St. Ronnie and the Southern Strategy

Brad DeLong says the debate between David Brooks and Paul Krugman is over, it's clear Krugman was right:

Game, Set, and Match to Paul Krugman..., by Brad DeLong: It appears that Paul Krugman wins his fight with David Brooks, who had written this about Paul Krugman's invocation of Ronald Reagan in Philadelphia, Mississippi:

David Brooks: History and Calumny: Today, I’m going to write about a slur. It’s a distortion that’s been around for a while, but has spread like a weed over the past few months. It was concocted for partisan reasons: to flatter the prejudices of one side, to demonize the other and to simplify a complicated reality into a political nursery tale.... But still the slur spreads. It’s spread by people who, before making one of the most heinous charges imaginable, couldn’t even take 10 minutes to look at the evidence. It posits that there was a master conspiracy to play on the alleged Klan-like prejudices of American voters, when there is no evidence of that conspiracy. And, of course, in a partisan age there are always people eager to believe this stuff.

Here, via Rick Perlstein, is Joseph Crespino:

Did David Brooks Tell the Full Story About Reagan's Neshoba County Fair Visit?: In his November 9, 2007, column in the New York Times, David Brooks discussed Ronald Reagan’s appearance at the Neshoba County Fair in 1980 and his use of the term “states’ rights.” Brooks absolved Reagan of racism, but he ignored the broader significance of Reagan’s Neshoba County appearance.... Consider a letter that Michael Retzer, the Mississippi national committeeman, wrote in December 1979 to the Republican national committee.  Well before the Republicans had nominated Reagan, the national committee was polling state leaders to line up venues where the Republican nominee might speak.  Retzer pointed to the Neshoba County Fair as ideal for winning what he called the “George Wallace inclined voters.”...

On July 31st, just days before Reagan went to Neshoba County, the New York Times reported that the Ku Klux Klan had endorsed Reagan.  In its newspaper, the Klan said that the Republican platform “reads as if it were written by a Klansman.”  Reagan rejected the endorsement, but only after a Carter cabinet official brought it up in a campaign speech.  The dubious connection did not stop Reagan from using segregationist language in Neshoba County.

It was clear from other episodes in that campaign that Reagan was content to let southern Republicans link him to segregationist politics in the South’s recent past. Reagan’s states rights line was prepared beforehand and reporters covering the event could not recall him using the term before the Neshoba County appearance.  John Bell Williams, an arch-segregationist former governor who had crossed party lines in 1964 to endorse Barry Goldwater, joined Reagan on stage at another campaign stop in Mississippi. Reagan’s campaign chair in the state, Trent Lott, praised Strom Thurmond, the former segregationist Dixiecrat candidate in 1948, at a Reagan rally, saying that if Thurmond had been elected president “we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.”

Brooks’s defense of Reagan seemed to be a response to his fellow Times columnist Paul Krugman.... Brook’s column, however, is a good example of conservatives’ discomfort with their racial history.  Reagan is to modern conservatism what Franklin Roosevelt was to liberalism, so it’s not surprising that Brooks would feel the need to defend him.  But Brooks’s throwaway remark that “it’s obviously true that race played a role in the GOP ascent” understates what actually happened.... [Reagan] did it in 1966 when he campaigned for the California governorship by denouncing open housing and civil rights laws.  He did it in 1976 when he tried to beat out Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination by attacking welfare in subtly racist terms. And he did it in Neshoba County in 1980.

Reagan knew that southern Republicans were making racial appeals to win over conservative southern Democrats, and he was a willing participant.  Despite what Brooks claims, it’s no slur to hold Reagan accountable for the choice that he made.  Neither is it mere partisanship to try to think seriously about the complex ways that white racism has shaped modern conservative politics.   

For more on the subject from Rick Perlstein, see St. Ronnie and the 11th Commandment.

Comments

[robertdfeinman]

The commentary upon commentary that has been spreading lately has made it increasingly difficult to follow the debate. The Talmud is famous for this type of literature. Here's a nice picture of how a style of commentary was developed:

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rs/2/Judaism/talmud.html

Indents don't seem to be adequate when one gets to second and third levels. Color?

[Patricia Shannon]

I have lived in the south since 1960, and Reagan was obviously appealing to segregationists. Everybody knew what he meant.

[James Killus]

Absolutely right, Patricia. And it's instructive to watch the attempts to pretend otherwise.

[Jim Harrison]

Maybe we need a new TV crime drama, Really Cold Case, which deals with old crimes that have never been punished even though everybody has known for decades who did it. Besides the revelation that the prosperity of the Republicans has always depended upon southern racists, there could be the shocking discovery that America has been fixing or trying to fix elections all over the world for the last 60 years or so as part of our national determination to support the sacred right to vote for the candidates of our choosing. Etc.

[James Killus]

Jim Harrison,

The problem with your idea of Really Cold Case, is that the crime is ongoing and the case isn't very cold. I would say that it's about as hot as a shooting war, wouldn't you?

By the way, did you know that about a century and a half ago, some States tried to secede, fought a war over it, and lost? I know, pretty ancient history, one would think. Yet when I was growing up in Tennessee, there were a lot of people who talked about it all the damn time, almost like it was yesterday.

[Cyrille]

In a way it's esay -anytime it's Brooks v. Krugman, you don't need to read any further to claim that Krugman was right.

Which is not necessarily a tremendous compliment for Krugman. I'm not entirely sure that Brooks has ever been right about anything...

[calmo]

But Cyrille, with any debate, you are supposed to suspend any prior allegiances and consider the arguments for and against...ok, and suspend any prior biases against the debaters who may have established reputations for being assholes insufferable pompous assholes asses.
Does Brooks work at this or izit part of his head being up his ass blindness?
Shall we debate this: the dimension of the debate is the same as the football game, win/lose rather than right/wrong?
Brooks wins many debates because he is unable to hear any other adjudication...and what other opinion could there be besides his?

[BJ Feng]

So what you are all saying is that there are a large number of racists in the South, and I'm not talking about people who have prejudices, but hardcore racists who believe in racial superiority and still want segregation? For any candidate to pursue this "Southern Strategy", there has to be a very large population--in the tens of millions at least--to whom race is a major issue, who want active discrimination and segregation. Maybe it's because I live in Los Angeles, but it's hard for me to believe that there could be enough people who still want to return to the days of segregation. Again, I've only traveled through the South and I'm interested in what people who have actually lived in the South have to say.

It's also hard to believe that anyone would think a presidential candidate (who could win) would actually do anything to promote segregation or white supremacy. So if race is that important, then why not vote for a true white supremest who isn't just playing lip service? The Southern Strategy seems pretty stupid to me because it stands to alienate a large number of voters, including voters who either would have voted for the candidate, or voters who would not have voted, but then are galvanized into voting for the candidate's opponent. David Duke lost his election because of that.

It may be that the majority of racists favor the Republican party over the Democrats, but it doesn't mean the Republican party shares their beliefs. After all, you're probably aware that the vast majority of criminals in prison favor the Democrats, including rapists, murderers, and child predators. Maybe I should say that the Democrats have a prison strategy to get the criminal vote and that's why most of them expressed a desire to soften criminal penalties on drug offenses (which I agree with) during a recent debate at Howard University. It's also why they want to allow more criminals to vote as in Florida. So if the Republicans are the party of racists, then the Democrats are the party of serial killers and child rapists among lesser criminals.

[anne]

Simply notice the lunatic viciousness of the above comment. Such is what monstrousness is.

[James Killus]

BJ, exactly why does it matter whether someone with deep prejudices crosses some arbitrary line into what you consider "hardcore?" Would someone who has pulled their child from the public schools in order to send them to a private school with no black students (and which also teaches creationism and biblical literalism) like to see a return to de jure segregation, or would they be satisfied with de facto segregation?

Or is, in fact, the intent of your comment to paint anyone who criticizes racial (and cultural) attitudes in the south as an anti-southern bigot, someone who believes that everyone who lives below the Mason-Dixon line is secretly a member of the KKK? Lordy I sometimes wish I were a scarecrow, because straw men get so much company.

In any case, I'm from the south, and I get to criticize my roots. My hackles rise when someone who knows nothing about what it's like to live there makes Grand Pronouncements about it all. That includes people who make foolish criticisms and those who make foolish defenses.

Krugman, on the other hand, has simply been making observations based on electoral data and the fairly public methods that have been used in political campaigns. That seems fair to me. Would that I could say the same about your comments.

[BJ Feng]

James, I specifically asked for people who live in the South to share their experiences about racism there. Would people who are not KKK type racists care enough about even implied promises to base their vote on that? Clearly those from the South are best able to answer that question. Would so called "closet" racists give their vote based on some perception of race favoritism from a candidate, or would those people likely not place much emphasis on the issue?

[James Killus]

Would people who are not KKK type racists care enough about even implied promises to base their vote on that?

BJ, Patricia and I have both told you that everyone in the south knew what Reagan was selling, based on our own experiences of living in the South. The answer to your question is "yes, yes many would."

When bosses couldn't hire someone, they blamed affirmative action, even if it had nothing to do with the problem. Jesse Helms ran ads to that effect. Every Willie Horton case was used to fan the flames, and every rant against "high taxes" was coupled with a few digs thrown at "welfare" and "those people." Ask people about how much of the Federal Budget is devoted to "welfare" and "foreign aid" and you get answers that are high by orders of magnitude.

My own experiences? My god, we don't have the space. Hearing teenage boys engage in a rite of passage whose nickname I will not mention, but which involved going to a particular section of town and howling racial epithets. The observation that before it was called DWB (driving while black), it was called DWC (driving while colored) and even naive suburban white boys knew what it meant. Being asked when I was still a teenager, doing day labor, by the middle aged black man to make sure that we all got paid, simply because, as a suburban white boy, I counted and he didn't. Hearing "jokes" that would turn your stomach at the raw animosity involved, yet told in an off-hand, "just among us" manner that insisted that it was "just clean fun."

And none of these people thought of themselves as bigots. One of the boys who engaged in a casual version of the above mentioned rite of passage confessed to me afterwards that he felt badly about it, but, well, you know, peer pressure. But eventually the stereotypes sink in deep, and people vote their "feelings" and they just had a "feeling" that Reagan was on their side. Well, he'd made damn sure that everyone knew whose side he wasn't on, hadn't he?

[RW]

BJ, are you looking for anecdotal evidence? For someone who lives in the South to figuratively leap out of the closet and honestly discuss their prejudices or lack thereof in an open forum among complete strangers? Are you serious and, if you are, why would you expect anyone to take you seriously?

Racism comes in all kinds of flavors and they are quite certainly not all American (ask a Tibetian) but equating it with simple bigotry adds more heat than light; racism reflects a system, an entire set of cultural practices and understandings that oppress a people, make them invisible, render them powerless. At its most potent it is absolutely invisible, so invisible people in the dominant group can honestly say without the slightest irony that they are not racist in the slightest and send their children to segregated schools without even noticing disparity. It is a way of living where everyone can be quite polite as long as everyone stays in their allotted place; overt expressions of bigotry or violence are not particularly common and when they occur almost invariably are directed at those who transgress, who disobey the traditions supporting the oppressive system as it stands (and this of course includes 'intruders' such as the three young men murdered in Neshoba county, Mississippi).

Krugman avers that Reagan probably wasn't a racist; that it was more likely he cynically used racism as a political tool as did other Republicans beginning with Nixon but did not necessarily subscribe to that philosophy himself. I would agree that Reagan was probably not strongly bigoted but racism is a way of life as much as the caste system in India and Reagan's comment that there was no racism in America when he grew up tells you all you need to know about his core beliefs: It was the water he swam in and I would guess he thought things were fine in America until 'those people' got 'stirred up' by commies, rabble rousers, liberals and other 'intruders.'

What made a lot of people angry I think was that, rather suddenly it must have seemed, the veil of invisibility was torn and people could see the lie we had been living as a country: That can be a terrible thing and it is little wonder that they would turn to someone like papa Reagan who told them, really, it's all right.

[ken melvin]

If Reagan was about anything, it was about going backwards. The man brought back the battle ships, declared that the solution to the energy problem was to drill more oil wells, invaded Grenada under false pretext, ...

[BJ Feng]

I'm just trying to better understand the racial attitudes of Southerners. It's not meant to be a definitive study or anything like that, but you can often gain a lot of insight by examining the personal conversations and idle chit locals have with each other. Growing up in Los Angeles, I haven't experienced much racism, but I acknowledge that attitudes could be different elsewhere. Racial attitudes are hard to measure, I just want to get a feeling for how many people in the South are bigoted and in what way.