The Southern Strategy and the devil down south.
March 7, 2016 10:56 PM Subscribe

"Goldwater discovered it; Nixon refined it; and Reagan perfected it into the darkest of the modern political dark arts." An excellent piece on the history of the Republican party’s racial politics since the Civil Rights Movement era, and how the 'Southern Strategy' and its dog-whistle appeal to racism paved the way for the current unpleasantness within the Grand Old Party.

Also of interest:

Jeff Stein on the racist ghost of George Wallace and his enduring influence over the GOP.

Charles Pierce at the grave of Lee Atwater, searching for the soul of South Carolina politics—and the modern Republican Party.

posted by homunculus (130 comments total) 69 users marked this as a favorite

The main article is really good...but also really dramatic. This is the kind of article whose substance would really teach something to a lot of friends I know, but I can't share it because they'll dismiss all that substance because of the style.

Which is really too bad, because again, this is a part of US history that more people need to learn.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:25 PM on March 7, 2016 [7 favorites]

Wow. I had no idea that Reagon started his post nomination run in such an racially charged way. And Nixon... All my family remembers him for is normalization of relations with China, they told me nothing about race.

So is it really just a matter of time before this is all terrible but distant history or is the racism thing growing? As American born Chinese in San Francisco it's quite difficult to tell from where I'm at.
posted by mikhuang at 11:51 PM on March 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

What's sad is that this hasn't become obvious to everybody many years ago. It is one of the worst-kept secrets in American Political History.

“I think we just gave the south to the Republicans,” [President Johnson] told his staff after ramming the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:54 PM on March 7, 2016 [12 favorites]

Related: "Why, Exactly, Is Trump Driving Conservatives So Crazy?"
"By making race and nationalism the text rather than the subtext of Republican politics, Trump threatens not only the party’s agenda but the self-conception of its intellectual class."
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:22 AM on March 8, 2016 [64 favorites]

Wow. I had no idea that Reagon started his post nomination run in such an racially charged way.

Racially charged isn't the half of it. He basically endorsed the "Mississippi Burning" murders.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:41 AM on March 8, 2016 [24 favorites]

they'll dismiss all that substance because of the style

Ha, that's funny...I actually like the style. Definitely a Guardian article. The interjection of Robert Johnson adds some flair and context.
posted by mountainpeak at 2:17 AM on March 8, 2016

From the New Yorker piece:

The secret fear lying beneath Rubio’s accurate depiction of Trump as a “con artist” is that Republican voters are easy marks. The Republican Party is constructed as a machine: Into one end are fed the atavistic fears of the white working class as grist, and out the other end pops The Wall Street Journal editorial-page agenda as the finished product. Trump has shown movement conservatives how terrifyingly rickety that machine is and how easily it can be seized from them by a demagogue and repurposed toward some other goal.

Almost implies that there's a conscience at work there. In politics? Politics ain't beanbag.

I am more taken by Taibbi's claim that the real reason that they are less worried by Trump's crazy than, say Cruz's crazy, or W's stupid is that the Party knew in the end that they could control Cruz, or W, but not the Donald.

Either way, I'm deeply, deeply pleased to see that the mask has fallen off the party, and their last defense is Paul Ryan insisting that they are the party of tolerance and inclusion. When he's the adult in the room, and that's his argument, then you know you're in a madhouse.
posted by nothing.especially.clever at 3:03 AM on March 8, 2016 [39 favorites]

I absolutely lost it when I got to "unto us a Trump is given." I have the weirdest ear worm right now.
posted by Sonny Jim at 3:42 AM on March 8, 2016 [12 favorites]

That Taibbi article is full of sick burns alright, but I can't work out whether his prediction of a coming reign of idiocracy in the world is undermined or augmented by the fact that his article leads into:

EDITOR'S PICKS
8 Bruce Springsteen Songs That Scream 'Don't Endorse Trump'
19 of Donald Trump's Weirdest Celebrity Endorsements
11 Biggest Beefs of 2015
Donald Trump's 25 Best Hair Days

posted by Sonny Jim at 4:23 AM on March 8, 2016 [15 favorites]

Since my early days of reading political blogs, conservatives have loved to push the "herp derp Democrats were the racist party in the 50s and 60s hyuk!" line. Many of them don't seem interested in hearing the obvious follow up, "But then LBJ passed the Civil Rights Act, correctly predicting it would lose Democrats the support of the South, where the white vote deserted to the Republican Party, which welcomed them with open arms." Let's not forget that in 2002, Trent Lott openly wished that Strom Thurmond's segregationist Dixiecrat presidential bid had succeeded.

Dying of brain cancer, Lee Atwater confessed that racism was at the root of the Southern Strategy and many Republican appeals to the white vote. Donald Trump is simply saying the quiet parts loud, but Republicans should not be allowed to pretend that they haven't been deliberately encouraging racists to stay just the way they are.

(Look at the contempt for so-called "political correctness" among Republicans -- it's an obvious coded appeal to not having to apologize for overt bigotry, and it's been a part of conservative rhetoric for decades now.)
posted by Gelatin at 4:24 AM on March 8, 2016 [65 favorites]

Researchers have found strong evidence that racism helps the GOP win
"Conservative leaders argue that Republicans do not exploit racial anxiety to win votes, and that any differences between Republicans and Democrats are coincidental...Other research, however, suggests that the party does benefit from racial antipathy."
posted by mountainpeak at 4:44 AM on March 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

I feel these links should also be here:

1980 - Ronald Reagan - Neshoba County Fair - states rights speech full (YT)

Transcript of Ronald Reagan's 1980 Neshoba County Fair speech

But I think even more important on a broader scale [is] in doing that, what we will have to do is to bring back to this country what is so evident here: Bring back the recognition that the people of this country can solve the problems, that we don't have anything to be afraid of as long as we have the people of America. ... I believe that there are programs like that, programs like education and others, that should be turned back to the states and the local communities with the tax sources to fund them, and let the people [applause drowns out end of statement].

I believe in state's rights; I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level.

In light of the setting, these words are chilling.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:03 AM on March 8, 2016 [20 favorites]

Great article. Nothing that I didn't know but nicely summarized. I am hoping that demographics will bite back on the Republicans hard.
posted by octothorpe at 5:04 AM on March 8, 2016

A lot of us knew at the time just what Reagan's speech meant in terms of location and content. That was the dogwhistle of dogwhistles. It was shameful.
posted by y2karl at 5:21 AM on March 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

I was 16 in 1980 and I remember my mom explaining what it meant that he was in Philadelphia, Mississippi. She hated that man.
posted by octothorpe at 5:29 AM on March 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

The most damaging legacy of Trump's campaign is that it demonstrates just how effective the Southern Strategy has been. Now any Republican hoping to secure the party's Presidential nomination in 2020 know that he or she will have no choice but to cater to that vote and there may be no way to make it far enough back to center to win the general election. Unless someone can reel it in, the Southern Strategy may cost them the White House for several upcoming terms.
posted by dances with hamsters at 5:41 AM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Josh Marshall: "You can say all sorts of things about these folks being crazy, or extremists or whatever else. But set aside all these evaluative or partisan interpretations and one thing is fairly clear in objective terms: a large portion of the GOP is not satisfied with what can realistically be achieved by conventional political means."
posted by T.D. Strange at 5:47 AM on March 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

Since my early days of reading political blogs, conservatives have loved to push the "herp derp Democrats were the racist party in the 50s and 60s hyuk!" line.

Whomever you want to attribute as its modern heirs, I do think it's important to note how openly and explicitly racist politics and society still were at that point. I found out just in the last few years that when Wallace was first elected governor the Alabama Democratic party's emblem still contained the phrase "White Supremacy", which was only removed in 1966. (That 1966 newspaper article identifies the Democrats opposing the change as "states rights committee members," evidence that Reagan was using a long-established dog whistle in 1980.) This is the emblem that had appeared on Democratic election ballots for nearly the entirety of the 20th century at that point.
posted by XMLicious at 5:51 AM on March 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

The southern strategy was dasdardly and effective, but it also depended on the neoliberal turn (and abandonment of New Deal style class warfare) by the Dems. As we've witnessed, liberal identity politics is no substitute for class-bases critique. Indeed, I'd argue it played into the right-wing dog whistle strategy.
posted by mondo dentro at 5:52 AM on March 8, 2016 [16 favorites]

"...a large portion of the GOP is not satisfied with what can realistically be achieved by conventional political means."

The rise of American authoritarianism. And now that these forces have been consolidated and magnified and set to work--what comes after Trump?
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:54 AM on March 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

mikhuang So is it really just a matter of time before this is all terrible but distant history or is the racism thing growing?

I'm a white guy, but my partner is black. I asked her basically that question a few days ago and she laughed at me. She says that from her POV it was a lot worse when she was a kid (for point of reference she's 57 and was the first black person to attend the school she went to in first grade). Its just that today white people like me are finally noticing. She says a lot of it has simply become more overt and open following Obama's presidency, and now with Trump moving the subtext into the text its a lot harder for white people to deny what's always been the case.

She compared it to police violence against black people. It isn't that it wasn't happening in the past, or that black people weren't trying to draw attention to it, its just that until video evidence started becoming commonplace white people could completely ignore the problem and pretend it was just hysteria and lies from the black people. Now the evidence is clear and suddenly white people are acting like they've just discovered this huge problem, when in fact the problem has been there forever and they were just ignoring it.

nothing.especially.clever It'll be interesting to see who Trump's VP pick is once he's wrapped up the nomination. If its some Dick Cheney style, never held elected office but been a party appointee for decades, type that'll say he's at least agreed to some degree of control from the party and isn't as much a lose cannon as he's claiming to be. If its a Sarah Palin type then I'd guess that means he's basically giving the party the bird. I'm kind of betting on the latter, but who knows?
posted by sotonohito at 5:58 AM on March 8, 2016 [60 favorites]

German Lopez: Study: white Southerners in counties that had more slaves are likelier to back Republicans

So what's the reason for the connection? The authors suggest that the end of slavery had a tremendous, lasting impact on white Southerners that's been passed down from generation to generation:
For example, Key (1949), Du Bois (1935), and Foner (2011) (among others) have argued that the sudden enfranchisement of blacks was politically threatening to whites, who for centuries had enjoyed exclusive political power. In addition, the emancipation of Southern slaves undermined whites' economic power by abruptly increasing black wages, raising labor costs, and threatening the viability of the Southern plantation economy. …

Taken in tandem with massive preexisting racial hostility throughout the South, these political and economic changes gave Southern Black Belt elites an incentive to further promote existing anti-black sentiment in their local communities by encouraging violence towards blacks and racist attitudes and policies.
To test this idea, the authors looked at how the adoption of tractors in some counties affected anti-black attitudes. The idea: If white Southerners could use the technology to mitigate their demand for black labor and maintain economic dominance over their black counterparts, there would be less of a need for anti-black attitudes to maintain white supremacy.

The hypothesis held true: White Southerners in counties that adopted tractors earlier were less likely to hold anti-black and conservative views today.

Based on the findings, it seems anti-black attitudes have been a way for some white Southerners to keep white supremacy in their counties after they struggled to adapt to political and economic losses once slavery ended. And such attitudes remain today — through modern political views — as a way to maintain white Southerners' political and economic dominance over their black counterparts.

posted by zombieflanders at 6:20 AM on March 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

So is it really just a matter of time before this is all terrible but distant history or is the racism thing growing?

I think the outward expression of racism has been more-or-less reduced over the past forty years or so. That doesn't mean, of course, that racist attitudes have been reduced very much. I'd like to hope it has, though.

What you're seeing today is pent-up or repressed racism being allowed to come roaring out into the public sphere once again, but with a different set of targets...undocumented immigrants and Muslims. I'm 58 and, in my lifetime, I can think of only one other time in my life where there were such overt expressions of hate and racism, and that was back in the late 60's and 70's when forced desegregation and student busing was happening across the country. It was very ugly. I see a lot of similar stuff coming to the fore among the followers of the GOP candidates.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:36 AM on March 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

Perlstein's Nixonland was a very, very good read on this.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 6:38 AM on March 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

The New Deal Grand Coalition was formed on the basis of shared values across Southern White Agrarian Interests and Northern (again largely White) Labor interests. The southern Democrats signed onto FDR style social programs because there was explicit limits to how much the FDR Democrats would interfere with Southern Democrats as they continued the policies of Jim Crow.

Furthermore Democrats were seen as the party of prosperity and stability which is an interesting contrast to today where Republicans have traditionally wrapped themselves in the veneer of being pro-prosperity even though the economy tends to do better under Democrats.

The perceived assault on Southern values in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement and LBJ's caused that coalition to split and white Southern Democrats to transfer party allegiance en masse. Make no mistake there are no Reagan Democrats anymore they are all Republican.

Combined with the loss of Southern Democrats was the decline in unions in the North and the tendency of Ethnic European Catholics to no longer identify as strongly with the Democrats as the Roman Catholic Church experienced a wave of conservative backlash following Vatican II.
posted by vuron at 6:39 AM on March 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

even though the economy tends to do better under Democrats.

I've always found this particular line a bit facile. . .

1950-80 was this country and the "First World" in general growing like a weed, finding much "green field" expansion possible as we, "the West", developed our industry, science, and technology in pretty neat directions.

Behind this was the rise of automation and imports from cheap-labor countries of the Far East and Mexico.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=3J92

shows in the 1950s mfg was 1 in 3 jobs (!), falling to 1 in 5 by 1980, and 1 in 10 now. (efficiency is good tho, so aside from trade deficit issues that's OK I guess)

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=3J9g shows two other trends, the rise of debt/savings (red, right axis) and the parallel rise of our Gini ratio.

The rise of 2+ income households since the 1970s has been a significant wealth multiplier, but it has come at the cost of ever-rising price inflation in land values.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=3J9x is jobs / population age 15-64.

9/12 people had jobs in 1999, now it's 8/12 (ignoring the effect of age 65+ working a bit more now).

The trends here are bigger than 4 or 8 year spans of time.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:07 AM on March 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

One more reason why the Supreme Court's gutting of the VRA was an absolute tragedy...
posted by sallybrown at 7:11 AM on March 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Here's another Guardian article by Thomas Frank on Trump and racism. He doesn't dispute that racism is a factor, but he thinks people are really listening to Trump's feelings about free trade.
posted by sneebler at 7:18 AM on March 8, 2016 [8 favorites]

The Republican Party is constructed as a machine: Into one end are fed the atavistic fears of the white working class as grist, and out the other end pops The Wall Street Journal editorial-page agenda as the finished product.

That's the best explanation I've seen in a long time.
posted by gottabefunky at 7:19 AM on March 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

the current unpleasantness

I see what you did there. Well played, sir.
posted by corb at 7:19 AM on March 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

I grew up in the middle of this mess and it left me with a permanent set of dog ears. The Dixiecrats were a year before I was born. All public facilities were segregated in Texas when I was a child. The Goldwater election was in my first year of high school. We regularly traveled to small town Mississippi and rural Georgia during the civil rights protests and I heard plenty of "them northern agitators are coming down here and stirring up our black folks" talk from relatives. The first (and only) black student I went to public school with was in my senior year. Agnes was one lonely girl. I was the only student from her new high school that attended her birthday party. A frequent bridge partner my freshman year in college was the first black to play football for the University of Texas. Our 24/7 floating bridge game possibly contributed to E.A. not making it past junior varsity. No Republican had been elected to a state-wide office in Texas for over 100 years when I was in college. By the time I was in my 30's the entire state was blood red. All this is possibly news to some but I threw up my hands and gave up long ago. No one alive right now will outlive this stain...
posted by jim in austin at 7:21 AM on March 8, 2016 [20 favorites]

Part of me is kinda glad that Trump is surfacing all the hatred boiling underneath the surface of the Republican party but I am also scared that he is legitimizing hate speech in a way that hasn't been publically acceptable in ages. It doesn't take that many "bad apples" to seize on his messaging and ramp up violence against all sorts of groups that Trump is more than willing to other in his quest for the nomination.

Violence against Muslims is on the increase and I suspect that violence against other minority populations will not be far behind.

At the end of the day I can always choose to blend into the background and avoid the invective and hatred being shouted at my fellow Americans but honestly I'd rather stand up against this sort of hate-speech and scapegoating.
posted by vuron at 7:25 AM on March 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

The scary thing for me is not Trump, but the people who like Trump. The well of racial hatred is very deep, and Trump is showing just how deep.
posted by OmieWise at 7:38 AM on March 8, 2016 [19 favorites]

A fascinating and excellent article. Unfortunately, although the Southern Strategy is beginning to backfire against the Republicans on the national scale, it is still alive and kicking in local races. There are 25 states where both the Governor and the majority of the State legislature is Republican. Aside from the effect on local laws and regulations, it assures Republican control over gerrymandering a majority of House districts.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 7:48 AM on March 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

Well, at least no matter what happens, if Trump wins or not, he's changed the game completely. The Republicans can't pretend anymore that there isn't this cauldron of racial resentment bubbling in their base.

The very best outcome the Republican establishment could achieve at this point is wresting the nomination from Trump at the convention, but that's clearly not some ringing condemnation of Trump's rhetoric or the forces in the party he tapped into.

That ugly truth is now exposed to the world for even the party itself to see.
posted by Sangermaine at 7:48 AM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

The very best outcome the Republican establishment could achieve at this point is wresting the nomination from Trump at the convention, but that's clearly not some ringing condemnation of Trump's rhetoric or the forces in the party he tapped into.

There's an argument that the best outcome for the Republican establishment (albeit a risky one) is to let Trump have the nomination and lose badly. That gives the GOP the opportunity to come back in 2018 and 2020 and say "that's not what we're about." I doubt they'll take the long view, however.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 8:13 AM on March 8, 2016

This is the connection between former slaveowning regions and voting blocs today.

Herrenvolk means, literally, “master folk.” The idea is that of democratic government — but only by and for the ethnic majority (or, in places like Apartheid South Africa or the West Bank or parts of Mississippi, for the privileged ethnic minority).

This is helpful for trying to understand the appeal of people like Donald Trump or Alex Jones. Herrenvolk democrats are not opposed to “Big Government” in the form of welfare and assistance for themselves, but they’re fiercely opposed to any such assistance going to others — to the wrong kind of people. They want “Big Government” under their own feet, solidifying the foundations of their own lives, but they hate the idea of government offering the same support to those other kinds of people.

posted by MonkeyToes at 8:18 AM on March 8, 2016 [8 favorites]

Well. If it's going to be that sort of time again, I suppose I had better prepare myself for a sooner demise than I would have wanted, is that it? If shit goes down in the next year, it would be a betrayal of my ancestors' struggles to simply run off to Canada, right?
posted by droplet at 8:25 AM on March 8, 2016

But the Republican party doesn't want to abandon the implicit racist dog-whistles because they are useful for GOTV strategies. They do want to hide explicit racism behind a veneer of compassionate conservativism so that minority voters in particular Latinos will be willing to vote for Republican candidates.

Basically the logic is this:

Republicans can no longer win Presidential elections based upon dominating the white vote (70-30 split is not realistically possible anymore) so they have to grow their brand by appealing to minority voters that might agree with Republican social and economic conservatism. The primary group they are focusing on have been Latino voters because they are perceived to be socially conservative (at least in relation to abortion and some hot button culture war issues) and have a perceived dislike of government taxation and regulation.

However explicit racism undermines that messaging to the point where even Latino republicans like Cruz and Ruboto are being seen in a negative light (not at the extreme level that Trump is but definitely at a level that could cost either of them the general election).

Between the white nationalists getting disenchanted with the Party and flocking to Trump's banner and the evangelicals realizing that the Fiscal conservatives have been playing them for rubes (great for GOTV but easy to ignore the rest of the time) there is a massive number of really deep fissures appearing in the GOP caucus which could force a radical realignment as they move rapidly into being a regional opposition party to a resurgent Democratic coalition.
posted by vuron at 8:26 AM on March 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Some of us weren't born when Reagan made that speech, and it's certainly not the sort of thing that makes it into the history courses unless you go looking and you go looking hard. I had no idea that he'd blown a dog whistle that loud, although I certainly had no respect for the long-term effects of his presidency. Jesus.
posted by sciatrix at 8:27 AM on March 8, 2016 [16 favorites]

the problem with these sorts of takes is that they make politics seem like a pure marketing/advertising exercise; it's all about the messaging. But, the meat of politics is "activists" and in this context "activist" means White Citizens Councils, KKK, and worse. Look at the CV of Richard Viguerie (and note his libertarian pedigree, google Rand Paul). One of the revolutions that Goldwater ushered in was direct mail outreach, but the people who figured out how to do direct mail outreach were racist activists in the South, the sort of scum that Wallace carried under his umbrella. People forget that Wallace represented a populist racism of the common man in the South, which he introduced to a national audience when he ran for prez. What Goldwater discovered is that you could get those activists to work for the Republican party, and those activists brought the white Southern vote with them. There is a similar story for radical christian activists who are shoots off the same tree.

The ultimate outcome of the Southern strategy has been that the "grassroots" of the Republican party is dominated by populist groups: racists and radical christians (and the intersection). It's why all those school board elections are filled by nutjobs. The problem for the Republican party is that those grassroots groups are no longer satisfied with being servants. They want to control the whole party. Trump and Cruz aim to capitalize on this political movement within the party, which is why both are seen as threats to the party itself, that is, the corporate and financial interests that have been the "real" base of the Republican party.

A contest between Cruz and Trump is about whether the elite of the party can play two populist movements within the party against each other and still remain on top, a dicey proposition at best. The most likely outcome of this election is that the Republican party will contract to it's white populist base, while the Democrats move fully into the role of representing big business and Wall Street. In a Clinton presidency, splitting the Democrats by opposing Hillary will have the outcome of aiding the Republicans ie. aiding racists. You are fooling yourself if you think there is any room for moving Hillary to the left in those circumstances.
posted by ennui.bz at 8:57 AM on March 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

If you haven't read Nelson Rockefeller's address at the 1964 GOP National Convention, you really should. Best quote IMO:

"These people have nothing in common with Republicanism.
These people have nothing in common with Americans.
The Republican party must repudiate these people. "
posted by eclectist at 9:03 AM on March 8, 2016 [12 favorites]

> The Republicans can't pretend anymore that there isn't this cauldron of racial resentment bubbling in their base.

The new trick seems to be denying these people are/were ever part of the base. "Where did Trump find these people? They're ruining our nice, respectable party!"
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:18 AM on March 8, 2016 [15 favorites]

“And we in the GOP, the party of the great Ronald Reagan, we do not say racist and sexist things. We imply them subtly, over decades and decades of policy.”
posted by zombieflanders at 9:29 AM on March 8, 2016 [9 favorites]

If nothing else the spectacle of David Brooks having a public meltdown over the barbarians invading his cocktail party is entertaining.
posted by octothorpe at 9:33 AM on March 8, 2016 [20 favorites]

I've run into several modern Republicans who will swear up and down that the Southern Strategy is a myth promulgated by the "liberal media". Never mind that the head of the RNC apologized for it over 10 years ago.
posted by brundlefly at 9:38 AM on March 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

If you haven't read Nelson Rockefeller's address at the 1964 GOP National Convention, you really should.

And of course, with Mitt Romney's recent public denunciation of Trump, we see history repeating itself. (Not that Romney is anything like Rockefeller, an honest-to-god liberal Republican, other than their both being well-heeled scions of the establishment.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:40 AM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

The very best outcome the Republican establishment could achieve at this point is wresting the nomination from Trump at the convention, but that's clearly not some ringing condemnation of Trump's rhetoric or the forces in the party he tapped into.

I think it'll come down to a Rubio/Cruz or Cruz/Rubio ticket born out of necessity, the order of which depends on which candidate is willing to blink first and wait 8 years.
posted by dances with hamsters at 9:40 AM on March 8, 2016

Not that Romney is anything like Rockefeller, an honest-to-god liberal Republican

Or even his father, George Romney, who fought against Goldwater, opposed the Vietnam War and supported civil rights.
posted by tivalasvegas at 10:15 AM on March 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

The scary thing for me is not Trump, but the people who like Trump. The well of racial hatred is very deep, and Trump is showing just how deep.

The surprising and scary thing for me is that some of them are people I've known and liked for a long time.
posted by Lyme Drop at 10:31 AM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've only met one professed Trump supporter in real life so far and he's not someone that I liked or respected before so seeing him wearing a Trump shirt didn't really lower my opinion of him.
posted by octothorpe at 10:40 AM on March 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Trump has simply taken everything the GOP has said or done in the last 40 years and turned it up to 11. The only surprising thing about this is that it hasn't been done before. I guess because they haven't had a candidate who a) had enough money to be able to ignore the party's rulers and b) was willing to spend it on a campaign until now.
posted by tommasz at 10:47 AM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

It'll be interesting to see who Trump's VP pick is once he's wrapped up the nomination.

Seems to be some talk of Sen. Jeff Sessions. But that's just vague rumblings.
posted by theorique at 10:49 AM on March 8, 2016

How does the VP get officially selected? I mean, usually the presidential nominee picks them, but is there technically a vote at the convention? If so, I presume the delegates are actually free to vote for whomever they want...

There is a vote at the convention, but it's been a long time since it was anything but a rubber stamp for the Presidential nominee's pick. If the GOP is still lined up against Trump but he has a majority of delegates, that might be where they make their move to kinda undermine him.
posted by Etrigan at 11:02 AM on March 8, 2016

My SO and I are making plans to visit family in Texas. In August. Either we will be down there when Trump is the GOP nom or Cruz is the GOP nom or there is some sort of brokered convention, a la David Brooks most recent plea. The notion of being down there then freaks this northerner the fuck out.
posted by angrycat at 11:26 AM on March 8, 2016

I asked this in another thread, but no one answered: If Trump doesn't get selected as the nom, why don't people think he'll run independently?
posted by OmieWise at 11:28 AM on March 8, 2016

By people, I mean GOP functionaries, including Brooks.
posted by OmieWise at 11:29 AM on March 8, 2016

I asked this in another thread, but no one answered: If Drumpf doesn't get selected as the nom, why don't people think he'll run independently?

I don't speak for GOP functionaries, but I think he wouldn't do it because he knows he'd lose. He's willing to go to some lengths to avenge a wronging, but I think a known loss is beyond the pale for him.
posted by Etrigan at 11:31 AM on March 8, 2016

I remember being so angry about that speech Reagan gave. Probably the worst of it was that when Andrew Young called him out on the speech, saying the whole state's right BS sounded "like a code word to me that it's going to be all right to kill niggers when he's President" the biggest backlash was against Carter and Young with both The New Republic and the Washington Post heavily criticizing Carter for having the temerity to suggest Reagan was racist. There seriously was more criticism of Carter and his cabinet for pointing out that it was racist than there was of Reagan for making the damn speech in the first place.
posted by Lame_username at 11:50 AM on March 8, 2016 [13 favorites]

Mitt Romney Files FEC Paperwork To Run In 2016 Election
posted by Hairy Lobster at 11:52 AM on March 8, 2016 [8 favorites]

Etrigan, I don't know. I wouldn't rule out an independent run from Trump based purely on spite and the certain knowledge that it would guarantee a Democratic victory and thus screw the people who didn't let him be the Republican nominee.

Sure, losing would be painful. But I'm not entirely convinced at this point that Trump is aware that he'd lose if he ran as an independent. The man seems to have fallen for his own propaganda.

The question: how vengeful is Trump has a simple and well known answer: very vengeful. And so are a lot of his followers. If there's a brokered convention where Trump enters with a plurality of the votes, but not enough to guarantee the nomination, and the party elites give he nomination to someone else, I think not just Trump personally, but a huge percentage of his supporters, would go for any plan that would hurt the Republicans, even if it meant President Clinton.

That outcome would, of course, vastly please me so maybe its just my bias speaking here.
posted by sotonohito at 11:53 AM on March 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

OmieWise: "If Trump doesn't get selected as the nom, why don't people think he'll run independently?"

Is the question why some people don't think he'll run independently? Because I thought the conventional wisdom for why the mainstream GOP was so hesitant to strike hard at Trump earlier in the primary season was precisely because of the risk of him throwing a tantrum and dropping out to run as a third party candidate.
posted by mhum at 11:53 AM on March 8, 2016

There seriously was more criticism of Carter and his cabinet for pointing out that it was racist than there was of Reagan for making the damn speech in the first place.

Isn't that always what happens? Republicans say something racist but just coded enough to give them plausible deniability and then when a Democrat tries to call them on it he/she gets accused of "playing the race card".
posted by octothorpe at 11:56 AM on March 8, 2016 [13 favorites]

A Trump run as independent (assuming he was not the Republican nominee) would essentially hand the election over to Clinton / Sanders by splitting the GOP vote. The question is, would he rather withdraw and give Cruz or Rubio a fighting chance? Or would he prefer to "crash the plane with no survivors", so to speak.
posted by theorique at 11:57 AM on March 8, 2016

Not only will he run as a 3rd party he'll say his famous two word catch phrase "I'll sue!" and try and extract some blood from the RNC. He can't help it. It's in his nature.
posted by cmfletcher at 11:59 AM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

But I'm not entirely convinced at this point that Drumpf is aware that he'd lose if he ran as an independent. The man seems to have fallen for his own propaganda.

The thing is, his propaganda (at least as regards his chances of being elected) has been right so far. I admit, I didn't think he'd stay in the race, and I would totally believe that he didn't think so either, until the polling numbers never really dropped. But if he loses a brokered convention, every pollster will tell him "You cannot win a three-way race", and he'll just make a lot of noise and probably even actually file some lawsuits, but running a quixotic race just to keep a Republican out of the White House who would probably lose anyway?

I don't see it. I kinda hope I'm wrong, because I'd rather see Clinton/Sanders win than anyone the GOP could come up with short of, I don't know, The Rock maybe?
posted by Etrigan at 12:03 PM on March 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

The major reason why Trump might not run as an independent is because he simply doesn't have enough wealth to do so.

Trump Doesn't have enough money

Basically the thesis is that Trump actually doesn't have a huge amount of liquid assets (about $300 million) and has shown no ability to actually get substantial donor support from his supporters. This would seem to support the idea that Trump's actual financial standing is more or less smoke and mirrors which is why he's claiming to be worth $10 billion but a larger % of that is related to his personal branding.

There is no way that Trump as a self-funded candidate could actually compete with the level of spending that a Super PAC supported Democratic or Republican candidate would.
posted by vuron at 12:04 PM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I kind of think that some of his followers would start a write-in campaign even if he officially doesn't run (again, assuming he gets blocked at the convention). Or, you know, the DNC could secretly fund a super PAC....
posted by tivalasvegas at 12:26 PM on March 8, 2016

If Trump could just beat the Republican candidate in a three way race, thereby humiliating the party, I imagine that would be a win in his book.
posted by snofoam at 12:27 PM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

> Since my early days of reading political blogs, conservatives have loved to push the "herp derp Democrats were the racist party in the 50s and 60s hyuk!" line. Many of them don't seem interested in hearing the obvious follow up, "But then LBJ passed the Civil Rights Act, correctly predicting it would lose Democrats the support of the South, where the white vote deserted to the Republican Party, which welcomed them with open arms."

Case in point: Trump-Backing CNN Contributor Jeffrey Lord: KKK Had A ‘Progressive Agenda’.
posted by homunculus at 12:27 PM on March 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

> The perceived assault on Southern values in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement and LBJ's caused that coalition to split and white Southern Democrats to transfer party allegiance en masse. Make no mistake there are no Reagan Democrats anymore they are all Republican.

Counterpoint: Donald Trump and the Rise of the New Dixiecrats. It’s not just the Republican fringe that loves Trump—his appeal to white working-class Democrats could shake up the general election.
posted by homunculus at 12:27 PM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

> although the Southern Strategy is beginning to backfire against the Republicans on the national scale

When you google "Southern Strategy," the second result is this piece by William Greider from last October:

Why Today’s GOP Crackup Is the Final Unraveling of Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy’: Tea Party rebels are exposing the deep rifts between country-club elites and social-issue hard-liners.
posted by homunculus at 12:29 PM on March 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

> In other words, the extremist assaults on the black president, combined with the economic failures, were deeply alarming for ordinary people and generated a sense of terminal crisis that was wildly exaggerated. But it generated popular expectations that Republicans must stand up to this threat with strong countermeasures—to win back political control and save the country. I suggested that racial overtones were also at work. “That’s your opinion,” the lobbyist said. “I don’t know about that.”

As always, it's just a weird coincidence that this "sense of terminal crisis that was wildly exaggerated" went into overdrive immediately after the black President was elected. Isn't that the strangest thing?
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:35 PM on March 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

Trump doesn't need money like traditional candidates need money. Why should he pay for media exposure when he can get it for free?
posted by zug at 12:36 PM on March 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

Trump doesn't need money like traditional candidates need money. Why should he pay for media exposure when he can get it for free?

I agree -- the so-called "liberal media" couldn't get enough Trump back when he was just one more fringe candidate spouting bizarre nativist hogwash among a dozen or so in the Republican primary. Trump wailing all summer about having the convention stolen from him would likely be perceived as ratings gold. The only way Trump crashes and burns is if Mr. and Mrs. Middle America get tired of seeing him on their TV and tune out.
posted by Gelatin at 12:52 PM on March 8, 2016

Every candidate is going to need traditional ad buys in the general election. You have to reach out to voters who aren't engaged in the primary process/don't use the internet/don't watch cable news/don't really care. Even the 2008 Obama campaign was using TV ads in the general and his convention acceptance speech was like a Superbowl.
posted by cmfletcher at 1:01 PM on March 8, 2016

Donald Trump Could Totally Fund a Presidential Campaign. Just Not a Good One.
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:44 PM on March 8, 2016

> One more reason why the Supreme Court's gutting of the VRA was an absolute tragedy...

Voting restrictions could offer warning signs for November

Race and the Crime of Felony Disenfranchisement
posted by homunculus at 1:54 PM on March 8, 2016

Do you know something I don't? Should I be fleeing the state?

Nah, just a person living in Philly who finds politics in Texas scary at the best of times. I mean, PA isn't much better often, but Philly doesn't really feel like part of the rest of the state.
posted by angrycat at 1:55 PM on March 8, 2016

Here's another Guardian article by Thomas Frank on Trump and racism. He doesn't dispute that racism is a factor, but he thinks people are really listening to Trump's feelings about free trade.

From "Can't Make It Here Anymore":

Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes for the shape Im in
Should I hate em for having our jobs today
No I hate the men sent the jobs away

Read more: James McMurtry - We Can't Make It Here Lyrics | MetroLyrics
posted by ocschwar at 2:03 PM on March 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

angrycat: as a general rule I'd say that the US is divided into cities and Alabama. No city feels like the rest of any state its in. We say that California is liberal, but it isn't. Go outside LA and San Francisco and you'll find the same stuff you find in rural Texas, rural Alabama, rural anywhere.

That's why a county by county election map generally looks like a few tiny islands of blue in a sea of red, over half of the US population lives in those tiny dots of blue. Leave the major metroplexes and you've entered Trumpland.

I lived most of my life in Trumpland, and only recently fled to a city big enough that it counts as one of those dots of blue. San Antonio doesn't really feel much like the rest of Texas, anymore than Austin or Houston do and for exactly the same reason why Philly doesn't feel like the rest of Pennsylvania.

Texas is big enough, and the cities are still small enough relative to the population of the rest of the state, that Trumpland has a majority here, but that's slowly changing. Texas is on its way to be a swing state soonish.
posted by sotonohito at 2:05 PM on March 8, 2016 [10 favorites]

Honestly as long as you are white or you stick to the major cities you are generally going to be okay in Texas angrycat. It's generally only when you head out into the vast wilderness and you look significantly different than the norm that your risk factors shoot up and even then your chances of a altercation are pretty low.

Texans especially in big touristy areas are pretty much going to be much friendlier than say you average New Yorker but as long as you aren't an obvious "deviant" you are likely to be ignored at worst.
posted by vuron at 2:08 PM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

yeah, we're kind of a odd bunch, I look pretty weird, and my SO's adopted son is Latino, and we're going to some small town south of Austin. I know Austin's cool. I just had some bad experiences when I interned many moons ago in the Texas panhandle (they apparently don't jog or walk in that town? I dunno. Never been catcalled so much in my life) and then a neighbor lady got so upset that I was staying for the summer with her neighbor, an unmarried man, that she came over and brought me bibles and lectured me.

i'm just really comfortable with urban dangers, you know? Like a few years back there were a string of shootings like right outside my apartment in my low income neighborhood, like some kid was held up at gun point for his Halloween candy, and my attitude was just *huh that's shitty*. It's I guess the devil you know v the devil you don't.

But all the same I don't think we'll plaster HRC and Sanders stickers all over our rental car.
posted by angrycat at 2:19 PM on March 8, 2016

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 [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."

posted by kirkaracha at 2:22 PM on March 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Important to point out, I think, that Goldwater himself was not a racist, even as he stumbled on the Southern Strategy (which no one could miss because, after opposing the Civil Rights Act on constitutional grounds, those were the only states he won.)

But Goldwater himself quietly opposed segregation in Arizona, and voted for earlier civil rights bills. MLK himself stated that Goldwater was not a racist.

I bring this up because I've seen dozens of Sanders supporters on Reddit trying to attack Hillary by noting she was a Goldwater Girl as a 16-year old, in imitation of her parent and a favorite teacher. They always state this as "she supported segregationist candidate Goldwater" which is just not true.
posted by msalt at 2:49 PM on March 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Here's a piece comparing the modern Republican party with the party in Abraham Lincoln's day: GOP stopped being ‘party of Lincoln’ long before Trump
posted by homunculus at 3:02 PM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sure, Goldwater wasn't a racist. Just like Mitt Romney. It's not saying your not a racist that makes you one, advocating racist policies while appealing to explicit racists for votes makes you also a racist, even if you call it Jeffersonian or "state's rights" in public.
posted by T.D. Strange at 3:16 PM on March 8, 2016 [8 favorites]

Are you suggesting that Barry Goldwater advocated racist policies? Because that is precisely what I'm disputing.

There are a lot of reasons to dislike him, but I don't think that's one of them.
posted by msalt at 3:35 PM on March 8, 2016

"Racist policy" means more than whites-only water fountains. Since 1861, the Federal government has either stepped in to guarantee civil rights when the states wouldn't, or has refused to do so.

In the context of the US, at least, libertarianism is inherently racist, even if individual libertarians are personally nice to black people.
posted by tivalasvegas at 3:54 PM on March 8, 2016 [22 favorites]

> Trump doesn't need money like traditional candidates need money. Why should he pay for media exposure when he can get it for free?

How the Media Enabled Donald Trump by Destroying Politics First: The mainstream media is to blame for Donald Trump’s rise, but not for the reasons most people think.

To enable Trump, what the media did is fulfill what almost seemed to be a longtime mission: to create the first “pseudo-campaign” with the first “pseudo-candidate.” And now they are having buyer’s remorse.

Welcome to the pseudo-election of 2016.
posted by homunculus at 4:20 PM on March 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Are you suggesting that Barry Goldwater advocated racist policies? Because that is precisely what I'm disputing.

Yes, as noted above.

But further, I'd dispute even your characterization of Goldwater as some kind of not-really-as-racist-with-a-heart-of-gold who nonetheless designed the Republican party's explicitly racist strategy for the next 40 years, let's just ask Jackie Robinson.

Or the man himself: But his vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Act would speak for itself, even if Goldwater didn’t speak for it: “the Supreme Court decision is not necessarily the law of the land,” he said in 1964, and he (or [ghostwriter Brent] Bozell) said likewise in 1960, describing Brown v. Board of Education and allied decisions as “abuses of power by the Court.” In italics, Goldwater declares that politics needs to take into account “the essential differences between men.”

Goldwater was an explicit racist who advocated rasict policies. I'm legitimately stunned this is even a question.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:31 PM on March 8, 2016 [20 favorites]

It's not really about rural vs. urban, though.

Exhibit A: I give you Minnesota. We are a blue state because loads of rural Minnesotans are still labor lefties (and the grandchildren of communists).

Some places mostly remember what it meant when labor saved their asses. The memory is fading, but it's there. We don't call our state Democratic party the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party for nothing.
posted by RedEmma at 4:39 PM on March 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

In other words, Trump doesn't have much play up here. We are the only state so far whose Republicans said no to... whatever that is.
posted by RedEmma at 4:42 PM on March 8, 2016

“My goal is to destroy the Republican Party”: Former Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett explains his vote for Donald Trump. The GOP is "just a coalition of cranks, and racists and bigots and religious kooks" that will lose big with Trump

We are all accelerationists now.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:52 PM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

“My goal is to destroy the Republican Party”: Former Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett explains his vote for Donald Trump. The GOP is "just a coalition of cranks, and racists and bigots and religious kooks"

The first thing that popped into my head was "Russian Roulette". This might seem clever but, boy, could there be a steep price to pay if it all backfires.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 5:01 PM on March 8, 2016

libertarianism is inherently racist

Libertarianism may be many strange things - not all of them practical or realistic - but it's not racist. The Libertarian party platform explicitly condemns many forms of discrimination, including racial bigotry:

We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant. Government should neither deny nor abridge any individual's human right based upon sex, wealth, ethnicity, creed, age, national origin, personal habits, political preference or sexual orientation. (Section 3.5)

posted by theorique at 5:30 PM on March 8, 2016

Libertarianism may be many strange things - not all of them practical or realistic - but it's not racist.

As I'm sure you're aware, many non-libertarians (big or small L) believe that government policy that creates negative outcomes for marginalized groups is racist policy even if it doesn't do so with racist intent. You can claim with some evidence that the party apparatus has repudiated racism, but it seems pretty clear that the median policy positions of self-described libertarians would do a lot of harm to members of many marginalized communities.
posted by tonycpsu at 5:47 PM on March 8, 2016 [20 favorites]

More history from Charles Pierce: Up in Michigan, Where American Fascism Lived Once Before: Father Coughlin, Donald Trump, and the dangerous narcotic we call the American Dream.
posted by homunculus at 5:54 PM on March 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

The history of Libertarians and Libertarianism in the US is also chock goddamned full of racists, to the point where if it's not a racist ideology you've got to wonder why white nationalists love it so much.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:25 PM on March 8, 2016 [16 favorites]

Great post and discussion.

Here's something that I didn't know about Lee Atwater: I'd always believed that he renounced the Southern Strategy on his deathbed, but from the wikipedia article:

Ed Rollins, however, stated in the 2008 documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, that "[Atwater] was telling this story about how a Living Bible was what was giving him faith and I said to Mary (Matalin), 'I really, sincerely hope that he found peace.' She said, 'Ed, when we were cleaning up his things afterwards, the Bible was still wrapped in the cellophane and had never been taken out of the package,' which just told you everything there was. He was spinning right to the end.
posted by triggerfinger at 8:34 PM on March 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

Join the Secret Service, they said. It feels great to serve your country, they said.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 8:44 PM on March 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I really recommend people read the article sneebler posted above. Yes, there are horribly gross racist things (and misogynist and xenophobic and authoritarian torture-happy and...ugh) going on in Trump & his "movement," but if that's all we look at, we're missing the whole picture.

I've said it before in one of these threads or another, but both Trump and Bernie are the two candidates that are speaking to the 'losers' of neoliberal economics, the blue collar workers of the 85th earnings percentile and down that have been completely shut out of productivity gains for the last 30 years, and in Bernie's case, the millennial generation that is bearing all of the blame for fucking things up, without ever having a chance to get started. They're speaking with opposite messages, and placing the blame against different actors - Bernie rightly blaming the Wall Street banksters, and Trump of course blaming immigrants mainly, but also China.

A lot of people are still hurting and never really recovered from the 2008 collapse, or were saddled with unbearable debt without any realistic hope of a job market that could justify it. Even improving the unemployment number doesn't fully account for good full time jobs with benefits being replaced with part-time, lower paid, zero-benefits jobs, or sharing economy bullshit marginally attached work, much less factor in the real and justified feeling that the game is still rigged by and for the elite, who never suffer, and if they do, are immediately and dramatically made whole by the same government that refuses to help anyone who can't afford a 10k per plate donation.

Clinton cannot remotely credibly speak to that message, and the Republican "establishment lane" candidates are maybe even less capable of doing so. Hence Bernie's durability on the Democratic side, and the rise of Trump.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:14 PM on March 8, 2016 [15 favorites]

triggerfinger, that documentary is great. It is also fist clenchingly angry making.
posted by futz at 10:35 PM on March 8, 2016

homunculus: Welcome to the pseudo-election of 2016.

Oh, absolutely. You can see the build up this in the Republican candidates who won big: Reagan and Dubya. Bush the senior was something of a throwback who got a single term because he was anointed by Reagan. When Bush got the chance to show that he actually had policies and ideas voters got rid of him, because he had to spend his reelection campaign defending that record. Bob Dole might have had a chance against Clinton, but the pseudo-candidate Ross Perot cock-blocked him. Even Romney had to pretend that his single greatest achievement (a health care plan that was adopted to be the law of the land) was a terrible mistake.

Pseudo candidates always do better for the Republicans than ones with ideas or a point of view. Just smile, nod, and yell what the masses are saying back to them. It's a proven formula for success.
posted by Kevin Street at 1:17 AM on March 9, 2016

Libertarianism effectively denies or ignores the lasting effects of structural racism, or at best assumes that the market will quickly level any such problems (when history clearly shows otherwise). At worst, you get self-described libertarians who explicitly advocate "self-segregation" and, in a few cases, actually think that market forces and market actors will and should punish behaviors they don't like. (Ever read Hoppe's comments on homosexuality?)

These folks are essentially cultural racists, the sort of people who argue that, say, African-Americans or QLTBG people or whoever have "a culture" of economically and politically self-destructive behaviors that explain all poor outcomes in such communities.

That view is thoroughly compatible with and arguably encouraged by much of libertarian ideology, not least because it enables the argument that the only reason such "bad" behaviors persist is that welfare and so forth "distort market outcomes" and "incentivize bad behavior." It's very much "the Southern Strategy" and "welfare queens" and all of that baggage.

But this is what an ideology gets when it relies on an fundamentally ahistorical reading of society, economics, and government, where the appeal to "spontaneous organization" or "the rationality of markets" means never having to think about the past. Those who wish to downplay or deny history might well gravitate towards this sort of rhetoric and ideology.

Of course, structural racism and cultural racism are not the only bad habits encouraged by this sort of ahistorical thinking. They're simply among the most destructive.
posted by kewb at 3:56 AM on March 9, 2016 [29 favorites]

triggerfinger, that documentary is great. It is also fist clenchingly angry making.

I can't believe I haven't heard of it before now. It looks like it's on Amazon video so I'm going to watch it tonight.
posted by triggerfinger at 6:39 AM on March 9, 2016

the Republican candidates who won big: Reagan and Dubya

How did Dubya win big? He lost the popular vote in 2000 (electoral vote 271-266) and won the popular vote in 2004 by 2.46% margin (electoral vote 281-251). Those are two of the closest elections in American history.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:56 AM on March 9, 2016

Sorry, I just mean he got elected twice. So he had eight years to put his stamp on America instead of four.
posted by Kevin Street at 9:16 AM on March 9, 2016

The GOP's Southern Strategy lives on
posted by homunculus at 6:59 PM on March 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

T.D. Strange: Goldwater was an explicit racist who advocated rasict policies. I'm legitimately stunned this is even a question.

That is not only untrue, but it's hard to believe you're arguing in good faith. Here is the sentence immediately before your quote, which you cut out:

"Pretty much everyone, including Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins, and Julian Bond, is willing to concede that Goldwater was not personally bigoted."

A couple more sources:
Washington Post: He ended racial segregation in his family department stores, and he was instrumental in ending it in Phoenix schools and restaurants and in the Arizona National Guard.

Michael Gerson: He had been a founding member of the Arizona NAACP. He helped integrate the Phoenix public schools. His problems with the Civil Rights Act were theoretical and libertarian — an objection to the extension of federal power over private enterprise.
posted by msalt at 9:50 PM on March 9, 2016

I didn't know he worked for integration in schools & businesses. That's great and I commend him for it. (It's not libertarian, though.)

It's also weird that he should support local desegregation laws but not federal civil rights legislation -- from a strictly libertarian standpoint, the freedom to (not) associate is absolute regardless of the level of government. So it sounds like he's libertarian when it suits him, and federalist when it doesn't. And it happened not to suit him to support federal civil rights protection. That's racist even if you do it with a smile on your face and genuine love in your heart.

Why is this relevant today? Because there is a belief across the political spectrum (but particularly on the right) that you can advance any policy you like and defend yourself against charges of racism so long as you profess (and in most cases, I think, genuinely believe in) equal legal & social opportunity.

From their own platform, quoted above:

We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant. Government should neither deny nor abridge any individual's human right based upon sex, wealth, ethnicity, creed, age, national origin, personal habits, political preference or sexual orientation.

This is actually -- well, it's okay! As long as it's interpreted to say that government shouldn't deny the human right of, say, clean water to residents of Flint, based on the fact that they can't pay. I think that most libertarians, however, don't believe in positive human rights. That's the hidden racist assumption. They're saying a nice-sounding thing but they're not translating that principle into policy in an anti-racist way.

We have to look at what policies are put forward, how they are implemented, and what the effects of those policies are before we can judge them as anti-racist. Libertarianism fails the test. At least in settler states, libertarians as political actors are racist even if they're not personally bigoted.
posted by tivalasvegas at 9:19 AM on March 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's also weird that he should support local desegregation laws but not federal civil rights legislation -- from a strictly libertarian standpoint, the freedom to (not) associate is absolute regardless of the level of government. So it sounds like he's libertarian when it suits him, and federalist when it doesn't.

Was "libertarianism" even a named ideology back then, much less codified? (It certainly isn't now, and there's dozens of variations of it). Sounds like he truly believed in states' rights, even when it conflicted with human rights. That's short-sightedly doctrinaire and dumb, but it does call into question the "yup, he's definitely a racist" claim.

I think we're once again dealing with a situation where there's different types of racism. Goldwater doesn't seem to be the "personal" bigot type, and a far cry from a cross-burner. But he seemed to be an institutional racist, or at least willing to let institutionalized racism continue because of his ideology. Which of course makes him less than laudable.
posted by Apocryphon at 9:47 AM on March 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

We have to look at what policies are put forward, how they are implemented, and what the effects of those policies are before we can judge them as anti-racist. Libertarianism fails the test.

Libertarianism certainly isn't "anti-racist". It holds as an article of faith that market solutions will tend to yield the best outcomes. Of course, this sidesteps the reality of race and tribalism entirely and models people as individualistic, rational economic actors, rather than the frequently irrational, tribal, bigoted entities that they actually are.

Most libertarians (at least, those I've met or interacted with) don't seem to be bigoted on a personal level, but they also seem to believe that punishing or discouraging bigotry through government action is an overreach of government power.
posted by theorique at 10:00 AM on March 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think libertarianism is unfeasible and would lead to policies that would further institutional racism and inequality, among other injustices. However, I would hesitate to claim that it's an ideology that's inherently racist or single it out. Because it's a less-than-mainstream position and there are others like say, neoliberalism (which isn't all that different libertarianism, just moderated and more conventional) or neoconservatism that would lead to racism just as well.

The fact that there are libertarians who have personally bigoted views is worthy of inspection, though. I'm also fascinated by why paleoconservatism tends to attract racists, despite it being anti-interventionist and not as free market as modern conservatism. I think sometimes ideologies get associated with cultures and subcultures and particular figures (like say, Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan), and if those figures are bigoted than bigots would flock to those ideologies regardless of what the ideology actually says.
posted by Apocryphon at 10:41 AM on March 10, 2016

I think the fairest formulation is that libertarianism is a logical and (by its own terms) very ethical ideology that can, unfortunately, act as a cover for or inadvertently tolerate some very unsavory personal and cultural biases. It makes assumptions about human nature that are unrealistic, or considers the costs of government directly attacking those biases worse than the disease.

You could say the same thing about free market liberalism, and about Barry Goldwater as a person. It is an important distinction though, that this is not the same as saying all libertarians, free market advocates or Barry Goldwater himself are racist or segregationist or homophobic.

Goldwater worked for desegregation privately (and usually quietly) while on principle disapproving of federal intervention in who private companies choose to have as customers or not. Part of that was a naivety about the effectiveness of talking to people quietly as a way to solve racism.

(Incidentally, Goldwater as an outspoken champion of gay rights later in his life.)
posted by msalt at 5:24 PM on March 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

Since Hillary Clinton brought it up today, it should be remembered that racism wasn't the only form of bigotry the Reagan administration embraced (autoplays video.)

The Reagan Administration’s Unearthed Response to the AIDS Crisis Is Chilling: A new short film, When AIDS Was Funny, unearths never-before-heard audio reaction to the escalating AIDS crisis.
posted by homunculus at 3:41 PM on March 11, 2016 [5 favorites]

White Man's Lament: There's a new Southern strategy, and it runs through the North.

This election year has its own version of the angry-white-guy voter, the ones who are anxious about the economy, upset at income inequality and frustrated with what they see as an unresponsive and ineffective Washington government. Only this time, those voters are in a region of the country that delivered the presidency to Barack Obama twice: the post-industrial Northeast and Midwest. Aging, struggling and more white than other campaign battlegrounds, these states are emerging as GOP front-runner Donald Trump's best chance to challenge the Democratic contender, should he win the Republican nomination. Can a modern Southern strategy deliver the North?

posted by homunculus at 7:37 PM on March 11, 2016 [4 favorites]

"A rootie toot toot, A rootie toot toot. We are the boys from the Institute. We don't vote and we don't move and we don't mess with the donks who do. A rootie toot toot, A rootie toot toot. Trump got loose from the Institute. The inmate's out to rabblerout, and now we're screwed without a doubt."
posted by homunculus at 7:37 PM on March 11, 2016 [1 favorite]

Donald Trump Is Worse Than George Wallace, According to a Guy Who'd Know - After all, he's seen them both.
posted by homunculus at 4:01 PM on March 14, 2016

1964 Anti-Goldwater Ad Could Run Today Against Trump or Cruz
posted by homunculus at 4:10 PM on March 14, 2016

From Wallace [and Nixon] To Trump, The Evolution of “Law And Order”
posted by homunculus at 8:44 PM on March 14, 2016

Interesting links homunculus - thanks for posting.
posted by YAMWAK at 1:19 AM on March 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

How the Southern Strategy Made Donald Trump Possible
posted by kliuless at 11:22 AM on March 15, 2016

I must have missed this kerfuffle back in January:

Hillary Clinton Goes Back to the Dunning School: How do you diagnose the problem of racism in America without understanding its actual history?

Fables of the Reconstruction: Why Clinton's comments about Southern history matter
posted by homunculus at 4:49 PM on March 15, 2016

The Republican Elites Have Finally Turned on the Rubes They've Swindled for Decades: The "Reagan Democrats" who once proved useful have been relabeled as deplorable drug addicts.
posted by homunculus at 5:31 PM on March 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

Nixon advisor: We created the war on drugs to “criminalize” black people and the anti-war left

Former Nixon aide admits racist roots of America’s drug war: Bernie and Hillary must own this issue and fix this injustice — now. The destruction of minority communities was a tactical decision by Nixon, the Dems need to stop this travesty
posted by homunculus at 8:45 PM on March 24, 2016

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