By Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
“We pledge ourselves to use all lawful means to bring about a reversal of this decision which is contrary to the Constitution and to prevent the use of force in its implementation.
-The Southern Manifesto, Cong. Rec., 84th Cong. 2d Session, Vol. 102, part 4 (March 12, 1956)
‘This was an activist court that you saw today. Anytime the Supreme Court renders something constitutional that is clearly unconstitutional, that undermines the credibility of the Supreme Court. I do believe the court’s credibility was undermined severely today.”
-Michele Bachmann (R. Minn.), June 26 2012
Most people are familiar with the opinion in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al., 349 U.S. 483 (1954), in which a unanimous Supreme Court summarily outlawed public school segregation by tersely declaring, “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” 349 U.S. at 495. But many people do not know that Brown involved a consolidation of cases from four states. The “et al.” in the style refers to decisions on similar facts in Delaware, South Carolina and Virginia. And the response of Virginia to the ruling in Brown provides an interesting comparison with the actions leading to the current government shutdown.
In 1951 the population of Prince Edward County, Virginia was approximately 15,000, more than half of whom were African-American. The county maintained two high schools to accommodate 386 black students and 346 white students. Robert R. Moton High School lacked adequate science facilities and offered a more restricted curriculum than the high school reserved for white students. It had no gym, showers or dressing rooms, no cafeteria and no restrooms for teachers. Students at Moton High were even required to ride in older school buses.
Suit was filed in federal district court challenging the Virginia constitutional and statutory provisions mandating segregated public schools. Although the trial court agreed that the school board had failed to provide a substantially equal education for African-American students, it declined to invalidate the Virginia laws, concluding that segregation was not based “upon prejudice, on caprice, nor upon any other measureless foundation,” but reflected “ways of life in Virginia” which “has for generations been a part of the mores of the people.” Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, 103 F. Supp. 337, 339 (E.D. Va. 1952). Instead, the court ordered the school board to proceed with the completion of existing plans to upgrade the curriculum, physical plant and buses at Moton High School. When the plaintiffs took an appeal from the decision, the Democratic machine that had for many years controlled Virginia politics under the firm hand of Sen. Harry Byrd had little reason to believe that “ways of life” that had prevailed since the end of the Reconstruction era would soon be declared illegal.
When the Brown decision was announced, the reaction in Virginia was shock, disbelief and anger. Reflecting the prevailing attitudes, the Richmond News Leader railed against “the encroachment of the Federal government, through judicial legislation, upon the reserved powers of the States.” The Virginia legislature adopted a resolution of “interposition” asserting its right to “interpose” between unconstitutional federal mandates and local authorities under principles of state sovereignty. And Sen. Byrd organized a campaign of opposition that came to be known as “Massive Resistance.”
In August of 1954 a commission was appointed to formulate a plan to preserve segregated schools. Late in 1955, it presented its recommendations, including eliminating mandatory school attendance, empowering local school boards to assign students to schools and creating special tuition grants to enable white students to attend private schools. Enabling legislation was quickly adopted and “segregation academies” began forming around the state. Subsequent legislation went even further by prohibiting state funding of schools that chose to integrate.
In March of 1956, 19 senators and 77 house members from 11 southern states signed what is popularly known as “The Southern Manifesto,” in which they declared, “Even though we constitute a minority in the present Congress, we have full faith that a majority of the American people believe in the dual system of government which has enabled us to achieve our greatness and will in time demand that the reserved rights of the States and of the people be made secure against judicial usurpation.”
Throughout this period the Prince Edward County schools remained segregated, but when various court rulings invalidated Virginia’s various attempts to avoid integration, the school board took its final stand. It refused to authorize funds to operate any schools in the district, and all public schools in the county were simply closed, and remained closed from 1959 to 1964.
There are striking similarities between Sen. Byrd’s failed plan of Massive Resistance and Republican efforts to prevent implementation of the Affordable Care Act. There was widespread confidence among conservatives that the Supreme Court would declare the Act unconstitutional. When that did not occur, legislators such as Michele Bachmann, quoted above, attempted to deny the legitimacy of the Court’s ruling. Brent Bozell went further, denouncing Chief Justice Roberts as “a traitor to his own philosophy,” hearkening back to the days when southern roadsides were replete with billboards demanding the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren.
The House of Representatives has taken over 40 votes to repeal the ACA, quixotic efforts pursued for reasons known only to John Boehner and his colleagues. And in accordance with the Virginia legislative model, the House has attempted to starve the ACA by eliminating it from funding bills. Following the failure of these efforts, Republicans have elected to pursue the path ultimately taken by the school board of Prince Edward County and have shut down the government.
Even the strategy followed by Republicans is largely a southern effort. Approximately 60% of the Tea Party Caucus is from the South. Nineteen of the 32 Republican members of the House who have been instrumental in orchestrating the shutdown are from southern states. It is hardly surprising therefore, that the current impasse is characterized by the time-honored southern belief in nullification theory as a proper antidote to disfavored decisions by a congressional majority.
In reflecting upon the experience of Virginia many years later, former Gov. Linwood Holton noted, “Massive resistance … served mostly to exacerbate emotions arrayed in a lost cause.” Republicans would do well to ponder the wisdom in that observation.
RTC: I worry about the hand you can’t see, the one getting ready to drop the other shoe.
We agree on that. I also presume some closed-door deal has been made; to be executed after the Holidays, January or February when this deal runs out.
The next time Obama inexplicably caves to some Republican or corporatist agenda for no reason, that is the payoff. His standing strong here and delivering “complete defeat” should prove to anybody watching he can do it, and he has done it before (like with the ACA itself). And did not do it when Guantanamo was on the line, even though as Commander in Chief he had absolute authority over closing it, and the arguments against closing it (by both Republican’s and Democrats) were ludicrous fear-mongering.
What we gather from that is that Obama picks and chooses when to stand strong and when to cave; it isn’t based on principle, it is based on collusion and political theater. I think if we want to know what is going on in politics we are best off ignoring everything either side asserts or claims or argues, and focus on the actions actually taken and the beneficiaries and results of those actions.
I honestly do not believe we have gridlock at all, I think we have the appearance of gridlock, which serves corrupt politicians that have no problem whatsoever passing a few quiet provisions for their money suppliers, and the theater of loudly blaming the other side is a great excuse to (A) never do what your constituents really want, and (B) serve the interests of your corporate masters, and (C) flood your dumb constituents with demands for donations you need to overcome your evil opponents and get something done, which (D) is never going to happen.
Tony C wrote: “I honestly do not believe we have gridlock at all, I think we have the appearance of gridlock, which serves corrupt politicians that have no problem whatsoever passing a few quiet provisions for their money suppliers, and the theater of loudly blaming the other side is a great excuse to (A) never do what your constituents really want, and (B) serve the interests of your corporate masters, and (C) flood your dumb constituents with demands for donations you need to overcome your evil opponents and get something done, which (D) is never going to happen.”
Tony, we’ve had our differences, but your analysis here resonates loud and clear. Very well said.
davidm:
I guess we will have to agree to disagree on the shutdown. Please email me when your travel plans are firm. I’d be happy to meet you for breakfast.
Mike A. – I looked you up. You are less than 100 miles away. I think I am scheduled to fly out of Orlando airport in November. If we can make our schedules work, maybe we can have a chat over breakfast.
The Houston Chronicle Un-Endorses Ted Cruz
By Rick Ungar
10/16/13
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/10/16/the-houston-chronicle-un-endorses-ted-cruz/
Excerpt:
Last week, I published an article here on Forbes.com entitled, “Ted Cruz’s Shameful Betrayal Of Texas.” In that piece, I noted that Senator Cruz’s desperate and misguided campaign for attention—a campaign successful in propelling his own name recognition to new heights—has done absolutely nothing to benefit the state that gave him his job.
As one might expect, the piece brought the condemnation of many a Tea Party traveler, incensed that I failed to see what Cruz has done for the folks back home—despite there being little evidence that the Cruz agenda has much of anything to do with the good people of Texas.
Who would have guessed that, just one week later, the conservative Houston Chronicle—the newspaper that handed Cruz a critical and key endorsement in his campaign to become the next senator from the Lone Star State—would agree with me by way of publishing something you just don’t see every day—an un-endorsement of Senator Cruz?
Under the title, “Why we miss Kay Bailey Hutchison”, the editorial board of the newspaper published on op-ed Tuesday evening wherein they write —
“One reason we particularly believe that Hutchison would make a difference in these hectic days is that if she had kept her seat, Cruz would not be in the Senate.
When we endorsed Ted Cruz in last November’s general election, we did so with many reservations and at least one specific recommendation – that he follow Hutchison’s example in his conduct as a senator.
Obviously, he has not done so. Cruz has been part of the problem in specific situations where Hutchison would have been part of the solution.”
Remarkably, a red flag warning of what Ted Cruz might become was specifically noted in the original editorial wherein The Chronicle gave their endorsement to Mr. Cruz—a warning provided by none other than Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson herself.
“In a visit with the Chronicle editorial board Thursday, Hutchison expressed some views about Cruz and offered some advice for her likely successor. “The good news is that Ted Cruz is smart, very smart, and wants to be effective,” Hutchison said.
She added a warning, noting that the people who supported Cruz in the Republican primary and runoff are from small states with different interests than a large state such as Texas. “He’s going to have to choose early between being loyal to [Sen.] Jim DeMint [R-S.C.] and [Sen.] Mike Lee [R-Utah] and the needs of the people of Texas.
The Republican based Tea Party has hurt all of us.
Government shutdown over: How big of a hit did the US economy take? (Christian Science Monitor Oct 16 by Mark Trumbull)
“But the shutdown and the threat of a debt-limit crisis also did some lasting damage. Economic growth in the fourth quarter is poised to be lower than it would have been. The shutdown may end up costing taxpayers money instead of saving them anything. And America’s reputation as a credit-worthy borrower has suffered at least a modest ding. …
By some estimates, the episode could knock as much as half a percentage point off economic growth in the fourth quarter. For reference, forecasters on average had been predicting growth at a 2.6 percent annual pace for the quarter.
Gregory Daco of Oxford Economics in New York estimates that the furlough of roughly half a million federal workers, by itself, will cut 0.3 percentage points from fourth-quarter growth in gross domestic product (GDP). An additional dent to growth could come from the way fiscal uncertainty affects consumer confidence. …
But uncertainty about federal policies lingers as a drag on the confidence of consumers and businesses. …
Taxpayer burdens. The shutdown won’t save taxpayers any money, judging from past history and economists’ predictions. That’s because federal workers will still get their full pay, and the work they were supposed to do during the shutdown still needs to be done. If anything, the episode means the government will spend a bit more than usual – thus adding to the future tab for taxpayers – because of costs incurred as agencies temporarily close down and then reopen.“
Jill:
I have always respected the thought that goes into your comments, and the passion with which it is expressed, but was a bit taken aback by your earlier statement that my column was a propaganda piece for bad legislation.
You may not recall, but I was a strong critic of the final version of the ACA and the compromise that it represented. I still believe that we will ultimately have a single payer system, but I don’t know how long that will take. Nevertheless, I know people who have already realized benefits from the law, and I think it should be implemented in good faith.
Your argument is virtually identical to that advanced by the Tea Party. The only difference lies in the nature of the issues to which you and they may find it applicable.
Several years ago I stepped on a deck screw, which pierced my sandal and imbedded itself in my foot. Were my foot the federal government, you would leave me with only two options to address the problem. I could either see a physician to have the screw removed or cut off my foot to eliminate the problem and the chance of any reoccurrence. I chose to go to the physician.
Bad laws can be addressed in a variety of ways. But civil disobedience is the last resort, and civil disobedience is not the province of a legislator. The reason is that although civil disobedience is both personal and collective, it is also voluntary. If I wish to fight against the NDAA, I may form lobbying groups, petition my representatives, write articles and give speeches. I may also elect to directly confront security agencies, provided that I am prepared to pay the consequences. Recall the Catonsville Nine. I will always have great admiration for the courage of the Berrigans. However, their actions would have not been valid examples of civil disobedience if instead of pouring blood over selective service records, they had instead killed employees in the office they broke into. Martin Luther King could not have been a witness for the truth had he armed the Selma marchers and gunned down counter-protesters.
Mr. Cruz did not have the right to draft 175,000 federal employees against their will to fight against the ACA. He did not have the right to take money out of the pockets of thousands of civilians whose businesses were effectively shut down as a consequence of the government shutdown. What he did was a form of terrorism, less violent, of course, but immoral nonetheless. Since he was unable to muster the necessary votes to eliminate the statute, his belief in its injustice required that he resign his seat in the Senate if he wished to take further action.
davidm:
I am responding to your comment from 3:04 p.m.:
1. I do not expect corruption to end in political life or in any other endeavor undertaken by man. And I can assure you that certain truths about human nature will remain immutable even should your dreams come true and the nation is reshaped as a neo-Calvinist paradise of levitical criminal law.
2. My arguments neither suggested nor implied that representatives should vote “along party lines” or ignore the concerns of their constituents. I do expect, however, that representatives will use mature judgment in making decisions, even if those decisions sometimes run contrary to the polls in their districts.
3. Your list of ways in which the shutdown could have been avoided is predicated upon erroneous assumptions, factual misstatements and silliness. First, you assume that the threat of a shutdown was a proper method for Congress to compel the President to do its bidding in this instance. It was not. What the House did was assert a right to literally refuse to function unless the President complied with the demand of a legislative minority to accept the effective repeal of a statute despised by that minority. I am not all that certain that what the House did was lawful; I am certain that is was unethical. Ted Cruz may be called the Anointed One by his father, but he has not been granted that status by the nation. His determination that it was perfectly acceptable to pursue a course of action leading to the furlough of thousands of people, a loss of business revenue to thousands more, forced cuts in welfare and Head Start programs and worldwide financial anxiety, all to call attention to his disdain for the ACA, was not an example of political courage, but a disgusting display of pride, arrogance and self-importance. In plain English, who the hell does he think he is?,
Secondly, your list neglects to mention that at the outset of the controversy, the non-negotiable demand of the Tea Party was the elimination of all funding for the ACA as a condition of continued funding for all remaining government operations. When it was clear that that would not happen, all sorts of increasingly nonsensical demands were trotted out.
Finally, your list is silly. Woulda, coulda, shoulda is not an argument for anything; it is a child’s excuse for a bad report card. If Congress “votes for laws which they could not afford,” the remedy is to elect representatives who will not vote for laws they cannot afford. That is, I believe, why we have elections.
4. Several years ago, I wrote a column on this blog entitled “Why the Tea Party is Dangerous.” I mentioned racism as one of its traits. Among the angry reactions was the obligatory reference to my “playing the race card.” My response then, which I have occasionally repeated, was that if you don’t want someone to play the race card, don’t deal it. But that response is not applicable here because your accusation is not applicable to my argument. I thought I made it abundantly clear that my column was not on the topic of “racist philosophy.” I will repeat once again that I drew an analogy to the Massive Resistance program in support of my view that political opposition in the South has traditionally relied upon the same blueprint: deny the legitimacy of the law; deny the legitimacy of the court decision; assert states’ rights; adopt nullification statutes; threaten secession. It is a cultural phenomenon. That it has frequently been utilized in opposition to rights for African-Americans is due simply to the historical fact that opposition to civil rights for African-Americans has been a prominent feature in the South.
5. The House did not cave in to a “quasi-dictator President.” John Boehner permitted the patients in the asylum to run the show until enough people demanded to know why he was permitting the patients in the asylum to run the show.
6. Your conclusion that no one wanted the shutdown does not square with the published comments of many conservatives, including Michele Bachmann, who expressed “disappointment” and geniuses like Steve King and Louie Gohmert who do not believe that a default would mean anything or have any economic or monetary impact.
7. The end of this fiasco was not a victory for corruption, except possibly in the case of Mitch McConnell. It was a victory for rational thinking, which holds that there is a procedure prescribed in the Constitution for the enactment and repeal of laws, and the utilization of that procedure ultimately assures the checks and balances with which you express concern.
Having said my piece, I live in Winter Park. I have no idea where you are, but I have always had a hunch that you are somewhere in Central Florida. If that is the case, look me up and we can have coffee. My contact information can be found at http://www.floridabar.org.
Mike – Just a couple of thoughts about what you said:
First, I am not yearning for some ecclesiastical government like Calvin’s Geneva. I have expressed numerous times my sentiment about religious institutions. I am not attracted to them in the least.
You claim that I assume that the threat of a shutdown was a proper method for Congress to compel the President to do its bidding in this instance. That is not really my assumption at all, and perhaps you will view me as naive, but my assumption is that the House can put together a funding resolution anyway that they want. I do not see that their goal was to shutdown the federal government, but rather their goal was not to fund Obamacare. I do not understand why you cannot see this simple fact. I recognize how the need for funding to keep the government open might be viewed as political leverage to influence Obama to more seriously consider their resolution, but that is not a threat of some kind. It is simply the circumstances that exist. No other President during a federal shutdown took the steps this President did, to close the WWII memorial and withhold death benefits from families of deceased soldiers, but our President decided he would play politics to cause as much pain as possible so he can claim that the REPUBLICAN shutdown proves that we need bigger government and more funding. Some of that backfired when States and non-profit groups stepped in to provide funding, but I doubt too many people pay enough attention to notice things like that. The media sure won’t be drawing attention to it. The truth is that much of what the federal government does could be done by the States, local municipalities, and non-profit groups.
As you point out, the first resolution the House passed addressed Obamacare, and called for no funding for it, but as they attempted to negotiate with a non-negotiating Senate and President, they compromised, asking for a one year delay in funding, and later presented many resolutions not addressing Obamacare at all. You consider that inappropriate. Why? I hear you being upset, but I do not understand why you consider it unethical or even illegal. Still waiting for somebody somewhere to explain it. As far as I can tell, the freshmen in Congress simply did not play by the unwritten and unspoken rules of the Good Old Boys Club and the Old Boys don’t like that.
Your angst toward Ted Cruz is somewhat puzzling because all he did was lend his voice to what the House was doing and attempt unsuccessfully to persuade the Senate to do the right thing. Ted Cruz did not wield anything but his voice in the Senate, and he did so following all the rules established by the Senate. You ask who the hell he thinks he is? He is a Senator representing his State. Should he not speak and vote accordingly? His vote was not sufficient to cause a government shutdown. Remember, Cruz is in the Senate, not the House. If everybody in the Senate had voted with Ted Cruz, the federal government never would have been shut down. So why do you have so much anger toward Cruz, as if Ted Cruz was the one who caused the federal government to shut down?
When you write the following: “John Boehner permitted the patients in the asylum to run the show until enough people demanded to know why he was permitting the patients in the asylum to run the show” — it seems to me that you do not believe in the democratic process of funding resolutions arising in the House and being voted upon there. It seems like you think that Boehner should be listening to the President and the Senate and doing their bidding rather than leading the House to voice its mind as a somewhat autonomous body. As far as I can tell, Boehner did a good job in a difficult situation. He allowed the House to voice its opinion and eventually capitulate to the President’s demands.
You conflate issues when you talk about the federal shutdown, raising the debt ceiling, and default. These are three separate issues, but you treat them all as one when attempting to quote Bachmann, Steve King, and Gohmert — who I believe were not concerned about the date about the debt ceiling, but were not at all in favor of defaulting on loans. Their position that without raising the debt ceiling, there was enough money to keep servicing the debt.
Lastly, let me comment on this statement: “If Congress “votes for laws which they could not afford,” the remedy is to elect representatives who will not vote for laws they cannot afford. That is, I believe, why we have elections.”
I think that is what explains some of what has happened here. New Congressmen and Senators were voted into office since the Obamacare law was passed three and one-half years ago. These new arrivals are adding to the push to stop Obamacare. Surely you would agree that if the present Congress were presented with the ACA today, it would never pass and never become law.
Hopefully this democratic process will continue, and when people see what a disaster Obamacare is for the nation and how important it is for us to repeal it, then they will vote for candidates intent on repealing the law. Hopefully the nation will vote in a Republican President at the next election, and then we can have real healthcare reform that actually works for everyone.
Tony,
McConnell’s deal was just good ol’ fashioned horse trading. My question is what do Boehner and , more importantly, Kantor want? I worry about the hand you can’t see, the one getting ready to drop the other shoe. Could be that the deal involves Obama taking the heat for approving a tar sands pipeline. Or enshrining the sequestration cuts in future budgets. My guess is that the deal involves a promise not to tighten regulations on fracking, a sly arrangement. Nobody “gives” anything to anyone. The administration simply does nothing.
SWM, You’re not moving to the Garden State are you? At least you will be able to get good Italian food if you are. In Texas you get Eyetalian food. My sister had a rough time down there.
David:
“Keep in mind that Obamacare was passed as a law that would not cost one penny. That’s what Obama said. If he had been right, we would not have been faced with a shutdown.”
“Congress failed to hold the President accountable for his overspending.”
————————————————-
You have to realize that most of the participants here are college graduates, right? If you expect to be taken seriously, then you have to make arguments based in reality. You’re not even in the neighborhood.
Lee Atwater’s ‘Southern Strategy’ Interview
By ANDREW ROSENTHAL
11/14/12
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/lee-atwaters-southern-strategy-interview/
Republicans bristled with indignation during the 2012 campaign any time someone suggested that there might be a racial undertone (or overtone, or just a tone) to attacks on President Obama. You know, that he was a Kenya–born socialist Muslim just passing himself off as an American. There was no racial intent there, no “dog whistle.”
But manipulating the racial fears, ethnic resentments and xenophobia of some American voters is in the warp and woof of the modern Republican Party. That bitter fact was vividly driven home yesterday by The Nation, which published a tape recording of a 41-minute, 1981 interview with Lee Atwater, the political operative who led the Republican Party’s “southern strategy” and formulated the politics of division and cultural warfare in the 1980s.
The political scientist who conducted the interview, Alexander Lamis, had previously made the interview available in print form. But it’s more chilling to actually hear Mr. Atwater describe the true underpinnings of the Republican electoral strategy in his soft lilt.
The words he uses are not ones I would normally use in this blog, or anywhere in the opinion pages of the Times, but the quotes require them.
You start in 1954 by saying ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘Nigger.’ That hurts you. It backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states rights and all that stuff and you get so abstract. Now you talk about cutting taxes and these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that’s part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract and that coded, we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. Obviously sitting around saying we want to cut taxes and we want this, is a lot more abstract than even the busing thing and a hell of a lot more abstract than nigger nigger. So anyway you look at it, race is coming on the back burner.
The results of this evolution were evident in the recent election. Eighty-eight percent of Romney voters were white. African-Americans and Hispanic Americans voted for President Obama by huge majorities.
Lee Atwater recognized at the end of his life what a monster he had helped unleash. In a 1991 article for Life he even apologized to Michael Dukakis for the “naked cruelty” of the 1988 campaign. The Republican Party seems worried about its race problem, but it’s not clear that its leaders really get the message. They seem to think they just haven’t done a good enough job talking to ethnic and racial minorities. But the real problem is their policies, not their rhetorical choices, and their history.
davidm,
Exclusive: Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy
The forty-two-minute recording, acquired by James Carter IV, confirms Atwater’s incendiary remarks and places them in context.
Rick Perlstein
November 13, 2012
http://www.thenation.com/article/170841/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy
Excerpt:
The back-story goes like this. In 1981, Atwater, after a decade as South Carolina’s most effective Republican operative, was working in Ronald Reagan’s White House when he was interviewed by Alexander Lamis, a political scientist at Case Western Reserve University. Lamis published the interview without using Atwater’s name in his 1984 book The Two-Party South. Fifteen years later—and eight years after Atwater passed away from cancer—Lamis republished the interview in another book using Atwater’s name. For seven years no one paid much attention. Then the New York Times’ Bob Herbert, a bit of an Atwater obsessive, quoted it in an October 6, 2005 column—then five more times over the next four years.
Those words soon became legend—quoted in both screeds (The GOP-Haters Handbook, 2007) and scholarship (Corey Robin’s 2011 classic work of political theory, The Reactionary Mind). Google Books records its use in ten books published so far this year alone. Curious about the remarks’ context, Carter, who learned Lamis had died in 2012, asked his widow if she would consider releasing the audio of the interview, especially in light of the use of race-baiting dog-whistles (lies about Obama ending work requirements for welfare; “jokes” about his supposed Kenyan provenance) in the Romney presidential campaign. Renée Lamis, an Obama donor, agreed that very same night. For one thing she was “upset,” Carter told me, that “for some time, conservatives believed [her] husband made up the Atwater interview.” For another, she was eager to illustrate that her husband’s use of the Atwater quote was scholarly, not political.
So what does the new contextual wrapping teach us? It vindicates Lamis, who indeed comes off as careful and scholarly. And no surprise, it shows Atwater acting yet again in bad faith.
In the lead-up to the infamous remarks, it is fascinating to witness the confidence with which Atwater believes himself to be establishing the racial innocence of latter-day Republican campaigning: “My generation,” he insists, “will be the first generation of Southerners that won’t be prejudiced.” He proceeds to develop the argument that by dropping talk about civil rights gains like the Voting Rights Act and sticking to the now-mainstream tropes of fiscal conservatism and national defense, consultants like him were proving “people in the South are just like any people in the history of the world.”
It is only upon Professor Lamis’s gently Socratic follow-ups, and those of a co-interviewer named “Saul” (Carter hasn’t been able to confirm his identity, but suspects it was the late White House correspondent Saul Friedman), that Atwater begins to loosen up—prefacing his reflections, with a plainly guilty conscience, “Now, y’all aren’t quoting me on this?” (Apparently , this is the reason why Atwater’s name wasn’t published in 1984 but was in 1999, after his death).
He then utters his infamous words. The interlocutors go on to kibitz about Huey Long and barbecue. Then Atwater, apparently satisfied that he’d absolved the Southern Republican Party of racism once and for all, follows up with a prediction based on a study he claims demonstrates that Strom Thurmond won 38 percent of South Carolina’s middle-class black vote in his 1978 Senate campaign (run by Atwater).
“That voter, in my judgment,” he claims, “will be more likely to vote his economic interests than he will anything else. And that is the voter that I think through a fairly slow but very steady process, will go Republican.” Because race no longer matters: “In my judgment Karl Marx [is right]… the real issues ultimately will be the economic issues.” He continues, in words that uncannily echo the “47 percent tape” (nothing new under the wingnut sun), that “statistically, as the number of non-producers in the system moves toward fifty percent,” the conservative coalition cannot but expand. Voila: a new Republican majority. Racism won’t have anything to do with it.
Not bloody likely. In 2005, the political scientists Nicholas Valentino and David Sears demonstrated that a Southern man holding conservative positions on issues other than race is no more likely than a conservative Northerner to vote for a Democrat. But when the relevant identifier is anti-black answers to survey questions—like whether one agrees “If blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites”—white Southerners were twice as likely than white Northerners to refuse to vote Democratic. As another political scientist, Thomas Schaller, wrote in his 2006 book Whistling Past Dixie (which naturally quotes the infamous Atwater lines), “Despite the best efforts of Republican spinmeisters…the partisan impact of racial attitudes in the South is stronger today than in the past.”
Elaine, I already gave a link to that interview in this thread… to the FULL interview which is over 40 minutes long.
Atwater said racism was an issue in 1954 to 1966. After 1966, Presidential elections could not be about race. Being pressured by Lamis about welfare policies, Atwater was trying to say that as a psychologist, which he is not, then if someone wanted to appeal to racists, it had to be done through indirect means. That is why at the end of your clip, he concludes with how race is on the backburner. There might be a subconscious component to it, though he is not saying there is, and that is the most you can do with addressing race in a Presidential election.
Foolish Democrats have blown this clip way out of proportion, often editing it to make it appear even more slanted, and they misrepresent it as a “coded message” strategy of Republicans to attract racists to their party. They claim, “Aha! That’s how the Republicans took over the South.” Such is absolutely ludicrous because Republicans don’t want racists. Neither Democrats nor Republicans want racists in their party. They will both take their votes, sure, but they don’t want racism. Today, neither party supports racism. Wake up and realize the truth.
Exclusive: Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy
The Conservative Fantasy History of Civil Rights
By Jonathan Chait
5/22/12
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/05/conservative-fantasy-history-of-civil-rights.html
Excerpt:
The civil rights movement, once a controversial left-wing fringe, has grown deeply embedded into the fabric of our national story. This is a salutary development, but a problematic one for conservatives, who are the direct political descendants of (and, in the case of some of the older members of the movement, the exact same people as) the strident opponents of the civil rights movement. It has thus become necessary for conservatives to craft an alternative story, one that absolves their own ideology of any guilt. The right has dutifully set itself to its task, circulating its convoluted version of history, honing it to the point where it can be repeated by any defensive College Republican in his dorm room. Kevin Williamson’s cover story in National Review is the latest version of what is rapidly congealing into conservatism’s revisionist dogma.
The mainstream, and correct, history of the politics of civil rights is as follows. Southern white supremacy operated out of the Democratic Party beginning in the nineteenth century, but the party began attracting northern liberals, including African-Americans, into an ideologically cumbersome coalition. Over time the liberals prevailed, forcing the Democratic Party to support civil rights, and driving conservative (and especially southern) whites out, where they realigned with the Republican Party.
Williamson crafts a tale in which the Republican Party is and always has been the greatest friend the civil rights cause ever had. The Republican takeover of the white South had absolutely nothing to do with civil rights, the revisionist case proclaims, except insofar as white Southerners supported Republicans because they were more pro-civil rights.
One factoid undergirding this bizarre interpretation is that the partisan realignment obviously took a long time to complete — Southerners still frequently voted Democratic into the seventies and eighties. This proves, according to Williamson, that a backlash against civil rights could not have driven southern whites out of the Democratic Party. “They say things move slower in the South — but not that slow,” he insists.
His story completely ignores the explicit revolt by conservative Southerners against the northern liberal civil rights wing, beginning with Strom Thurmond, who formed a third-party campaign in 1948 in protest against Harry Truman’s support for civil rights. Thurmond received 49 percent of the vote in Louisiana, 72 percent in South Carolina, 80 percent in Alabama, and 87 percent in Mississippi. He later, of course, switched to the Republican Party.
Thurmond’s candidacy is instructive. Democratic voting was deeply acculturated among southern whites as a result of the Civil War. When southern whites began to shake loose of it, they began at the presidential level, in protest against the civil rights leanings of the national wing. It took decades for the transformation to filter down, first to Congressional-level representation (Thurmond, who Williamson mentions only in his capacity as a loyal Democrat, finally switched to the GOP in 1964), and ultimately to local-level government. The most fervently white supremacist portions of the South were also the slowest to shed their Confederate-rooted one-party traditions. None of this slowness actually proves Williamson’s contention that the decline of the Democratic Party in the South was unrelated to race.
Williamson concedes, with inadvertently hilarious understatement, that the party “went through a long dry spell on civil-rights progress” — that would be the century that passed between Reconstruction and President Eisenhower’s minimalist response to massive resistance in 1957. But after this wee dry spell, the party resumed and maintained its natural place as civil rights champion. To the extent that Republicans replaced Democrats in the South, Williamson sees their support for civil rights as the cause. (“Republicans did begin to win some southern House seats, and in many cases segregationist Democrats were thrown out by southern voters in favor of civil-rights Republicans.”) As his one data point, Williamson cites the victory of George Bush in Texas over a Democrat who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He correctly cites Bush’s previous record of moderation on civil rights but neglects to mention that Bush also opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Williamson does feel obliged to mention Barry Goldwater’s opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but defends it as a “principled” opposition to the “extension of federal power.” At the same time, he savages southern Democrats for their opposition to the 14th and 15th Amendments, Reconstruction, anti-lynching laws, and so on. It does not seem to occur to him that many of these opponents also presented their case in exactly the same pro-states’ rights, anti-federal power terms that Goldwater employed. Williamson is willing to concede that opponents of civil rights laws have philosophical principles behind them, but only if they are Republican. (Perhaps is the process by which figures like Thurmond and Jesse Helms were cleansed of their racism and became mere ideological opponents of federal intrusion.)
Elaine M quoted Chait: “The mainstream, and correct, history of the politics of civil rights is as follows.”
Elaine, whenever you read a sentence like this, you should know that a bunch of propaganda follows. No seasoned historian is so presumptuous as to preface his history as “mainstream, and correct, history.” The article is clearly journalist propaganda, so read it ready to spit out the bones that come with it.
There is an element of truth to his version of history, but it is not THE truth, or the correct history, as he asserts. It is what he has been taught and what he has believed, and he is offended that others have come to any other conclusion than his. Therefore, he calls other histories “revisionist histories” suggesting fabrications.
It certainly is true that southern Democrats tended to be racist and northern Democrats tended not to be racist. As northern Democrats became successful in joining with Republicans to secure civil rights, this had an effect to cause southern Democrats to defect from the party. However, their initial defection was to create another Democratic party, the Dixiecrats, States’ Rights Democratic Party. They did not go running into the arms of racist Republicans. Rather, as Chait points out, it was a reaction to President Truman’s civil rights policies. What Chait does not advertise is that President Truman was not one of these “northern civil rights wings.” His State of Missouri had been a slave State and Truman fully acknowledged that his forbears were Confederates in the Civil War. Despite historical allegiance, Truman was upset about how black soldiers coming home from World War II were being mistreated in the South by southern Democrats. The facts that Chait attempts to apply here would better line up later in the timeline of the early 1960’s with President Kennedy, who was a northern Democrat interested in furthering civil rights. Republicans and Democrats worked together on that piece of legislation with a higher percentage of Republicans supporting the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Chait loves to point out that Bush when running for the Senate did not support the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but he does not point out that there are non-racist reasons why he might not support it. Bush said that in his view at the time, it transcended the Constitution. As a young man running for office for the first time, he basically took his cue from Goldwater. Chait does not point out that during this same time period, as county chair for the Republicans, Bush managed their funds in a Black owned bank. Bush also, as a Congressman, voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1968. When he was a student at Yale, Bush led a fundraising drive for the United Negro College Fund, and later in life donated half the proceeds from his autobiography to the United Negro College Fund.
Chait’s article also attempts to portray Republicans who assert their civil rights history as believing that race had NOTHING to do with southern Democrats defecting from the democratic party. That is not our position at all. We say that there are a multitude of factors which have caused the Republican party to appeal to people in the South. Initially Republicans had no appeal in the South because we were the party against slavery. Much of the economy of the south depended upon slaves. We were the party that went to war with the South. As the Republican message emphasized economic issues, states’ rights, and limited government, these were areas of common ground that resonated with Southern voters. At the same time, Democrats became bigger with fighting for civil rights issues. Did some racists defect from the Democrat party because of that? Probably so, but such is not the whole picture, and it was not racist sentiments among Republicans that attracted them toward us. It was our message on limited federal government and states’ rights. There also were some other issues at play in the South. The South has been known as the Bible belt, and Democrats increasingly embraced a platform on women’s liberation, abortion, homosexuality, and anti-religious tones that basically drove religious people out of the Democrat party. Most of this happened post Jimmy Carter as we moved into the Reagan years. During the 1980’s and 1990’s, I heard many Christians say that it is impossible for them to remain Democrats and still be a Christian. I’m not saying they are right. I am just saying that these are sentiments that I have heard from Democrats in the South.
My point is that history is complicated, and we should attempt to appreciate all historians and the perspectives they offer. While we certainly might have our favorites, it really is inappropriate to think one historian has the correct history and all other histories are false revisionist versions. Instead, look at the facts presented and make up your own mind about what really happened.
Oh, apparently McConnell’s dam has been under construction for over twenty years.
I said: Obama will probably “blink” in giving up some non-ACA thing so the Republicans can save face with the Tea Party, and that might hurt, whatever it is. But ACA will go forward as planned; I think the “flaws” mentioned are going to be quite profitable for the overlords that wrote them.
So it wasn’t the Tea Party appeased, it turns out it was McConnell directly; he got a $1.2B increase in funding for a dam (a joint project across Kentucky and Illinois) that was originally supposed to cost us $775M, and is now so over-budget (and way behind schedule) it will now cost us at least $2.9B to finish, nearly four times as much as projected.
I guess corruption runs deep in Kentucky…
Of course we don’t know what back-room handshakes were made for Obama to get this “win”; I bet we are going to be royally boned by the new January shut-down.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/361432/last-conference-jonathan-strong
Losing a Lot to Get Little … NYTimes today by JEREMY W. PETERS (I’m not using a link so as not to get caught in the filter … hopefully)
‘“We managed to divide ourselves on something we were unified on, over a goal that wasn’t achievable,” said Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri. “The president probably had the worst August and early September any president could have had. And we managed to change the topic.” …
It is not an abstract question. The deal reached Wednesday would finance the government only through Jan. 15 and lift the debt ceiling through Feb. 7. Some top Republicans suggest that this confrontation, one some of the most conservative Tea Party-aligned Republicans have been itching for since they arrived, ended so badly for them that it would curb the appetite for another in just a few short months. …
Speaker John A. Boehner’s strategy always involved a gamble that his members would come away from this clash chastened. He intentionally allowed his most conservative members to sit in the driver’s seat as they tried in vain to get the Senate to accept one failed measure after another — first to defund the health care law, then to delay it, then to chip away at it. His hope was that they would realize the fight was not worth having again. …’
Why, thank you Bruce. Coming from you that is like being called ugly by a frog. 🙄