Apparently, Bruce Bartlett wrote a book length "Slavery! Robert Byrd! Democrats are wrong on race!" screed. Yglesias gives the response from rote. In the comments, Bartlett says he's trying to make the point that if Woodrow Wilson is out of bounds since it's "old news", so it ought to be with Nixon's "southern strategy", Reagan and welfare queens, etc.
Look, folks, this is pretty easy. Sonny Perdue (R) is probably governor of Georgia today because Roy Barnes (D) had the nerve to make a real effort to remove the Confederate battle flag from the state flag. Trent Lott (R) addressed the national conference of the "Concerned Citizen's Council". Until his resignation, Lott held a higher position in the Republican leadership than Robert Byrd. Exactly zero members of the Republican House or Senate caucuses are African-American. I could go on, but you get the point.
Reagan's record on race, or Lott's nostalgia for Strom Thurmond's (D, until Democrats started supporting anti-lynching laws, at which point he switched to R) Dixiecrat campaign, will be an irrelevant bit of political history as soon as the Republican party stops pandering to our worst instincts when it comes to racial prejudice. This is not to say all Republican voters or politicians are racist, but at present, dog-whistle tirades against "city people", etc., and occasional policy measures that have disparate negative impact on African-Americans are built in to the party's political strategy. None of this is news; GOP political operatives freely admit to it.
Recent Comments