Wrong on Race?

Tyler Cowen describes Bruce Bartlett's new book Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past as "incendiary."

If this overview in The Wall Street Journal reflects the content, though, it seems fairly banal. As everyone with any awareness of American political history knows, for about 100 years starting in the mid-19th century, the Democratic Party was the vehicle of choice for the white supremacist agenda that dominated the politics of the white south and that vast majority of the leading villains in the story of race in America were Democrats. That said, starting in the New Deal, the Democrats also became the preferred party of urban northern African-Americans and white liberals. That created a lot of intra-party tensions which played out over the next 30-40 years and resulted in a decisive victory for the racial liberals.

Meanwhile, in a parallel development, "new right" insurgents -- most of whom were, like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, opponents of civil rights legislation -- took control of the Republican Party. During this time, the white south became the electoral base of the GOP, while the much-shrunken Dixie faction of the Democratic Party became biracial. I don't think there's anything about this history that would upset modern-day Democrats -- obviously, Abe Lincoln and the GOP was the right way to go in the 1860s and Woodrow Wilson's record on racial issues was terrible but that was all quite a long time ago.

Comments

A book-length version of the time-honored "What about Sen. Robert Byrd? Huh? Huh?" concern troll.

Great.

Posted by Davis X. Machina | December 24, 2007 11:15 AM

"Incendiary"?

Well, maybe this Tyler Cowen fellow has never previously read a book on modern American history, so indeed regards these "revelations" as being "incendiary"?

Perhaps he'd be similarly astonished to discover that the "Roman Catholic Church" derives part of its name from a state which was not merely anti-Christian and Pagan, but actually persecuted and killed Christians in large numbers...

Posted by RKU | December 24, 2007 11:17 AM

Joe McCarthy's sins are pretty old new, too. But that doesn't stop liberals from dredging them up time and time again. It's a rare year when there isn't a major new book about McCarthy or a Hollywood film about him.

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.

Posted by Bruce Bartlett | December 24, 2007 11:34 AM

So apparently Bruce you decided to be a hack. Congratulations! I'm sure the pay will be better!

The next time some Democrat runs as the next Woodrow Wilson it would be relevant. Of course that isn't going to happen. Romney just called McCain not Regan enough. Gordon Smith just praise Lott for praising Thurmond. I know you'd love a pox on both their houses since yours is the one that smells like shit.

Posted by Rob | December 24, 2007 11:41 AM

Can a fact that's presented in great detail in any high school American history book really be considered buried? I know that people complain about the way we teach history, but most schools do in fact cover the frigging Civil War.

Posted by Gabriel | December 24, 2007 11:42 AM

Although this story is always told with the New Deal as the inflection point, I think the black shift to the Democratic party started in 1928. Why? Because Hoover ran that year partly on the work he had done in 1927, federalizing disaster relief for the first time as the result of the great Mississippi flood. Hoover urged this course as Coolidge's commerce secretary. But what he directed the federal government to do was, essentially, screw the black farmers of the Mississippi delta. Here's a bit from a review of John Barry's book, Rising Tide , about this subject.

"Greenville, Mississippi, known as the Queen City of the Delta, was the center of power in that region in 1927; it was the home of LeRoy Percy, a planter, lawyer, former United States Senator, and, without a doubt, the most powerful man in the Delta. The Percy family had forged an empire out of the rich land created over the centuries by the Mississippi River, but maintaining that empire "required them to contain both the river and great social forces sweeping through the nation" (96). The society that LeRoy Percy built would "adhere to a code of honor" and would be "ruled by an elite" willing to "take care of its less fortunate members" (107). Percy is presented as a paradoxical figure, progressive for his time and region with respect to his attitude toward blacks, yet desperate to preserve his patrician way of life and anxious about the problem of blacks migrating northward. Barry explains that the Delta, always "starved for labor" (121), was inhabited by two classes: the aristocratic planters and the blacks who worked for them. There were virtually no poor whites living in the region. Percy and others had tried but failed to recruit white farmers from the Midwest and Europe; thus "The future of the Delta and of whites like Percy was wedded to the black race more than ever, however much men of either race resisted" (121). By providing quality education and other opportunities for a better life, Percy had made Greenville and the entire Delta one of the best places in the country for a black person to live. Percy even became a national hero when he vanquished the Ku Klux Klan from the region. "He had built a society and he would protect it against any enemy" (155), writes Barry. But LeRoy Percy would face an enemy far more powerful than the Klan. As Barry says, "The great invincible enemy was of course the river" (155)."

Eerily, just as Bush's policies re New Orleans resulted in the great black diaspora from that city we are seeing now, so, too, did Hoover's policy of directing federal money into the hands of the richest white farmers. The black community, which reliably voted, when it could, overwhelmingly for the Republicans, complained to Hoover, but Hoover in 1928 made several gestures of appeasement to the Southern white population, rejected black appeals regarding funds to help relieve flood victims, and helped accelerate black flight to the north.

The political influence of disaster response is too often underated when talking about politics. Whoever ran in 1932, and whatever the economic conditions had been, blacks were going to desert the Republican party.

Posted by roger | December 24, 2007 11:44 AM

"John Hawkins: Now I heard that you wrote an impassioned defense of tailgunner Joe in the book. Is that the case? If so, why do you think Joe McCarthy has gotten a bad rap?

Ann Coulter: I know he got a bad rap because there are no monuments to Joe McCarthy. Liberals had to destroy McCarthy because he exposed the entire liberal establishment as having sheltered Soviet spies."

McCarthy isn't old news. He's the honored forebear of the modern Republican Party. If Bruce Bartlett can find a prominent present-day Republican who's repudiated McCarthy, let's see the quote.

Posted by Bloix | December 24, 2007 11:45 AM

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.

How many Democratic Presidential candidates are falling all over themselves to claim the mantle of Andrew Jackson, or FDR for that matter? On the other hand, most Republican Presidential candidates have spent a lot of time trying to claim they are the "next Ronald Reagan." This issue has reared its head based almost entirely on the fact that these guys all want to be Reagan.

Democrats aren't avoiding anything. They just aren't trying to be the next [insert favorite racist/segregationist Democrat's name here]. (Well, maybe HRC wants to be the next Bill Clinton, but that is an entirely separate issue, and debatable.)

Posted by The Grandest Panjandrum | December 24, 2007 11:52 AM

Little that is new. The only thing worth stressing is that today's Democrats want to keep blacks on the Plantation of Dependency via such "caring" programs as dangerous public housing, failing public schools, public health, and other federal undertakings. The last thing Democrats want is the last thing Democrats of 1900 wanted: An independent, thinking, and non-servile black population.

Posted by Little that is new | December 24, 2007 11:58 AM

Little that is new. The only thing worth stressing is that today's Democrats want to keep blacks on the Plantation of Dependency via such "caring" programs as dangerous public housing, failing public schools, public health, and other federal undertakings. The last thing Democrats want is the last thing Democrats of 1900 wanted: An independent, thinking, and non-servile black population.

Posted by Little that is new | December 24, 2007 11:59 AM

Little that is new. The only thing worth stressing is that today's Democrats want to keep blacks on the Plantation of Dependency via such "caring" programs as dangerous public housing, failing public schools, public health, and other federal undertakings. The last thing Democrats want is the last thing Democrats of 1900 wanted: An independent, thinking, and non-servile black population.

Posted by Little that is new | December 24, 2007 11:59 AM

"Bruce Bartlett" is full of Reagan shit: "Joe McCarthy's sins are pretty old new, too. But that doesn't stop liberals from dredging them up time and time again. It's a rare year when there isn't a major new book about McCarthy or a Hollywood film about him."

The last "major book" I recall with a big McCarthy theme was Ann Coulter's, and her position was that the paranoid old drunk was a great American hero.

The reason "liberals" bring up McCarthy so often is that the conservatives have never given up his favorite tactic of deriding political opponents as traitors.

There's nothing "buried" about the old Democratic sins. Anyone with any knowledge of American political history knows that the Dixiecrats existed, and knows that once the Democratic Party cast its lot with civil rights the Dixiecrats abandoned it and went over to the Republicans. That's now the dominant strain in the GOP and it has been for decades.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | December 24, 2007 12:05 PM

A book-length version of the time-honored "What about Sen. Robert Byrd? Huh? Huh?" concern troll.

Given Jonah's 400-page version of 'National Socialism, see: it's in the name!' it appears that the book-length troll comment is all the rage these days.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 24, 2007 12:08 PM

Bruce Bartlett (if that's really you)

I think you're completely missing Matt's point. Matt is not sweeping the shameful history of the Democratic party under the rug, he is pointing out that between that history and the present there is a difference-making series of events, i.e. the Democratic party ceased being the party of white supremacists, and the GOP became the home of the white south. The new version of the Democratic party was, in other words, decisively different from the old. Corresponding to this is the fact that you will be hard pressed to find a Democrat who would defend its old white supremacism.

In contrast, Reagan's 1980 speech is very much continuous with the present-day Republican party. Indeed, Reagan is probably the most commonly viewed recent hero in the Republican party. And I ask you: have Republicans as decisively rejected the past embodied in Joe McCarthy as Democrats have rejected their white supremacist past? That is, I have never met a Democrat who was prepared to defend the Democratic party's old white supremacist agenda. In contrast, it is not difficult to come across prominent defenses of Joe McCarthy among Republicans, is it?

Posted by Jeff | December 24, 2007 12:08 PM

Nothing that is new writes: "The only thing worth stressing is that today's Democrats want to keep blacks on the Plantation of Dependency via such "caring" programs as dangerous public housing, failing public schools, public health, and other federal undertakings. The last thing Democrats want is the last thing Democrats of 1900 wanted: An independent, thinking, and non-servile black population."

Meanwhile Repiglicans want blacks in jail or in Iraq. Or in Iraq and THEN in jail. And they just can't understand why Dumbya Bush didn't get 90% of the black vote in 2004 after he went and hired that nice articulate Rice woman and all...

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | December 24, 2007 12:09 PM

Since the history cannot be denied they will sweep it under the rug as old news

Bruce, the most gracious defense we can make of you is that, perhaps, you did not come up with the title of the book. Because, really, "buried past"? How can a phenomenon which appears in every single high school history text book be "buried."

Either history matters or it doesn't.

Many people call themselves the "heir to reagan" and deny that he in any way appealed to racist sentiment. I hear more democrats declaring themselves the "heir to Truman" than the "heir to Thurmond."

Seriously, Burce, weak. Weak.

It's a rare year when there isn't a major new book about McCarthy or a Hollywood film about him.

Years in which there were movies about Sen. McCarthy: 2005 with Good Night and Good Luck. Also, The Majestic in 2001. Now, you're probably thinking of "Guilty By Suspicion" with a similar theme that came out in 1991. However, it involved HUAC and the crusade against Hollywood, not the Army-McCarthy hearings. So we're really looking at 2.5 movies over a 15 year period.

As far as books, the most famous recent book about Sen. McCarthy was written by Ann Coulter.

I may be wrong of course, and perhaps you can detail yearly release of books and films about Sen. McCarthy. However, I suspect you can't and are merely using the "it's a rare year when..." phrase "metaphorically" to express a sentiment that isn't actually true but a sentiment that you feel.

====

You pretty much confessed a couple things: first, that your book contains no original contributions and is basically a book-length version of talking points repeated in blog comments. Next: that the book is simply the result of a hissy fit you're throwing for having it constantly thrown in your face that modern Republicans have played to racial fears in their campaigns.

David X. Machina basically summed up your book much better than I could. Honestly, if you didn't attach yourself to the Republican party, you wouldn't have to place yourself in these morally-compromising positions where you have to publicly embarrass yourself like this. I didn't live my life working for and supporting politicians who got ahead by whipping up racial resentment. You did. Writing a book about how "[Some] Democrats did it too from 1865 to 1965!" isn't going to make that all better.

You are the one who saw Reagan appealing to such racist sentiments and said to yourself, "I want to work for this guy!" So not only are you a bad writer, you're also a flaming hypocrite.

Posted by Tyro | December 24, 2007 12:10 PM

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.

Shorter Bartlett: 'Southern Strategy? Look, there's Senator Fulbright!'

What a fucking hack.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 24, 2007 12:12 PM

Re: The last thing Democrats want is the last thing Democrats of 1900 wanted: An independent, thinking, and non-servile black population.

And exactly what is keeping Black people from thinking independently? It's not like they;'ve all been herded onto a special resrvation where only Democratic Party propaganda can reach them. Fact is they've looked at the reality of modern America and even if the Democrats are 100% perfect they've got the Republicans beat hands down as a party that more clearly represents their interests.

Re: But that doesn't stop liberals from dredging them up time and time again.

True, and I'd be happy to drop Joe's sins from current discourse. Problem is, too many on the Right insist on defending the drunken demagogue. I mean, when the last time you heard a Democrat speaking well of Lester Maddox, Bull Connor or George Wallace?

Posted by Jonf | December 24, 2007 12:21 PM

Republicans: we love the past! Just don't ask about the present.

Posted by Chris M | December 24, 2007 12:21 PM

Me: white southerners still racist.

Posted by Chris M | December 24, 2007 12:24 PM

I'd be happy to drop Joe's sins from current discourse.

It'd be easier to stop talking about Joe McCarthy if the modern GOP wasn't intent on emulating his methods. Or is 'criticize the president = traitor' no longer standard practice?

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 24, 2007 12:31 PM

What Bartlett and others like him don't get is that the history of party labels is not the salient issue here -- rather it's the genealogy of political ideologies. A lot of segregationist right wingers, particularly in the South, used to call themselves Democrats. Since the early 60's, however, those people increasingly found a home in the Republican party. Democrats today, even former clansmen like Robert Byrd, strenuously disavow the illiberal past of their party and have become progressives. The Republicans then picked up the old Dixiecrat vote and now want to blame Democrats for having formerly been what they themselves have become, namely a party of reactionary, fundamentalist, nativist loons? WTF?

Posted by jonas | December 24, 2007 12:42 PM

Bartlett: that Henry Clay was pro-slavery does not make Barack Obama a race-baiter. That Ronald Reagan opposed the Civil Rights Act, advocated "States' Rights", opposed affirmative action, and mentioned "Cadillac-driving welfare queens" and "young bucks on food stamps" every chance he got, makes Ronald Reagan a race-baiter.

If you want to argue that Ronald Reagan is ancient history, has nothing to do with the modern GOP, and can as easily be claimed today by Democrats as by Republicans, be my guest.

That is all.

Posted by brooksfoe | December 24, 2007 12:48 PM

I haven't read this book, but as far as the Dems and Jim Crow the history is right. It's still right in a way.

The Reps position on 'race' is that the law should be color blind, and has been with a few exceptions since the end of the Civil War.

Southern Dems were the 'white' party in the south who succeeded at disenfrachising their competition, rhe Reps or blacks, and then passed Jum Crow, i.e. jigged the law to favor whites in private prusuits (like business) as well as public ones.

I once saw the chairman of the NAACP, then Julian Bond defend affirmative action by pointing out that Jim Crow was affirmative action for white people. He was perfectly correct, though obviously there is a difference in degree, if not in kind, and the difference in degree is not unimportant.

For about 5 years in the 60's the Dems and the Reps sort of matched in some sort of formal sense in that the law was supposed to be colorblind, but then the Dems decided to put in affirmative action, which is that the state should favor individuals based on race, and eventually sex, and lordy lordy, just as in the south after the civil war, their regime favored people who vote for them. Who'd a thunk.

Maybe white guys without graduate degrees and people whose fortunes are tied to white men (their wives) tend not to vote for Democratic for the same reason that a southern black who somehow managed to keep his right to vote might not have voted for George Wallace in 1960. There is a not unimportant difference in degree, but their is no difference in kind. Give it some thought.

Posted by j mct | December 24, 2007 12:49 PM

Jonf wonders: "I mean, when the last time you heard a Democrat speaking well of Lester Maddox, Bull Connor or George Wallace?"

At least Wallace apologized and tried to make amends late in his life. I suppose we'll never know if he was sincere, but I believe he actually won the majority of the black vote in his last gubernatorial win.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | December 24, 2007 12:52 PM

j mct writes: "Maybe white guys without graduate degrees and people whose fortunes are tied to white men (their wives) tend not to vote for Democratic for the same reason that a southern black who somehow managed to keep his right to vote might not have voted for George Wallace in 1960. There is a not unimportant difference in degree, but their is no difference in kind. Give it some thought."

Yeah, I've given it what it's worth, and what it is is an unconvincing apology for racism.

Is it possible that there are actually people out there who think affirmative action was "keeping the white man down"? Give me a frigging break.

A white man just can't get ahead in America!

How stupid can you get?

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | December 24, 2007 12:57 PM

The McCarthy analogy just doesn't hold up, mostly because a party isn't an individual. Throwing the Democratic Party's racist history in the face of modern-day Democrats is just silly because, well, we joined the party after (or even because of) its turning away from being the party of white supremacy. Before that, we wouldn't have been Democrats. As Matt writes, in the 1860s, the Republicans were the way to go.

This reminds me of when Al Sharpton was a guest on Glenn Beck's TV show. Sharpton said he'd like to know what Romney did to change or oppose his church's racist teachings before 1978 (or something to that effect). Beck retorted, "would it then be fair for me to hold you responsible for the Democratic party's former racism?" Holy false equivalency, Batman! Yes, it would be fair, *had Sharpton been a member of the party when it was the unabashadely pro-segregation movement in American politics*. He wasn't. But Romney was a devout Mormon when racism was institutionalised as church doctrine.

This is all to say that the "Democrats were racist too" argument is usually a distraction from the issues at hand. You see, some racists were Democrats, but when the Democratic party stopped echoing their views, they became Republicans. The idea that this has anything to do with those of us who join the party now and support its ideals is silly.

Posted by Anthony Cantor | December 24, 2007 1:18 PM

As a conservative republican, two things need to be admitted in the spirit of candor;

1)Racism has clearly permeated the GOP since the Dixiecrats jumped aboard to a greater extent than it has within the democratic party. Obviously, the subtraction of racists in one led to the cumbersome addition of them in the other, which is what led LBJ to lament that " we (the democrats) may have forever lost the south," and, besides, it's a bit harder to evince racism when minorities comprise the essence of one's party matrix.

2) Having made that admission, what can't be denied is a)the GOP's pivotal role in the 60s civil rights legislation and b) the Warren Court's seminal role in establishing the expansive rights of blacks and women, and minorities in general.

I would challenge anyone to match in substance and scope what Brown v. Board of Education, Gideon v. Wainwright, Miranda v. Arizona, Mapp v. Ohio, and Griswold v. Connecticut did for the minority community. That is not to say I am unmindful of what his court did to the Japanese, nor what his court did for the (anti-)cause of the hard right concerning SOCAS.

Warren, of course, was appointed as a conservative GOPer by Eisenhower.

Case closed.

Posted by resh | December 24, 2007 1:20 PM

Bartlett is just the latest example of the low opinion conservatives have for the intelligence of their target audience.

Posted by Kenneth | December 24, 2007 1:39 PM

Kenneth writes: "Bartlett is just the latest example of the low opinion conservatives have for the intelligence of their target audience."

I suppose it's good to know that they're right about that one thing.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | December 24, 2007 1:42 PM

resh writes: "Having made that admission, what can't be denied is a)the GOP's pivotal role in the 60s civil rights legislation and b) the Warren Court's seminal role in establishing the expansive rights of blacks and women, and minorities in general.

I would challenge anyone to match in substance and scope what Brown v. Board of Education, Gideon v. Wainwright, Miranda v. Arizona, Mapp v. Ohio, and Griswold v. Connecticut did for the minority community. That is not to say I am unmindful of what his court did to the Japanese, nor what his court did for the (anti-)cause of the hard right concerning SOCAS.

Warren, of course, was appointed as a conservative GOPer by Eisenhower.

Case closed."

Not so fast. Warren was subsequently demonized by Nixon and Reagan, for one thing. And the nature of "conservative GOPers" has changed pretty drastically between Eisenhower's time and this. Today most "conservative GOPers" are xenophobic America Firsters who embrace the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower wouldn't recognize his party in its current state. I do think he would have given Warren a "well done," though.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | December 24, 2007 1:48 PM

Griswold v. Connecticut?

Posted by Matt Weiner | December 24, 2007 1:52 PM

MLJ-

"Eisenhower wouldn't recognize his party in its current state. I do think he would have given Warren a "well done," though."

Sorry. Ike regretted appointing Warren; he thought he was getting a moderate-conservative and ended up with a liberal-activist.

As to the GOP's current fondness for the M/I/C, don't kid yourself: nearly every congressional democrat equally, if quietly, loves the war machine-just check their votes. Remember, almost all of them signed on to fund/support the Iraq invasion, including HRC and JE, and, once again, Pelosi's eunuch tribe has genuflected to the outcast neocons and to the aggressive democratists.

Posted by resh | December 24, 2007 2:17 PM

In contrast, Reagan's 1980 speech is very much continuous with the present-day Republican party. Indeed, Reagan is probably the most commonly viewed recent hero in the Republican party.

The present nature of the Republican party does not bear a great deal of resemblence to the Reagan party. One only needs to read anything by Reagan and contrast it with Gerson's heroic conservatism or Podhoretz's WW4 book to see that.

"Compassionate conservatism" and "permanent revolution" were not elements of Reagan's agenda. The socons like Reagan because they don't remember him. The neocons, who hated Reagan at the time, now pretend to revere him as a way to manipulate the socons and try to take credit for the perceived Reagan victory over the Soviets (I personally credit Eisenhower).

The fact is, Reagan (the man, not the symbol) could not survive a 2008 GOP primary because his ideas were too similar to Ron Paul's (of all people), including even Gold buggery.

If there is a spiritual heir to Reagan, it's probably the Governator (even though Ahnuld doesn't seem to exhibit an "Austrian School" influence). Schwartzenegger is not particularly popular with either the base or the establishment.

Posted by Shinyk | December 24, 2007 2:22 PM

All of this discussion just proves that liberals can dish it out when it comes to race, but they can't take it when someone throws the Democratic Party's indisputable racist past back at them. The problem has been that Republicans have been too stupid to take advantage of Democratic racism because they are convinced that blacks will never vote Republican, not matter what. But times are changing. The post-civil rights generation of African Americans don't feel the same blind loyalty of the party of FDR & LBJ that their parents did. That is why Democrats feel it necessary to dredge up old speeches by Ronald Reagan from 27 years agao and blow them out of proportion--and it is why they cannot stand any kind of light being focused on their own racist past (and present). Read those quotes in my OpinionJournal piece. I was very careful to pick statements by party leaders that covered the full history of the Democratic Party from the beginning to the present day.

Posted by Bruce Bartlett | December 24, 2007 2:40 PM

Matt-

I threw in Griswold since it so dramatically aided and extended a woman's right (to privacy). I'm assuming you'd accept women, then, if not still, as a de facto minority.

Posted by resh | December 24, 2007 2:45 PM

I might mention that not only has the Democratic Party's racist past been thoroughly covered in the history texts, but there are many alive to day who remember it from the daily news. Bartlett is writing for people younger than 50 who didn't pay attention in school.

His pitiful defenses here reinforce one's low opinion of his competence. "Maybe 90 years ago (Wilson) was a long time ago, but 27 years ago (Reagan) was a long time ago too!" How could that argument possibly be made weaker and stupider?

The zombie right are not necessarily stupid people -- the caricature of the ignorant hillbilly is false. They're practical people who pay no attention to things like history which have little practical application ("liberal arts bullshit"). Their lives are focussed on salvation, family, money, and other directly practical things, and a lot of them are very prosperous. (Libertarian rightists substitute sex and drugs for the religion and sometimes for the family, but the money remains). These people are very busy, and they subcontract their thinking about politics and war to men they trust like Bush and Robertson. Zombie voters are very practical and trust whoever will kiss their ass and scratch their itch.

Posted by John Emerson | December 24, 2007 2:59 PM

After Bartlett's bout with GOP apostasy last year with Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, I'm not surprised that the next book took on this extremely low-hanging fruit to get back in the good graces of the modern American (post-9/11) right wing. I expect that BB was as surprised by the conservative backlash as I was not, and this was a quick and easy way to right his course, as it were.

Now whether anyone actually reads the thing is a whole 'nuther matter.

Posted by rickhavoc | December 24, 2007 3:04 PM

resh quotes and writes: ""Eisenhower wouldn't recognize his party in its current state. I do think he would have given Warren a "well done," though."

Sorry. Ike regretted appointing Warren; he thought he was getting a moderate-conservative and ended up with a liberal-activist."

Ike died before seeing what his party turned into - I made my comment with the premise that he'd have changed his mind about Warren's work with a little more perspective.

The phrase "liberal-activist" is only used by conservative dingbats who don't mind activism when it comes in conservative colors. See Bush v. Gore for details.

In any event Warren's "liberal" aspect shouldn't have been a real surprise, since at one point in his political career he was the gubernatorial nominee of the Reps, the Dems, and the Progressive Party, all at the same time.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | December 24, 2007 3:12 PM

Bruce,

You said:
The problem has been that Republicans have been too stupid to take advantage of Democratic racism because they are convinced that blacks will never vote Republican, not matter what.

If the Republican party wants to court African Americans without compromising ideology, it should start by ending the fedral War on Drugs and loudly, unanimously denouncing liberal proposals like gas taxes and cigarette taxes--all of which hit African Americans harder than Whites.

Frequently, the Democratic party promises African Americans the world and then, instead, kicks them. The Republican party could stand to gain by simply promising to stop kicking and keeping that promise.

Posted by Shinyk | December 24, 2007 3:32 PM

Bruce,

You said:
The problem has been that Republicans have been too stupid to take advantage of Democratic racism because they are convinced that blacks will never vote Republican, not matter what.

If the Republican party wants to court African Americans without compromising ideology, it should start by ending the federal War on Drugs and loudly, unanimously denouncing liberal proposals like gas taxes and cigarette taxes--all of which hit African Americans harder than Whites.

Frequently, the Democratic party promises African Americans the world and then, instead, kicks them. The Republican party could stand to gain by simply promising to stop kicking and keeping that promise.

Posted by Shinyk | December 24, 2007 3:32 PM

Several dozen Democrats defended their rejection of Bartlett's point about Democrats' racist history, arguing "No Democrat is trying to be the next Fulbright." They say this as though Republicans, by invoking the name of Reagan, are somehow deliberately invoking a racist past.

This is grotesque and dishonest. The only people even attempting to paint Reagan as racist are Democrats, and the only way they can do it is by positing "code words;" to wit, "We realize Republicans never said anything that could reasonably be considered racist, but WE ALL KNOW they're really racists in their hearts, so we're justified in using non-racist words as evidence of racism."

This is what passes for "analysis" among Democrats.

Incredible. Beyond. Belief.

Here's the thing, folks: it means nothing that Democrats don't invoke the memory of Wm. Fulbright. Democrats to this day continue to regard blacks as inferior to whites. It's evident in their policy choices that posit blacks as incapable of making the gains every other American cultural group has made on its own. It's evident in their consistent marginalizing of the Congressional Black Caucus. It's evident in the lily-white staffs of major Democrat Senators.

Posted by Plumb Bob | December 24, 2007 3:46 PM

All of this discussion just proves that liberals can dish it out when it comes to race, but they can't take it when someone throws the Democratic Party's indisputable racist past back at them.

In what possible way does it demonstrate that? As the original post, and many folks above mention, the past is hardly "buried." It's well known, it just happens to be quite old, with some pretty significant events that have occurred in between.

It's nice that you can make an argument by assertion, but it's hardly novel.

Posted by Brad L | December 24, 2007 3:49 PM

All of this discussion just proves that liberals can dish it out when it comes to race, but they can't take it when someone throws the Democratic Party's indisputable racist past back at them.

and

they cannot stand any kind of light being focused on their own racist past (and present).

Huh? How about you actually address responses to you instead of making bizarre statements that remain so general that there is no way of connecting them with what's been said? A number of the replies have been perfectly content to acknowledge the indisputable racist past of the Democratic party. The point that people have contested is that the Democratic party of the present has not broken with that past. Matt's original post made the case pretty clearly. You have done nothing to rebut that. And you've made the case harder on yourself by citing Democrats' occasional reminder of what Reagan said in 1980 - are you saying that Republicans have repudiated what Reagan was up to there? Or are you simply denying that there was anything problematic about it?

Again, you don't see people here denying the white supremacist past of the Democratic party. But you do see people on the right denying that Reagan's 1980 was a racist act, or that Joe McCarthy was a bad bad guy. Or would you care to actually contest that with, you know, facts and arguments?

Posted by Jeff | December 24, 2007 3:58 PM

Me: Affluent white progressive democrats living under apartheid in Massachusetts.

Posted by J2 | December 24, 2007 5:46 PM

They say this as though Republicans, by invoking the name of Reagan, are somehow deliberately invoking a racist past.

Arguably they aren't (though it's worth noting that Democrats don't even invoke Fulbright's name). But when Trent Lott praised Thurmond's presidential campaign he was deliberately invoking a racist past. Republicans voted to put Lott back in the leadership, and fulsomely praised him on his retirement, even explicitly whitewashing his Thurmond speech. That's invoking a racist past too.

Republicans don't get black votes because Republicans are still terrible on race.

resh, thanks for the clarification about Griswold.

Posted by Matt Weiner | December 24, 2007 6:00 PM

Bartlett responds: they cannot stand any kind of light being focused on their own racist past (and present)

Holy crap. I can't believe a guy with this kind of reasoning ability was allowed within 10 miles of any centers of government deliberation. Maybe if we talk real slow, in soft, reassuring tones, he'll eventually grasp the argument:
1. The old nativist/segregationist types that used to populate the Democratic Party before the 1960's are gone.
2. They became Republicans because candidates like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan appealed to those sentiments.
3. This is the Republicans' problem, not the Democrats'. The fact that your dirty restaurant still has cockroaches is not the fault of the restaurant next door who, while having had a cockroach problem in the past, did a thorough cleaning and made its space less hospitable to the vermin.

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

Why don't we just get David Horowitz and Alan Keyes in here, to argue how Republicans really care most about African Americans' interests, and explain why such a small percentage of African Americans seems to agree.

Posted by Jalmari | December 24, 2007 6:39 PM

We do have an "independent, thinking, and non-servile black population." And they vote Democratic. And Bruce hates this.

Posted by Daddy Love | December 24, 2007 6:47 PM

Um, how about the Reagan stuff is relevant because the GOP has spent the last several years trying to turn him into the greatest president since George Washington?

Posted by Steve V | December 24, 2007 8:56 PM

Reagan may have been against race preferences but he wasn't anti-Black as Colin Powell, Alan Keyes, or the many Black appointees to his administration would point out if asked. I'm bi-racial and grew up in an all Black family and I know first hand that the so-called "racism" of Reagan and conservatives like him is the beleif that I and my Black brothers and sisters can stand on our own two feet and would be foolish to rely on the non-existant largess of White liberals. The inaction and silence of White liberals in the face of racist killings of Blacks by illegal immigrant populated gangs, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has termed ethnic cleansing, proves that White liberals have no more thrown off their Klannish roots than we have thrown off their ideological shackles.White liberals do not have our best interest at heart.

What White liberals have is so called "Black leaders" in ther pocket willing to preach Black inferiority in return for being allowed to be the house slaves on the Democratic plantation. If my Black brothers and sisters don't want to vote Republican so be it, but at least demand that we be respected by the Democrats as much as Gays, Latinos and Muslims are. Demand that they expell "former" Klan member Robert Byrd, demand that the dragging death of our Black sister Sandra Hall by a Arab Muslim who said he ran down an unarmed mother of three in "self defense" be classified a hate crime.

But most of all demand that you be treated as Men and Women equal in all ways to Whites, and watch how quickly your "Friends" in the Democratic party turn on you.

Posted by Rob Taylor | December 25, 2007 12:11 AM

OMFG. Bartlett has amazin friends, friends worthy of him.

Posted by John Emerson | December 25, 2007 1:45 AM

"I was very careful to pick statements by party leaders that covered the full history of the Democratic Party from the beginning to the present day."

I have a hard time believing that Bruce Bartlett managed to get through school without learning what information is supposed to be included in a citation. (Hint: it's more than just the author and the year.) So I have no intention of trying to check his quotes. But I do notice that most of his quotes clearly express racist sentiment, so checking them would be mostly a matter of determining whether the words were actually said. To check any of the quotes after 1961, on the other hand, would require looking carefully at the context to figure out whether the quotes were racist or not. Because liberals seized the Democratic party from the racists in the 1960's, I'll make an educated guess that anyone who checked the quotes after 1961 would find that the quotes weren't racist.

P.S. I don't have to guess in the case of the Dodd quote. Byrd left the KKK before entering politics, so Dodd's praise of Byrd's Senate career is not an endorsement of Byrd's KKK membership.

Posted by Kenneth Almquist | December 25, 2007 3:14 PM

That is why Democrats feel it necessary to dredge up old speeches by Ronald Reagan from 27 years agao and blow them out of proportion--and it is why they cannot stand any kind of light being focused on their own racist past (and present).

Ooh, touchy.

You've already established you're a political whore, Bruce. Now we're just speculating over your price. Was this your own idea, or did some bright spark at your publisher come up with it?

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 25, 2007 3:40 PM

@ jonas:

“ 1. The old nativist/segregationist types that used to populate the Democratic Party before the 1960's are gone.”

The preceding statement is by and large correct.

2. They (old nativist/segregationist types )became Republicans because candidates like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan appealed to those sentiments.

Times have changed. It ain’t your grandfather’s Oldsmobile: Bull Connor no longer rules the roost. In 1958, 94% of white Americans disapproved of marriages between blacks and whites, which also indicates that such opinions were not at all restricted to the segregationist South. By 2007, that percentage had gone down to 19% of white Americans.

The old nativist/segregationist types have by and large died off. See the above. For white Americans 50 or above, 64% approved of interracial marriage. For white Americans 18-49, 86% approved of interracial marriage.

@ Almquist:

P.S. I don't have to guess in the case of the Dodd quote. Byrd left the KKK before entering politics, so Dodd's praise of Byrd's Senate career is not an endorsement of Byrd's KKK membership

Among the Democrats who opposed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 were Senators Albert Gore Sr. and Robert Byrd. Not only did former Klansman Robert Byrd oppose the Civil Rights Bill, he filibustered against it for 14 hours before the final vote. At a very critical time, Senator Byrd sided with the Klan. I beg to differ with Senator Dodd: someone who sided with the Klan at a critical point in his Senate career does not have a Senate career worthy of praise.

Posted by PostLiberal | December 26, 2007 3:35 AM

PostLib-

Exactly (re Byrd): and not only did he vote against the '64 CRB, but later in '65 against the Voting Rights Act! The fact is, Byrd remained a de facto segregationist well into his senate career, which principally accounts for his Dixiecrat nexus.

That Dodd, or anyone, would praise that bigot is as laughable as the Lott/Thurmond kudo.

Posted by resh | December 26, 2007 10:09 AM

Reagan may have been against race preferences but he wasn't anti-Black as Colin Powell, Alan Keyes, or the many Black appointees to his administration would point out if asked.

The first letter of "black" does not need to be capitalized in most if not all of your uses of the word. Nor do the first letters of "white," "gay," "men," "women" and "friends." Also, you misspelled "belief," "expel," and, in the first sentence of the second paragraph, "their." It looks like you improperly used a number of compound adjectives as two words instead of hyphenating them. I'm not certain about all of them, but "so-called" should definitely have a hyphen.

The inaction and silence of White liberals in the face of racist killings of Blacks by illegal immigrant populated gangs, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has termed ethnic cleansing ...

Do you have a link or citation?

Demand that they expell "former" Klan member Robert Byrd, demand that the dragging death of our Black sister Sandra Hall by a Arab Muslim who said he ran down an unarmed mother of three in "self defense" be classified a hate crime.

There should be a semicolon after Robert Byrd's name instead of a comma. Also, the word "Arab" should be preceded by "an."

More importantly, though, why do you say that the death of Sandra Hall was a hate crime? I had never heard of her before this, so I Googled her. The first two links I found were to news articles and your own site was the third. Definitions of hate crimes vary, but a federal 1969 law seems like a good basic definition: when someone "by force or threat of force willfully injures, intimidates or interferes with ... any person because of his race, color, religion or national origin ..." I didn't see compelling evidence at your blog that Abdelaziz Hamze was motivated by Hall's race. You make an argument, plausible but in my opinion far from airtight, that Hamze's friend Terak Chaaban is racist, but that's it.

On the other hand, I suppose I should thank you for drawing attention to the real menace facing our country. Yup, eternal vigilance against Russians tunneling under the Bering Strait is the price of liberty!

Posted by Cyrus | December 26, 2007 12:11 PM

Wow, I've really lost a lot of respect for Bruce Bartlett based more on his attempted defense of his article and book than on the writings themselves. Who is denying the racist past (and to some extent present) of the Democratic party? No one that I can see here. The Democrats are far from perfect on race issues today, but they are leagues ahead of Republicans. Does he think it's a coincidence that Strom Thurmond left the party in 1964 when Civil Rights legislation passed? Methinks he doth protest too much. By the way, when Biden made the "Obama's so articulate" statement, he got ripped up and down by liberal (presumably Democratic-leaning) blogs. There's really no sense in going into the history, because it's obvious that most of the people here know it, but this stuff is apparently news to Bartlett and his defenders.

Posted by gus | December 26, 2007 3:23 PM

Bruce wrote:

"The problem has been that Republicans have been too stupid to take advantage of Democratic racism because they are convinced that blacks will never vote Republican, not matter what. But times are changing. The post-civil rights generation of African Americans don't feel the same blind loyalty of the party of FDR & LBJ that their parents did."

After digging up all that "hidden" history in plain view, Bruce just happened to conveniently overlook how Blacks switched parties. Black Republicans even try to sell Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a Republican. So Blacks obviously must have seen something wrong with the Republican party to change said "loyalty."

As far as the post-civil rights generation... Please leave the funny smelling kool-aid alone. The "times are a changing" song is a broken record that's been skipping beats for a while now. And Blacks aren't blind to the fact that today's Republican party ain't the party of Lincoln. But I'm sure insulting Black people's intelligence regarding who they vote for is a way to ingratiate yourself and the Republican party to them.

Yeah.

I'm also sure the notion implicit in your "times are changing" logic is sound too. I'm sure it follows that Blacks who feel little or no loyalty to the Democratic party will just automatically become loyal to the Republican party.

I'm telling you I'm sure that logic works. That's why we've saw it work it's magic in the mid-term election with the amazingly successful campaigns of Lynn Swann, Michael Steele and Ken Blackwell.

Yep! Times are a changin'...

Posted by Nmaginate | December 31, 2007 12:00 AM