument.

No, I'd say Davis13 delivered a pretty thorough BEAT DOWN.

I'm thinking of inviting him to go hunting with me.

Posted by Richard Chainee | December 26, 2007 5:34 PM

Re: Willie Horton:

"Dukakis didn't mess up. He didn't wake up one day and decide to free Horton. He was governor at a time when MA had a furlough programme."

You shameless liar.

Michael Dukakis was an ardent defender of the furlough programme, dating back to his first term as Governor, which began in 1975 - more than a decade before Horton was released on furlough. Dukakis, inexplicably, continued to defend the programme even into the 1988 elections.

Willie Horton was a murderer. Say it with me slow. A mur-der-er. Who was in prison without possibility of parole. Dukakis defended the furlough programme for its rehabilitative properties. What this idiot thought rehabilitating people who were incarcerated without possibility of parole was supposed to accomplish I can't imagine. It probably takes a liberal to excuse something that stupid. But let's take a closer look at Horton, as he was percieved - correctly, it turns out -- by the judge who sentenced him:

"I'm not prepared to take the chance that Mr. Horton might again be furloughed or otherwise released. This man should never draw a breath of free air again."

This is the man whom Dukakis released. This is the programme that Dukakis defended in 1976 and in 1988.

Defended in 1976, you say? Yes. Here are the facts:

The state legislature passed a law authorizing the furlough program, which was signed into law by Dukakis' predecessor, a Republican. But the genius liberals on the Massachussetts State Supreme Court found that the law, as written, also applied to first degree murderers.

Now, clear-reasoning people rightly see that as insane. And so the Massachussetts legislature passed a law exempting first-degree murderers. You know. Like Willie Horton.

In 1976, Governor. Dukakis. Vetoed. That. Law.

Don't you dare try to excuse Dukakis from responsibility for that programme. His fingerprints are all over the furlough programme. And he went to the mat insisting that it apply to first degree murderers.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 26, 2007 5:36 PM

Wasn't your point that the Horton ad wasn't racist or designed to appeal to people's worst racist instincts?

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 5:40 PM

By Jason Van Steenwyk at 5:17

Argument by invective is not argument."

Argument by endless Right Wing Noise Machine manufactured talking points isn't any better. In fact as with your swiftboat lieing pals {and yes I did say a negative about these vets who dishononered themselves by lying about Kerry's military record} it is often much worse.

Accusations from a GOP'r about others use of invectives is just more splendid wingnuttery.

Posted by nightjar | December 26, 2007 5:43 PM

My point was that Willie Horton's furlough was part and parcel of Gov. Dukakis' policy, and was absolutely fair game, regardless of Horton's race.

My ancilliary point was to blow this notion that Dukakis was "simply governor at a time when Massachussetts had a furlough programme" to smithereens.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 26, 2007 5:46 PM

Ahhh...yes, I know that the Duke supported the programme. I meant that Horton was released as part of that programme, not as some pet project of Dukakis's. A difference in emphasis, maybe a little unclear, but not shameless lying. I continue to debate you in good faith even though you are very quick to call names; you might do me the same courtesy. Now, the point of the ad wasn't that Dukakis believed in rehabilitation or that his support for a furlough programme led to a murder. It was that Dukakis will let black people come kill your white women. This was the subtext (and really not part of Al Gore's use of the issue, which was opportunistic but not racist.) But the Bush/Atwater appeal was clearly racist.

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 5:48 PM

That might have been true if Bush didn't clearly make the issue about Horton's race to appeal to deep-seated fears and stereotypes about dangerous black masculinity. The codes were all there; you can't insist it was a fair issue regardless of race and then defend a mobilisation of that issue centred solely on race. No one is saying criticising the furlough programme was unfair; we're saying that the particular ad--the one that had such an effect--was racist.

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 5:51 PM

Number of paragraphs: 11.

Number of relevant facts: 0

Says you. I would expect no less from one of y'all. You won't refute any of what I said. You can't without lying your ass off. So don't even try.

I am not a Christian. I used to be. For many years. I am very familiar with how the movement used to be compared to what it is now. Corrupted by politicians, promises of power and vast amounts of money.

As for hate? I hate what you zealots have turned the faith into. I hate what you've turned our country into. I absolutely hate religious manipulation. It's one of the most disgusting things in life. Innocents victimized by users. I also hate torture and human rights violations and those who commit them. That used to be the norm in this country. That went out the window when you people decided on a permanent majority.

I hate the fact that Republicans have created a surveillance society, Big Brother, after screaming "Reno!!!" "one world government!" and all the other bullshit double standard tactics you rightwingers use day in, day out.

If Republicans do it, no matter what it is, it's okelee dokelee. Torture? No problem. Domestic spying? No problem. Eliminate habeas corpus? No problem. The list goes on and on. I could spend hours listing all the unconstitutional and illegal activities you people have committed since Bush. As long as Republicans do these things it is fine with you.

You don't deserve to be trusted. At all. It's called a track record.

Posted by davis13 | December 26, 2007 5:59 PM

What code was there? That Horton happened to be black? That's not germaine.

That the Republicans made it an issue? Well, you said yourself that raising the issue is not racist.

That the ad had a picture of Horton? Well, of course. Who else are they going to show? The Easter Bunny? Bonnie Prince Charlie?

If a Democrat furloughs a murderer who is sentenced to life without parole, I don't see why the GOP is obligated not to show a photograph.

That's just screeching nonsense on Democrats' part. Your energy would be better off directed at holding Democrat idiots responsible for their actions so they don't furlough more Willie Hortons.

Oh, and furloughing Willie Horton was not a pet project of Dukakis's. But furloughing first degree murderers sure as heck was. Or Dukakis would not have wielded his veto pen specifically to ensure that first degree murderers were eligible for the furlough programme.

As for your statement that "Dukakis didn't mess up," I will flat out call that a shameless lie.

Draw your own conclusions.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 26, 2007 6:01 PM

If a Democrat furloughs a murderer who is sentenced to life without parole, I don't see why the GOP is obligated not to show a photograph.

What would have served the argument further by showing it? Dukakis's public policy vis-a-vie furlough could have been (and easily was, by Gore) criticized without resorting to the tactic.

Lee Atwater himself admitted as much that Horton was used for "racial mileage." So, yes, the opportunists in Bush's campaign corp knew exactly what they were doing.

And calling people shameless liars doesn't really help you get your message out better, but if it makes you feel better, I hope it worked.

Posted by handy | December 26, 2007 6:10 PM

I'm more likely to call that a disagreement than a shameless lie, but I don't know how these things work in the right-wing imagination.

Horton's race isn't Germaine or Tito, but it is germane and relevant. If you think that Horton's being black wasn't a HUGE part of why they ran that ad and that the *way* they showed his picture wasn't intentionally playing to, as I said, deep fears about aggressive African-American masculinity, you are either naive or disingenuous. The ad wouldn't have worked the same way had it been a white murderer, nor would they have seized upon certain images and shown them the same way. I'd like to live in a world where there aren't racial codes and fears that can be tapped, but I'd rather not achieve that by closing my eyes and pretending it's the case.

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 6:10 PM

Thanks handy---that's exactly why suggesting it is inconsistent to find Atwater's ad racist without finding Gore racist is absurd. Gore raised the issue to criticise Dukakis's judgement, stance on crime, etc., without appealing to racism. Bush/Atwater appealed directly to racism (and, surprise surprise, it was more effective, since it helped Bush overcome his polling deficit re Dukakis but didn't help Gore win much of anything.

Can anyone really imagine that American rhetoric on crime (and, for that matter, sentencing policies) isn't deeply tinged with racism and racial fears?

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 6:14 PM

If you think that Horton's being black wasn't a HUGE part of why they ran that ad and that the *way* they showed his picture wasn't intentionally playing to, as I said, deep fears about aggressive African-American masculinity

Is murder considered to be a sign of "masculinity" in your mind? That is a bizarre thought process on your part.

I think it was to the Republican's advantage to run a "scary looking" photo of Horton in order to drive home the point that Dukakis' liberalism was the type that really would release dangerous, scary violent felons into the community. Whether he was black or white wasn't important except in the race-obsessed voices in the minds of liberals.

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 26, 2007 6:22 PM

EHillbilly--that is certainly not how Atwater envisioned the ad. Read how he described it--the racial elements were analysed by liberals but were there by design and did their job well with the latently racist electorate that responded to it. And aggresively sexualised images of violent black men preying on white people/white women has LONG been a part of racist imagery. It even formed a part of Nazi portrayals of Jews.

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 6:26 PM

Say what heedless

"Whether he was black or white wasn't important except in the race-obsessed voices in the minds of liberals"

Kobach admits to coordinated voter supression

Now say again what party is obsessed with race.

Posted by nightjar | December 26, 2007 6:34 PM

sorry got my trolls mixed.

That be "say what Ehillbilly."

Posted by nightjar | December 26, 2007 6:37 PM

EHillbilly--that is certainly not how Atwater envisioned the ad

Whatever he may have said, and I understand that his damning 'admissions' were made in the late stages of suffering from a brain tumor.. whatever he said in that state, the fact remains that the ad was entirely fair and reasonable. Dishonest liberals try and accuse racsim where there is none as has been done throughout this thread.

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 26, 2007 6:43 PM

Once evidence and analysis stops mattering, we'll just have to agree to disagree, EHillbilly.

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 6:44 PM

Rightwingers sure now how to duck responsibility, pass the buck and twist logic.

"his damning 'admissions' were made in the late stages of suffering from a brain tumor"

The man clears his conscience and you assume it's brain damage? Wow.

I suppose the white woman "see ya" ad used against Harold Ford in Tennessee with jungle drums in the background wasn't racist either? You people are just full of shit.

Posted by davis13 | December 26, 2007 6:51 PM

P.S. In a vacuum, showing a black murderer wouldn't necessarily be racist. Portraying him in a certain way in a culture where, for example, black defendants get the death penalty far more often for killing white people than for similar crimes against black people (and exponentially more often than white people who kill black people) is anything but innocent. Think of images as only able to tell a story---because they are composed of limited frames---by drawing on already known and understood cultural referents. The story the Horton ad told, through this prism, is much larger than "the Duke's programme freed a murderer." The ad really wouldn't have played the same way to middle America had Horton been white.

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 6:51 PM

My bad. It was the "call me" Playboy mansion ad.

Posted by davis13 | December 26, 2007 6:53 PM

davis13--don't you love how these Republicans close their eyes to the racial problems in America, then accuse those of us who take them seriously as being the real racists/having race on the brain. Only someone with no qualms about benefiting from his racial priveleges (or with his eyes too closed to realise them) could be so self-righteously insistent that only those who expose racism are racists. One wonders why more minorities don't vote Republican. The only explanations I"ve heard from Republicans are, themselves, pretty racist.

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 6:57 PM

Kobach admits to coordinated voter supression

Judging from the article, he admitted no such thing. Where are the details of his efforts to reduce Dem voter fraud? If he was guilty as you have asserted, then why aren't lawyers from the DNC, DOJ, NAACP, or ACLU on this? Seems to me that if there was any validity to this, they would be all over it. I'll guess we'll see. But if there is no validity to it, then it would be yet another baseless smear coming from the left.

Whenever there is vote fraud, it's almost always Dems. Whether it be dead indians voting, driving vans of homeless to vote Dem for a bottle of cheap booze, or inner city voter intimidation .. when there's voter fraud it's almost always Dem

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 26, 2007 7:04 PM

It's my understanding that vote fraud is a Republican myth used to justify things like the Georgia ID card, cynically designed to reduce participation among Democratic voters and justified through lies about preventing non-existant fraud.

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 7:06 PM

Portraying him in a certain way in a culture where, for example, black defendants get the death penalty far more often for killing white people than for similar crimes against black people

It is fact that convicted black murderers are executed at a significantly lower rate than white murderers. Blacks commit a disproportionate number of murders in this country compared to whites, yet black murderers are less likely to be executed for their crime.

No vacuum. Just facts which contradict the lies being asserted here

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 26, 2007 7:08 PM

Check the percentages of people sentenced to death, sorted by who the victim in the crime was and controlling for states where there is no death penalty. Overcoming innumeracy to produce meaningful statistics contradicts your "facts."

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 7:11 PM

The man clears his conscience and you assume it's brain damage? Wow

I take it you are blissfully unaware that Lee Atwater died from a brain tumor.

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 26, 2007 7:11 PM

here you go:

http://aclu.org/capital/unequal/index.html

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 7:13 PM

He (the poster) knew it was a brain tumour. His point was that Atwater, knowing he was going to die, wanted to clear his conscience, and you assumed that this was *because* he had a brain tumour and that his admissions weren't true. If I were one of you, I'd start ranting about lies and lacks of shame, I'll just assume lack of comprehension and move on. Glad I could clarify for you.

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 7:15 PM

Check the percentages of people sentenced to death, sorted by who the victim in the crime was and controlling for states where there is no death penalty.

The relevant metric for comparison is not total numbers from population at large, but percentage of convicted murdererers who were executed for their crime. A convicted black murderer is in fact less likely to be executed for his crime than a convicted white murderer.

I believe you are dishonest to the core by trying to use total executions as percentage of race rather than comparing apples-to-apples control group of convicted murderers. Because a more honest look at who is executed blows your narrative of 'racist justice' out of the water. And you liberals can't have the truth get in the way of your narrative as has been amply demonstrated on this thread.

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 26, 2007 7:18 PM

His point was that Atwater, knowing he was going to die, wanted to clear his conscience, and you assumed that this was *because* he had a brain tumour and that his admissions weren't true

It's baseless speculation to assert that he was "clearing his conscience" in that state of mind and health (late stages of a brain tumor). If this admission had validity, then why do you all fall flat on your collective faces trying to demonstrate racism in the Willie Horton ad orchestrated by Atwater?

Your entire argument boils down to "Republicans showed his face in the ad". It's a pathetic argument on your part. But then again, you all aren't arguing in good faith.

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 26, 2007 7:24 PM

pretty big coincidence then that he deliriously admitted exactly what we saw in that ad. (Just like the Harold Ford ad--wouldn't have worked with a black woman b/c it wouldn't have played on the same fears.) It must be nice living in your society where race is totally irrelevant. Those of us living in America, Real World, can only be jealous.

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 26, 2007 7:27 PM

"To date, the Kansas GOP has identified and caged more voters in the last 11 months than the previous two years!"

This is taken verbatim from Kobach's signed letter. But maybe he was referring to ballots being stored in "cages". Ya think hillbilly?

And your video link was an affirmation of an GOP operative disrupting minority voting with his antics of bringing a film crew into a voting precinct. But wait, he said he was a democrat. Right. Please provide better evidence for your arguments, that was so lame and embarrassing .

Posted by nightjar | December 26, 2007 7:35 PM

"He (the poster) knew it was a brain tumour. His point was that Atwater, knowing he was going to die, wanted to clear his conscience, and you assumed that this was *because* he had a brain tumour and that his admissions weren't true. If I were one of you, I'd start ranting about lies and lacks of shame, I'll just assume lack of comprehension and move on. Glad I could clarify for you."

Yes indeed. If Atwater said what hillbilly approved of billhilly wouldn't care. Maybe Atwater was clearing his conscience, maybe he wasn't. I'm no psychic. But to blame the statement on a brain tumor is pretty stupid and lower than whale shit.

But... after watching Limbaugh ripping on Michael J. Fox's stem cell ad and Republicans tearing into the 12 year old who was the poster child for the SCHIPS insurance plan nothing surprises me.

They have -0- honor or decency. No concept of fair play or proportion either. I never thought I'd say it but I miss my old Rep Bob Michael. He never acted like these assholes. This all out war the Republicans have declared on everyone really sucks and is destroying our country.

Posted by davis13 | December 26, 2007 7:45 PM

It must be nice living in your society where race is totally irrelevant

I never said or implied that race is totally irrelevant, I'm objecting to liberals' tendency to hurl pernicious accusations of racism where none exists. It's divisive as hell.

I'm particularly appauled by those on the left who inject racism to discourage adoption of black babies by white parents claiming that it results in 'cultural genocide' of the adopted black children.

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 26, 2007 7:47 PM

"It's divisive as hell."

Good god. You people embrace Karl Rove/G.W. Bush and their vicious, divisive, all out war 51% election strategy and you have the nerve to say something like that?

Do you have any shame whatsoever? The more I read radical rightwingers the more I realize the party has little to no redeeming qualities left at all.

Posted by davis13 | December 26, 2007 8:05 PM

I'm jumping in on this discussion rather late because it is tangential to a charge that I am making contemporaneously. That charge is that racists have become a stand-in for whitefolks and the white electorate and the most demographically white electorate. So it comes as a matter of accepted fact that whoever appeals to the most people of color is the least racist party, no matter that those actual appeals are based on assuming racial minorities should and must vote in their own racial self-interest.

I find both parties, and quite frankly the blogosphere itself, incapable of sustaining a genuine anti-racist politics. In the charges I'm making, I accuse The Field Negro of accusing Republicans, which he calls 're-puke-licans' of being racist, without the slightest effort on his part to find or engage any such Republican blogger. In other words, I am accusing him of running a blacks-only blog which demonizes white bloggers and Republican bloggers.

This is all part and parcel of one problem with the structure of the blogosphere and throwing bricks over the transom. But I think the real world implications are the same. Nobody is really naming names.

Implicit in this lack of naming names is the assumption that your unknown minority of choice is responsible for all the evil you pretend to oppose. So it's easy for folks here at Yglesias to badmouth white southerners ad being obviously racist, and obviously politically powerful enough to express their sentiments through the ballot. The interesting thing is that this is all being done in restrospect but not in real time. Bloggers with some memory recall the death of a Rob 'Acidman' Smith who became something of that name. So who has picked up the ball? Reality is a bit more complex.

Now as the deconstruction of Karl Rove goes on, we'll start hearing how the Christian Right is responsible for waterboarding at Gitmo, right? Every minority group we can stereotype becomes responsible for Republican evil.

Too bad Ned Lamont lost. We on the Right could play the same games.

Posted by Cobb | December 26, 2007 8:23 PM

Good god. You people embrace Karl Rove/G.W. Bush

Do you seriously see Karl Rove or GW Bush as more divisive than, say, Howard Dean saying that he "hates" Republicans? Or those on the left who routinely compare GWB with Hitler.. or harrassing disrespectful treatment of the military from leftists?

Posted by EruditeHillbilly | December 26, 2007 8:31 PM

cobb

"Too bad Ned Lamont lost. We on the Right could play the same games."

Sweet Jesus man, Your party fucking invented the game. Liberals are just now coming to realize the rubber knives they wield are no good in a right wing political gunfight. It is true we libs have resisted joining the all out scorched earth politics Lee Atwater began and Karl Rove perfected and have suffered at the ballot box. We are slow to enter wars of any kind and especially with our own countrymen, albeit a political one.

Your side has taken that as weakness but it's not. Now we're getting in your face and the tables are turning and you want to whine, wiggle and parse yourself out of what you created. Your own medicine don't taste to good, does it. The next dose is scheduled for Nov. 2008.

Posted by nightjar | December 26, 2007 8:45 PM

[[["Do you seriously see Karl Rove or GW Bush as more divisive than, say, Howard Dean saying that he "hates" Republicans? Or those on the left who routinely compare GWB with Hitler.. or harrassing disrespectful treatment of the military from leftists?"]]]

I'm no Dean fan but you are beyond help if you're trying to compare what George Bush and Karl Rove have done to this country and the world with what Howard Dean said. That is just ridiculous and brainless. We may never undo the damage Rove and Bush have done to our country. Jeez.

As far as the Nazi comment? WOO HOO!! I know I'm going to get shit for this. The "enhanced interrogation" is similar to techniques the Gestapo used. It's ok as long as you don't draw blood or cause organ failure. Verschaerfte Vernehmung was what they called it. Some comparisons are quite valid. Torture used to be considered a war crime. Now it's official Republican policy. Hell, almost all of the Republican candidates for president say they would be harsher on suspects than Bush. One said he'd double the size of GITMO. Andrew Sullivan, a Republican, has a good piece on Verschaerfte Vernehmung. Very enlightening. Enjoy.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/12/best-of-the-d-2.html

Then you have Bush using 9/11 as his own Reichstag. And like the original, he succeeded in whipping the population into a frenzy of bloodlust and revenge which he aimed at Iraq like a gun. Pitiful. And a shame.

Leftists harrassing disrespectful treatment of the military?

That's hogwash. Why not use the spitting on troops bullshit tale too? Your comrades seem to like it. You are not talking to someone who was born yesterday. You guys just distort everything for your own purposes. Durbin's comments, Kerry's comments, everything. Your portrayal is not honest at all.

By the way, it would be hard to beat the Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church from Kansas as far as disrespecting troops goes. Hardly liberals or Democrats. They are as far right as can be. Even farther than you people here.

You can try and bs me until the cows come home. You won't succeed. I know what you people are and what you represent. The end of our democratic republic and our defense of human rights around the world. You've set us back a hundred years if not more.

Posted by davis13 | December 26, 2007 9:20 PM

From Andrew Sullivan's piece:

Yes, this is an account of someone who went through the "enhanced interrogation techniques" at Dachau. (Google translation here.)

Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I'm not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

Posted by davis13 | December 26, 2007 9:28 PM

Yo nightjar, you are right on target. They should have been tougher a long time ago. Just standing up for common decency would have been cool. You liberals can be too nice.

Posted by davis13 | December 26, 2007 9:47 PM

And kudos to you davis13. The Dachau survivor you quote leaves no doubt of what the Bush administration and it's minions hath wrought upon our beloved country. I doubt the stain of state sponsored torture will be cleansed away anytime soon, if ever.

Posted by nightjar | December 26, 2007 10:01 PM

E Hillbilly,

You are correct that a black murderer is less likely than a white murderer to be executed, but I have to take issue with your more general point about the criminal justice system.

The likelyhood that a black murderer will be executed is greatly increased if the victim is white. This suggests that while we have learned (more or less) to treat most violent offenders with equal harshness, there is still a considerable distance to travel before our country can view all victims of crime as equally deserving of justice.

One last note, if you think my advice worth taking: I really wouldn't waste your time arguing with davis13 or nightjar. They aren't paying attention to your arguments, and their reading comprehension is subpar. Call it a night and wait for brooksfoe to come back online. He's (she?) convinced that all non-liberals are scum, but he's at least willing to engage with what you actually wrote.

Merry Christmas and goodnight

Posted by heedless | December 26, 2007 10:24 PM

What pisses me off is they always use this bs ticking bomb scenario. The USSR had something like 15,000 nukes and we didn't use it on them. Terrorists are certainly not as big a threat to us as the old Sovet Union.

Now we find out they used torture when there wasn't even anything close to a ticking bomb. They just wanted intel.

Posted by davis13 | December 26, 2007 10:32 PM

[[["I really wouldn't waste your time arguing with davis13 or nightjar. They aren't paying attention to your arguments, and their reading comprehension is subpar."]]]

lol. That's real good. Not hearing what you want, eh? Sorry buddy, I call em how I see them. I am past the point of being nice about it. I've tried like hell to reach rightwingers but as the proverb goes, there are none so blind as those who will not see.

Posted by davis13 | December 26, 2007 10:39 PM

heedless says

"One last note, if you think my advice worth taking: I really wouldn't waste your time arguing with davis13 or nightjar. They aren't paying attention to your arguments, and their reading comprehension is subpar. Call it a night and wait for brooksfoe to come back online. He's (she?) convinced that all non-liberals are scum, but he's at least willing to engage with what you actually wrote."

Thanks for the late night chuckles there heedless. Sorry my reading isn't up to your standards, but I try.

The only relevant statistic for white/black executions is the ratios of whites sentenced to death and those given life for similar crimes in a local jurisdiction versus the same ratios for blacks in that jurisdiction.

I hope brooksfoe comes back too. so you can be comfortable in making your nonsensical arguments.
Nothing more precious than picky trolls LOL.

Posted by nightjar | December 26, 2007 10:40 PM

The obnoxious regional bigotry of today's progressives, unfortunately, is compounded by rampant and rabid antisemitism. Which is today more prevalent by far than racism on either side of the aisle.

Cynthia McKinney, for one. Who do you think Wesley Clark was referring to when he complained about the "New York money people?"

Code words, indeed.

Then again, some people don't even bother with code words.

http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=20242

Now, I think this left wing blogger, who was once profiled in the Washington Post, is clearly unbalanced, bordering on paranoid schizophrenic (albeit at least partially self-induced. Liberalism does that to people. It's sad.)

Nevertheless, for those not inclined to link, here's the liberal blogger du jour:

And the consequence is this: I now find myself, for the first time in my life, hating Jews. I find myself hating the Jews on this site, both the Jews who have conducted their malicious campaign against me for so long and the Jews who have stood by in silent solidarity with them, never saying a word against their vile attacks, their cruelty and ugliness.

I find myself thinking that Proximity perhaps has the right idea, that Jews regard other human beings as objects, to be sacrificed to the interests of Jews. That Jews will always stand with other Jews no matter their guilt, and against non-Jews, no matter their innocence. The face of Jews has become unspeakably ugly in my sight, because of the ugliness of the Jewish haters here.

Looks like the comments have been purged, or something. I can't access them, but others have noted that many commenters have written in, and rather than expressing good riddance to her hateful, leftist ass, begged her to stay and keep blogging.

You have to speculate about "racist code words." I don't have to speculate at all. It's right there in the plain text.

Clean up your own mess, libs. You've got way bigger problems than the right does.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 27, 2007 9:35 AM

Oops: Minor correction. The blog was profiled in the Washington post, but this is a different diarist than the one the Post profiled, originally, apparently.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 27, 2007 9:43 AM

"Looks like the comments have been purged, or something. I can't access them, but others have noted that many commenters have written in, and rather than expressing good riddance to her hateful, leftist ass, begged her to stay and keep blogging."

You have to speculate about "racist code words." I don't have to speculate at all. It's right there in the plain text.

Clean up your own mess, libs. You've got way bigger problems than the right does.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk "

Good for you Jason, you've discovered there are fringe nut leftist anti-semites just as there are fringe rightists anti-semites. Yawn. You said the comments were purged as was the diary post. Of course, Ron Paul REPUBLICAN candidate for prez says he's being attacked by "jewish cabal". If we judged either libs or wingers by blog comments or diaries then both parties would appear evil.
And Wes Clark's comment about "money people" meant just that, wealthy political elite some of which are jewish and some not. Put away your broad brush and btw Anti-Semitism is sectarian not racial.

Posted by nightjar | December 27, 2007 9:57 AM

"Anti-Semitism is sectarian not racial."

No, not really. The semites are a race, not a sect, first of all.

Second, conversion was no antidote to a Nazi death sentence. The Nazi persecution of Jews was based entirely in racism, not sectarianism.

As for Wes Clark, bullshit. Everyone knew exactly whom he was talking about.

Anti-Semitism on the left isn't exactly fringe. It's your own congresspeople indulging in it like Cynthia McKinney.

I think Ron Paul's an idiot, so you won't get any defense of him from me. I'm not familiar with his antisemitism per se, but he sure attracts a lot of buttheads I don't care for. I think the correlation between goldbugs and antisemitism is high due to the goldbug distrust of a central bank. (But because they're morons, they think of the central bank as a client of soft money, when actually the central bank was created to keep money "hard". Also, because they're morons, they associate Jews with the international cabal of Jewish bankers.)

But bigots come in more than one stripe. Leftists are all too frequently Jew-haters. It's part of the marxist DNA, I guess. And Jew-hating is, sadly, quite in vogue among young progressives.

It's shameful, really.

But the twits on the left are more worried about rebel flag decals on pickup trucks than about actual bigots.

Suckers.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 27, 2007 12:42 PM

"No, not really. The semites are a race, not a sect, first of all."

actually many of todays scholars consider semites more of a common language group rather than a race.

AS for Wes Clark, bullshit right back at you. only right wing hacks or actual anti-semites read anti-semitism in a remark about money people.

So because C. Mckinney you think C Mckinney is an anti-semite, and she WAS a congressperson, then she is automatically supported by mainstream progressives. I know of no mainstream dem who supports her stupidity, I suspect that's why she got the boot from congress.

But Ron Paul, CURRENT GoP congressman and GOP libertarian darling you dismissed from GOP anti-semitism because why? Because you think he's an idiot. Your wingnut hypocrisy is shining brightly.

"But bigots come in more than one stripe. Leftists are all too frequently Jew-haters. It's part of the marxist DNA, I guess. And Jew-hating is, sadly, quite in vogue among young progressives."

What a slimy jackass thing to say and utterly false. Look around pea brain, the bulk of anti-semitism in America can be found in right wing fringe militias, neo nazis, and other white supremacy groups. Their scattered about the country like the fetid turds they are. And exactly none of them claim to be anything other than far right wing politically.

"Suckers."

Your precious conservative movement is dead, dead, dead and there's nothing you can do to save it, other than throw dud rhetorical grenades and howl at the moon. Pitiful.

Posted by nightjar | December 27, 2007 1:13 PM

Wow. I reject Ron Paul and for that I'm a hypocrite?

You're even dumber than I gave you credit for.

As for your "look around" comment, you haven't been on a college campus lately, apparently. Not too many revelationist militia groups there. But a whole lot of misguided little jew-hating progressive turds.

Much more background here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_antisemitism

Meanwhile, the antisemitism of Marxists and communists is well documented elsewhere.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 27, 2007 2:33 PM

"The neutrality of this article is disputed."

From your wiki link.
more from your link

"New antisemitism is the concept of a new 21st-century form of antisemitism emanating simultaneously from the left, the right,"

Pathetic evidence indeed.
---------
Your an unserious jerk Jason. You rant and toss accusations about like confetti. Your evidence is non-existent. Meanwhile your linking American progressives and liberals to Marxists and Communists is a black lie from a black lier. You've exactly one true statement on this thread that anti-semites come in more than one stripe.

You are a hypocrite because you accuse all democrats as owning the likes of CMckinney while dismissing GOP ownership of Ron Paul.

As far as college kids go I think your confusing hatred of republican politics with bigotry.

Posted by nightjar | December 27, 2007 3:23 PM

Hmmm...I don't remember anyone flocking to Wes Clark's message. I'm Jewish, often on a campua, and feel perfectly comfortable as a liberal. (And in general campus leftist radicals aren't liberal and consider being called that an insult.) There are anti-Semites and other racists (Judaism being really both a religious and ethnic signifier, and racial anti-Semitism existing along with religious Jew-hatred) of all political stripes; but anti-Semitism and racism aren't instrumentalised on the Left, the way that fears about black people, brown people, are routinely mobilised on the Right. (See Buchanan, Pat) The point isn't to find someone with prejudice on the Left and call it even, the point is that racism is a stock go-to vote-generator on the Right.

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 27, 2007 3:25 PM

Sorry, nightjar. Your illiteracy is not my problem. I know the article was in dispute over its neutrality. I also know why. The reason has nothing to do with whether antisemitism exists on the left.

Frankly, I've already written you off as unserious, so your opinion of me means nothing to me.

Cantor has a more focused mind, and he's right...antisemitism comes in all stripes.

I don't blame the radicals. I'd take being called a liberal to be an insult as well.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 27, 2007 4:55 PM

"Sorry, nightjar. Your illiteracy is not my problem. I know the article was in dispute over its neutrality. I also know why. The reason has nothing to do with whether antisemitism exists on the left."

I reads gooder dan sum. Your funny as hell JV. You get caught using tainted evidence and you attack the messenger. How very wingnut of you. But wait, you really new it was bogus and why but you're not tellin'. What are you like 6 years old.

"Frankly, I've already written you off as unserious, so your opinion of me means nothing to me"

I'd written you off too, for the same reason, but your last post convinces me I was wrong. Only a fascinating person would write:

"I don't blame the radicals. I'd take being called a liberal to be an insult as well."

I don't know what that means, but it is interesting.

Posted by nightjar | December 27, 2007 6:22 PM

"Neutrality in dispute" != "bogus," genius.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 27, 2007 6:39 PM

neutrality in dispute=maybe bogus and if used as wiki neutral POV evidence=bogus

Posted by nightjar | December 27, 2007 6:55 PM

Who claimed it was neutral POV evidence? It was a quick and broad overview that was easily found.

Even if the verbage on the site is balanced toward a certain POV, that does not negate the many incidents and examples it describes and links to, which you are so desperately trying to avoid dealing with.

Admit it: Antisemitism is a problem on the left. And an ugly one.

As for Pat Buchanan, while I'm not convinced he's the racist he's frequently been accused of being (I haven't followed him closely since he quit Crossfire), he's not a Republican. He's a Reform party guy. Apparently he couldn't get traction in the Republican party (though he did win the NH primary as a Republican once, a decade ago).

But we're straying away from my original point:

I posit that the reason liberals don't poll well in the south has little to do with race and much more to do with their pernicious habit of bashing evangelicals, accusing US troops of carrying out a genocidal policy against brown people.

I further predicted that some morons would quickly prove my point by bashing evangelicals and accusing US troops of carrying out a genocidal policy against brown people.

And the commenters on this blog responded by bashing evangelicals and accusing US troops of carrying out a genocidal policy against brown people.

And you defended Dukakis' long discredited and election-losing policy of furloughing first-degree murderers for good measure.

No wonder Democrats do have some successes though.

You people may not be poor. But you are definitely uneducated and easily led.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 27, 2007 10:54 PM

"Red herring breakfast"? "Spitting on veterans"? Jason must actually be a computer program printout gone into tilt.

Posted by Daphne Chyprious | December 27, 2007 11:02 PM

Right. We're all well aware of the greater degree of anti-Semitism among Democrats, which explains why the exit polls last time showed 85% of Jews voting Democratic. And of course it's outrageous to think that white guys with Confederate flag decals on their trucks might be more inclined toward white racism than white guys who don't do so.

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | December 27, 2007 11:18 PM

"Red herring breakfast"? "Spitting on veterans"? Jason must actually be a computer program printout gone into tilt.

Posted by Daphne Chyprious |"

I think you may be right Daphne. Maybe he's a main frame on planet wingnut, programmed by David Horowitz with every Gooper talking point ever
created.

And your right Bruce, the proof is in the pudding, so to speak, among voting Jews as well as 90 % of voting African-Americans. Jason would likely claim those facts are liberal fantasies or some such.

But some of his rants are fascinating, if incomprehensible, like the last one. "You people may not be poor. But you are definitely uneducated and easily led."

As the Republican party circle the drain the sound of wingnuts squealing like stuck hogs will only get louder. Music to my ears.

Posted by nightjar | December 28, 2007 12:01 AM

You don't think the shameful treatment of Viet Nam veterans on the part of many democrats and students in the 60s-70s had anything to do with your loss of credibility in the south and west?

Is it your position, then, that the practice of spitting on Viet Nam veterans is a fiction?

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 28, 2007 9:16 AM

I am from the south and a Vietnam era vet, so I was there. The poor treatment of Vietnam vets by mostly draft age Americans was real and awful, although the spitting accusations have never been verified. What percentage were dems or not also cannot be verified except in fevered wingnut brains.

Whatever effect this had on voting patterns in the south, it pales in comparison to the effect of LBJ signing the CRA and voting laws. Your arguing the earth is flat pal, and looking foolish. Give it up already.

Posted by nightjar | December 28, 2007 9:54 AM

What's your source for stating that the spitting accusations have not been verified?

There are a number of first-hand accounts, newspaper accounts, official reports, and court records from the era documenting the practice. I know of at least one who acknowledges he was doing the spitting.

"it pales in comparison to the effect of LBJ signing the CRA and voting laws."

You have asserted that, yes. But you have not demonstrated it. Your hypothesis does not explain the lack of liberal appeal in the western states. Mine does.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 28, 2007 10:52 AM

Oh goodness gracious. This is so simple, but the racists and their apologists/sympathizers will go to their graves attempting to defend an indefensible position.

Southerners were primarily Democrats until the CR movement was in full swing and then they turned to the GOP. Thurmond & Helms are two of the more recognizable names and Shelby is a more recent one.

The switch wasn't all at once, it was gradual but definitive. Hence, the pervasive racist nature of the current Republican party! That is not to say the Democrats did not have have their issues with race, it is merely stating the way things are.

Neither Al Sharpton nor Jesse Jackson are Democratic officials or spokespeople. They do, however, represent a version of the Black boogeyman that Republicans *think* scare all other white/caucasian/non-black people.

All this bullsh*t argumentation is proof that racists understand they are dysfunctional. They are so ashamed of it they will offer up all manner of obfuscation and circumvolution to try to cover it up.

Posted by LJ240 | December 28, 2007 11:59 AM

How many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a "leg" doesn't MAKE it a leg.

--Abraham Lincoln

You have asserted many times the pervasive racist nature of the GOP. You have not demonstrated it to be so. (Instead, you elevate Sen. Byrd to chair status).

You have also not demonstrated that racism accounts for liberal unmarketability in the south.

Assertion is not argument.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 28, 2007 12:52 PM

"What's your source for stating that the spitting accusations have not been verified?"

more priceless wignuttery. Makes a smear and then demands we prove it didn't happen.

Republicanism in the west is based libertarian views primarily concerning land ownership and land rights. And also a fidelity to the constitution. They don't like liars and thieves which is why several intermountain states are turning blue faster than you can say crooked republican.

Other than that LJ240 handed you your hat very well there Jason.

Posted by nightjar | December 28, 2007 12:57 PM

Final Word. Google Southern Strategy and hundreds if not thousands of hits will appear of all types of writings on the subject confirming the history your side wants so desperately wants to re-write. You can believe whatever you want.

Posted by nightjar | December 28, 2007 1:13 PM

I can Google 9/11, too, and get lots of hits from people who think Cheney was in on the whole plot.

That doesn't make it true, and Google hits don't "confirm" history. Facts do.

"Republicanism in the west is based libertarian views primarily concerning land ownership and land rights."

Thank you for confirming my point. That is another reason why liberalism is unmarketable in the south.

"And also a fidelity to the constitution."

Ditto. Specifically, the 2nd and 10th amendments. Liberal positions on both have nothing to do with race. But poll very poorly in the south.

Same with the overt liberal hostility to the second part of the Establishment Clause in the 1rst Amendment, which reads "nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

People don't like the ACLU moving to outlaw creches in parks very much. The liberals get tarred with that quite a bit. And liberals compound the problem by bashing baptists at every turn.

Neither element has a thing to do with race. Both hurt libs in the south.

Accusing troops - many of whom come from southern families and towns - of committing genocide, and comparing them to Khmer Rouge and Gestapo pretty much confirms liberals as idiots in the minds of most southerners as well.

Each one of these libtard platforms has far, far more to do with electoral results than appeals to racism. Also, it was your party that had a campaign spokesperson refer to white southerners as "crackers." (spec. Donna Brazile). So who's appealing on the race card now?

"They don't like liars and thieves which is why several intermountain states are turning blue faster than you can say crooked republican."

Get your head out of your ass. The long-time residents of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and other states are just as conservative as ever. What's changing is that blue state voters are migrating eastward. Why? Because liberal morons are making California unliveable with high taxes, obtrusive government, and ridiculous regulation.

Ask the longtime residents there how they feel about the California refugees.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 28, 2007 2:30 PM

Aside from everything else, this discussion provides a useful and instructive justification for Republicans' attempts to turn even mild criticism of Israeli foreign policy into smears of "anti-semitism". If they can yell "anti-semite" at Dems who are insufficiently pro-Israel, like Biden (apparently), they can obfuscate their own laughably obvious racism.

Handy, that.

Oh, and Jason, your ridiculous little poorly-sourced diatribes don't deserve the use of the word "posit". You assert. Argue. Claim. Speak. Maybe even "put forward". You don't "posit". That implies both a questioning mind and appropriate evidence: neither of which you actually possess.

Posted by Demosthenes | December 28, 2007 2:46 PM

Jason

You are a desperate lying stack of right wing shit. Take your name calling and wingnut talking points and shove them so far up your ass the world will never know they existed. You haven't proven any point. You haven't even asked the right questions.

Posted by nightjar | December 28, 2007 3:49 PM

nightjar:

"You are a desperate lying stack of right wing shit. Take your name calling..."

ROFL!

Ok. Please point out where I've 'lied.'

You folks lie about Dukakis all the time. You just got called on it this time. Where's my "lie?"

"You haven't proven any point."

Oh, yes I have. And the irony is, you helped me do it. You helped me prove the exact same point I made at 4:32pm on December 24th.

Here's what I've proven, with your assistance: That Dems have no insight into the problems that make them unmarketable in the South and West, (well, that's not quite true. They dropped gun control when they realized how stupid they were). I've proven, with your help, that many of them are arrogant, regional bigots quick to question the patriotism of others but hypersensitive to the same criticisms when applied to themselves, that they are bigoted towards evangelicals, that, like the worst of the bigots, they can even take pride in their bigotry. I've proven, with your help, that they lie to themselves even about Dukakis's record, years after that record became clear, that they bash troops and accuse them of genocide, and that they are all too frequently emotionally unhinged haters who resort to ad hominem attacks when they have nothing left.

And you're the icing on the cake.

What's funniest is that you're so easily led around by the nose to display these qualities almost on command.

Next week, we'll work on getting you to roll over and fetch.

Posted by Jason Van Steenwyk | December 29, 2007 12:29 AM