Friday, January 02, 2009

Krugman on the Historic Collapse of the GOP

This has been bubbling under the surface for a long time, the latest "Magic Negro" incident coming from the highest levels of the GOP has brought the party's inherent racism out into the open. Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times, has nailed it.
As the new Democratic majority prepares to take power, Republicans have become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a party of whiners.

Some of the whining almost defies belief. Did Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general, really say, “I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror”? Did Rush Limbaugh really suggest that the financial crisis was the result of a conspiracy, masterminded by that evil genius Chuck Schumer?

But most of the whining takes the form of claims that the Bush administration’s failure was simply a matter of bad luck — either the bad luck of President Bush himself, who just happened to have disasters happen on his watch, or the bad luck of the G.O.P., which just happened to send the wrong man to the White House.

The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.

If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well, it was just following the advice of leading conservative think tanks: after the 2000 election the Heritage Foundation specifically urged the new team to “make appointments based on loyalty first and expertise second.”

Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in general. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing well? Bigger Than Bush

This is not a partisan blog. We have our principles, and those principles are best represented, in general, by Democratic politicians, but they're no angels. For instance, if the Democrats in the Maryland legislature had any backbone our state would have marriage equality now... don't get me started.

I don't care one way or the other about any political party, but the principles that the Republicans have embroidered on their flag are the exact opposite of what I believe. It didn't have to be that way, you can stand for free enterprise and self-reliance and even straight-and-narrow moral principles and if you make a good case, then fine, there's a lot to talk about there. But instead they have come to stand for underhandedness, for divisiveness, for bullying, they have become the anti-intellectual party. They are not a party that disagrees with the other side's beliefs, it is a party that doesn't like the other side, personally, that thinks the other side is made up of bad people.
Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People.

Oh, and the racial element isn’t all that abstract, even now: Chip Saltsman, currently a candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, sent committee members a CD including a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro” — and according to some reports, the controversy over his action has actually helped his chances.

So the reign of George W. Bush, the first true Southern Republican president since Reconstruction, was the culmination of a long process. And despite the claims of some on the right that Mr. Bush betrayed conservatism, the truth is that he faithfully carried out both his party’s divisive tactics — long before Sarah Palin, Mr. Bush declared that he visited his ranch to “stay in touch with real Americans” — and its governing philosophy.

That’s why the soon-to-be-gone administration’s failure is bigger than Mr. Bush himself: it represents the end of the line for a political strategy that dominated the scene for more than a generation.

It is interesting to analyze the party's platform as an expression that emanates from a nucleus of racist feeling. They maintain a social dichotomy based on disgust for the other, it's always us against them, we're good and they're bad -- ask a pro-lifer what kind of person gets an abortion, and see how long it is before they use the word "welfare." And just what would a woman on welfare look like? Just a guess: they will have darker skin than the average Republican. That Atwater quote really says a lot.

I've copied and pasted almost all of this column here, I might as well finish the job.
The reality of this strategy’s collapse has not, I believe, fully sunk in with some observers. Thus, some commentators warning President-elect Barack Obama against bold action have held up Bill Clinton’s political failures in his first two years as a cautionary tale.

But America in 1993 was a very different country — not just a country that had yet to see what happens when conservatives control all three branches of government, but also a country in which Democratic control of Congress depended on the votes of Southern conservatives. Today, Republicans have taken away almost all those Southern votes — and lost the rest of the country. It was a grand ride for a while, but in the end the Southern strategy led the G.O.P. into a cul-de-sac.

Mr. Obama therefore has room to be bold. If Republicans try a 1993-style strategy of attacking him for promoting big government, they’ll learn two things: not only has the financial crisis discredited their economic theories, the racial subtext of anti-government rhetoric doesn’t play the way it used to.

Will the Republicans eventually stage a comeback? Yes, of course. But barring some huge missteps by Mr. Obama, that will not happen until they stop whining and look at what really went wrong. And when they do, they will discover that they need to get in touch with the real “real America,” a country that is more diverse, more tolerant, and more demanding of effective government than is dreamt of in their political philosophy.

Every once in a while a newspaper columnist gets it just right. This is one of those times.

11 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"This has been bubbling under the surface for a long time, the latest "Magic Negro" incident coming from the highest levels of the GOP has brought the party's inherent racism out into the open."

Not really. The "Magic Negro" video was a parody of a writer who claimed that whites only voted for Obama because they were looking for a "magic negro" to save them from the guilt they feel for slavery. Do you agree that's why Obama was elected, Jim? In any case, to object to that line of reasoning is hardly racist. Now that a clear majority of Americans have elected a half-black President, it's time to end the knee-jerk sensitivity that says that in any disagreement on racial topics, one side must be racist.

Moreover, top Republicans immediately condemned the video. Republicans have long been more aggressive in appointing minorities to high level positions than whites. George Bush's cabinet was more diverse than any administration in history. He had two black Secretary of States. Indeed, Colin Powell, was a leading candidate in polls of Republicans and likely would have been the first black President had he chosen to run. There isn't much evidence that Republicans are racist.

It's likely that now that the barrier has been breached and a partially black man has become President, that blacks will not vote so monolithically but start to examine the positions of both parties and determine what candidate truly supports theor interests. This is scaring the bejeebies out of Democrats so we can expect more people like Jim trying to paint the GOP as racist.

Give it up, guys.

January 03, 2009 9:31 AM  
Blogger JimK said...

Anon, it's not hard to paint the GOP as racist, in fact it's an interesting exercise to trace everything back to that, and not very difficult. I voted for Obama without taking his race into account at all. That's the beauty of it, he's intelligent, he's well informed, he can fight a tough fight, he's just the opposite of the guy we've got now.

I don't think he was elected for any reason that had to do with race. Well, I think a lot of black folks voted for him, but people like me voted for him because he was qualified and the other candidate wasn't. Cheapen his victory as much as you like, I saw the guy speak, he's bright, he's got the right ideas, he's down to earth, he'll make a great president.

JimK

January 03, 2009 10:22 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I didn't say he was elected solely because of his race. The writer from the LA Times did. The person who cricticized the writer, in the form of parody has been labelled a racist by you, which is why I asked if you agreed with the writer.

I don't remember "cheapening" his victory. I like Obama alright. He has no track record so we don't know what his decision-making will be like and he has ideas that conflict with those of most Americans but he seems a good "face" for the country: congenial, even-tempered, devoted family man, good (if not) great speaker, pragmatic.

We'll see how it goes but America needs a two-party system. Scurrilous charges of racism are inappropriate. Eventually the Democratic Party will either become more centrist, as Obama realistically seems to be moving it toward, or it will be replaced.

This is still a centrist-right country. Don't be deceived by the euphoria of a good election for your side.

January 03, 2009 11:09 AM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

I voted for Obama because he represents the change we need, which is to get as far away as possible from the lies, greed, and arrogance of the Bush/Cheney administration, not out of any sense of guilt. McCain/Palin even tried to coopt Obama's line and say that they represented the change the country needed. Fortunately, the country was not fooled again and decided otherwise.

You prove Krugman's point that the GOP is racist when you refer to Obama as half or partially black rather than half or partially white. How many mixed race people do you think of as part white? We know your answer.

The GOP forgot it was the party of Lincoln when it made the conscious decision to pursue racist Southern Democrats using the Southern Strategy in its effort to divide, conquer, and win elections.

Wikipedia reports:

Although the phrase "Southern strategy" is often attributed to Richard Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips, he did not originate it, but merely popularized it. In an interview included in a 1970 New York Times article, he touched on its essence:

"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."

While Phillips was concerned with polarizing ethnic voting in general, and not just with winning the white South, this was by far the biggest prize yielded by his approach. Its success began at the presidential level, gradually trickling down to statewide offices, the Senate and House, as legacy segregationist Democrats retired or switched to the GOP. The strategy suffered a brief apparent reversal following Watergate, with broad support for the Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election. But Ronald Reagan proclaiming support for "states' rights" at the Neshoba County Fair near Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964's Freedom Summer--his first Southern campaign stop after winning the 1980 Republican presidential nomination--is often cited as evidence of the Republican Party building upon the Southern Strategy again.


Unlike Anon who prefers lurking in the shadows, Lee Atwater was proud of the work he did. Here's how Lee Atwater described the GOP's winning tactic in 1981:

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".


He trained Karl Rove and George W. Bush to use this strategy of abstract codes to divide the opposition and win elections. That strategy worked pretty well, until George Allen had his "macaca moment." Things changed a lot after that homemade film showed the ugly truth of GOP campaigning. Nowadays, intolerance and segregation are out, tolerance and diversity are in.

Once he became ill and just before he died, Atwater had a change of heart and he spoke of the spiritual hole that needs filling in our nation. Bush tried to lead us with his "my way or the highway" pronoucements but finally now, Obama is here to fill that hole in our spiritual hearts. He fills us with hope and leads us by encouraging all of us to say loudly and proudly "YES WE CAN!" And now, guess what "YES WE DID!"

I can't wait for Jan. 20 when all the world sees Obama sworn in as the leader of the free world.

January 03, 2009 11:59 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Aunt Bea said " can't wait for Jan. 20 when all the world sees Obama sworn in as the leader of the free world.".

Et tu Aunt Bea? Obama will never be the leader of the free world just as no U.S. president ever has been. The free world has its own leaders and we don't kow tow to American presidents.

January 03, 2009 1:26 PM  
Anonymous Robert said...

Racially, socially, ethnically and economically divisive politics have lead the Republican party into a cul-de-sac simply because the United States is inexorably becoming a more diverse and tolerant nation.

I worry, though, that such progress can be reversed in times of national setback and disaster. People in pain look for someone to blame.

January 03, 2009 2:20 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I voted for Obama because he represents the change we need, which is to get as far away as possible from the lies, greed, and arrogance of the Bush/Cheney administration,"

You must be confused. Bush and Cheney weren't running.

"not out of any sense of guilt."

You agree with the creator of the "Magic Negro" video, then, that Obama didn't win because he fulfilled a need to heal whites' sense of guilt.

"McCain/Palin even tried to coopt Obama's line and say that they represented the change the country needed."

They had a good case. Problem is, Obama might represent some changes no one bargained for. Hopefully not though.

"Fortunately, the country was not fooled again and decided otherwise."

Actually, they were fooled into thinking Obama was more accomplished than he is.

"You prove Krugman's point that the GOP is racist when you refer to Obama as half or partially black rather than half or partially white."

I actually said that because you guys keep referring to him as the first "black" America. Nice try at trying to think though.

"How many mixed race people do you think of as part white? We know your answer."

I know a number of couples that are mixed race. I don't really think of their kids as part anything. I may also know mixed race individuals but wouldn't know it because I haven't met their parents.

Point is, you guys are the ones who always want to bring up race. I'm just responding to your inane ideas.

"He trained Karl Rove and George W. Bush to use this strategy of abstract codes to divide the opposition and win elections."

Bea, you're ignoring the fact that George Bush's initial cabinet was the most diverse in history. That he appointed two black secretaries of state. That he had a close black friend deliver the bendiction at his second inaugural. That he insisted on racial categories in No Child Left Behind, which has begun to make real inroads into the black scholastic achievement gap. That Republicans fought to open school choice and save inner city black children from failing and dangerous schools. That he doubled funding to fight AIDS in Africa from the level the Clinton administration had appropriated. The list goes on and on.

Anyway, can we have a few examples of these abstract codes?

"Bush tried to lead us with his "my way or the highway" pronoucements"

How about some examples of this vague statement you keep making?

"Obama is here to fill that hole in our spiritual hearts. He fills us with hope and leads us by encouraging all of us to say loudly and proudly "YES WE CAN!""

Well, he can become an honorary member of the Pointer Sisters if he likes, but he'll need to do more than chant "yes, we can" to succeed.

"Obama will never be the leader of the free world just as no U.S. president ever has been. The free world has its own leaders and we don't kow tow to American presidents."

Take a class in world politics, Priya. Obama is the leader of the free world, starting January 20. Get used to it. You'll be hearing about his expectations every day. Most Americans don't know the name of the Canadian president. All Canadians know the name of the American president.

"Racially, socially, ethnically and economically divisive politics have lead the Republican party into a cul-de-sac simply because the United States is inexorably becoming a more diverse and tolerant nation."

So, the country has become more "diverse and tolerant" under Republicans?

Maybe you should have voted for them!

January 03, 2009 8:59 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Andrea-not anon
Alberto Gonzales is not just a whiner- he is a shameful blot on our country along with so many others put in positions of power by the Bush Administration. 17 days and counting!

January 04, 2009 10:18 AM  
Anonymous Aunt Bea said...

You must be confused. Bush and Cheney weren't running.

You must have forgotten the facts like this one, brought out in this FOX NEWS interview (among many others) with McCain campaign manager Rick Davis.

MCCAIN: The president and I agree on most issues. There was a recent study that showed that I voted with the president over 90 percent of the time.

(end video clip)

WALLACE: In fact, Mr. Davis, Senator McCain is understating it. Last year, he voted to support Bush legislation 95 percent of the time.


McCain tried to have it both ways, supporting Bush/Cheney policies while trying to pass himself off as the instrument of change the nation needed. A Gallup poll in July 2008 found about two in three Americans concerned that John McCain would pursue policies as president that are too similar to what George W. Bush has pursued. Many polls found the same thing.

You agree with the creator of the "Magic Negro" video, then,

I vehemently disagree with Paul Shankin's video depiction of black public figures and elected officials in negrophobic stereotypes. That's not how I would express my sentiments that white guilt had nothing to do with Obama winning the election. Shankin should take the MCPS classes on "Repect for Differences in Human Sexuality" so he can learn how to treat people who are different than himself with respect and dignity instead of contempt and derision. In fact, you should take the classes too, Anon, for the very same reason.

"How many mixed race people do you think of as part white? We know your answer."

I know a number of couples that are mixed race. I don't really think of their kids as part anything. I may also know mixed race individuals but wouldn't know it because I haven't met their parents.


I didn't ask how many mixed race couples with children you knew. I asked how many mixed race people do you think of as part white? If you were to encounter a person with brown skin and tightly curly hair, you'd think of the person as "black," not "part black" or "part white."

Point is, you guys are the ones who always want to bring up race.

You're the one who said "Now that a clear majority of Americans have elected a half-black President" in the very first comment on this blog thread.

Bea, you're ignoring the fact that George Bush's initial cabinet [blah blah blah]

Nice change of subject. I wasn't talking about the way Bush governed, I was talking about how low he stooped to get himself elected, from campaigning at Bob Jones University to snubbing the NAACP for 5 years. He only relented and finally accepted the NAACP invitation in 2006 because polls were showing the GOP was already starting to collapse. It was a campaign stop to help GOP candidates.

But if you want to talk about how he governed, I'm game. You do realize, Bush/Cheney cabinet members and White House advisors were selected for their loyalty, not their competence. Bush/Cheney must not be very good judges of loyalty though. How many White House advisors have written books or made public statements exposing the mess Bush/Cheney made of the White House and how many more will join them in exposing the inner workings of Cheney's bunker? Let's see, counter-terrorism czar Richard Clark, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, and the deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives David Kuo all wrote books and/or spoke out about the shocking inner workings they witnessed at the White House. At least O'Neill and Kuo were selected by Bush/Cheney for their loyalty, but were so disturbed by what they witnessed that they felt obligated to tell the rest of us what was going on. Thank goodness their loyalty to their nation outweighed their loyalty to a couple of men. Makes me wonder what the rest of the White House advisors know but aren't saying. But I'm glad Obama has no intention of starting impeachment proceedings. Bush will be gone and the whole truth will find its way to the surface, eventually.

Anyway, can we have a few examples of these abstract codes?

I'd be happy to supply them for you, again. According to Lee Atwater they include phrases like

"Nigger, nigger, nigger."

forced busing

states' rights

cutting taxes

totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

"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".


Is that clear enough for you?

"Bush tried to lead us with his "my way or the highway" pronoucements"

How about some examples of this vague statement you keep making?


The google is your friend, but the blackle is your environmentally friendly friend. Happy reading!

Well, he can become an honorary member of the Pointer Sisters if he likes, but he'll need to do more than chant "yes, we can" to succeed.

He already did. He got you to praise his Cabinet choices!

So, the country has become more "diverse and tolerant" under Republicans?

No, the country has become more "diverse and tolerant" in spite of Republicans.

Now that I think about it some more, maybe we should be grateful to Bush for screwing up so badly that he finally did unite the country.....behind Obama, the man who will clean up after Bush's blunders. Thanks George, for being such a screw-up that your racist "party of Lincoln" has collapsed in on itself.

January 04, 2009 12:04 PM  
Anonymous aunt Bea said...

Frist Krugman, now Rich. Another excellent summary of the past 8 years is found here: Frank Rich: A President Forgotten but Not Gone

January 04, 2009 3:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

For those who think the GOP is not racist, here's some interesting reading for you.

http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/s0901/final.pdf

January 15, 2009 9:58 AM  

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