John Sherman Cooper vs Miss McConnell... Let Alone The Nut With The Crazywig

I grew up in a Democratic household in Brooklyn but back then it wasn't hard to say that there were inspiring political leaders of the Republican persuasion-- as well as really terrible Democrats. There are still some really terrible Democrats, plenty of them, but I can't think of a single inspiring Republican in office anywhere. When I was a kid, Kentucky Republican John Sherman Cooper, for example, was someone any American could look up to. Aside from an exemplary personal life, he always believed his job was to fight for the interests of ordinary American families rather than for Big Business and he was one of the first Republicans with the guts to denounce Joseph McCarthy, to lead the battle against the Vietnam War, and to vote for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and, before that, the very Civil Rights Act of 1964 that current Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul says he would have opposed.

Ironically, the current Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, a leader of the GOP's campaign of obstructionism against President Obama, was as inspired by Cooper as I had been. And he worked for him as an intern. "I had an opportunity to witness the first great man I ever knew as a young man and he became someone I looked up to and hope to maybe follow into the Senate someday. And, interestingly enough, 20 years later, I was elected to the same seat that he held,” McConnell said. Could you imagine McConnell ever saying something like "I just didn’t want to attack someone in the other party because they happened to be a Democrat or an Independent. I meet the issues the best I could,” which Cooper did say?

[I don't want to go off on a tangent about how it was Cooper who saved McConnell's ass when McConnell was tossed out of the military after being caught groping an enlisted man during his 10 day career in the U.S. Army. McConnell's dark, lonely life in the closet, living a lie every single day, has had far more of an influence on him than his early association with John Sherman Cooper.]

OK, back to business... In their brilliant new book, Over The Cliff, John Amato and Dave Neiwert take on the Republican lie that their party isn't really a validator of racism. Take a look at how Rachel Maddow dealt with it, specifically regarding Republican racist icon Haley Barbour and his alternative worldview, on her show last week:



Amato and Neiwert delve into the Republican Party's conscious decision to take the racism route. It's worth reading for its own sake, although notice that I've bolded out an interesting quote from Kentucky Republican Senator John Sherman Cooper:

After Richard Nixon’s narrow loss to John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential campaign, Republicans embarked on a conscious effort to recast their image in the South. Following the lead of Goldwater and his allies, the Republican National Committee began “Operation Dixie,” a course of action that attempted to win over southern voters based on conservative states’-rights and segregationist policies and entailed recruiting candidates with that agenda to run as Republicans.

This was called the “Southern Strategy,” and in the 1964 presidential campaign Goldwater pursued it avidly. The key to the strategy was the Democrats’ open embrace of civil-rights legislation in Congress that year, which meant that they were finally shedding their old southern segregationist image. Conservative southern voters were thus effectively disenfranchised-- and in politics, nature abhors a vacuum. So in the 1964 campaign, it was Republicans, not Democrats, who were defending and promoting segregationist policies, both in the presidential campaign and, even more strikingly, in southern congressional races.

Joseph Aistrup, in his book The Southern Strategy Revisited:
Republican Top-Down Advancement in the South, described how it worked:

The major goal of the Southern Strategy was to transform the Republicans’ reputation as the party of Lincoln, Yankees, and carpetbaggers into the party that protects white interests. Thus, subtle segregationist threads are sewn in to the tapestry of the Southern Strategy. As a response in part to the GOP’s new image and the liberalizing changes in the national Democrats’ party positions, the Southern Democrats evolved from a party that depended on race-baiting, white supremacists to a party that needs and depends on black support to win elections.

In tandem with the Southern Strategy issue orientation, a number of Republicans attempted to use subtle segregationist suggestions to win elections. Southern Republicans developed a set of policy positions that reinforced their racially conservative policy orientations. Republicans opposed forced busing, employment quotas, affirmative action and welfare programs; at the same time, they favored local control and tax exemptions for segregated private schools.

Goldwater’s success in the South, and the strong showings made in 1964 by even more segregationist Republicans in the South, provided movement conservatives with evidence that this approach would reap rewards. However, within the Republican Party-- historically the defenders of civil rights for minorities, and still the “Party of Lincoln”-- the conservatives’ strategy raised serious concerns. There was strong dissent within the Republican National Committee from such GOP heavyweights as former committee chairman Meade Alcorn and New York senator Jacob Javits, who argued strenuously that the party should not abandon its historic commitment to civil rights in return for the votes of southern segregationists. Kentucky senator John Sherman Cooper agreed, emphasizing that the strategy was fundamentally amoral: “But in the long run, such a position will destroy the Republican party, and worse, it will do a great wrong because it will be supporting the denial of the constitutional and human rights of our citizens.”

Nonetheless, it became the official strategy of the Republican Party in the 1968 campaign under Richard Nixon, who deliberately used phrases that echoed many southerners’ complaints about desegregation and adopted many of the themes of George Wallace: attacking the busing issue, pounding at “law and order,” and decrying welfare.

It's hard to imagine John Sherman Cooper could win a Republican Party primary in Kentucky these days. In fact, it would be hard to imagine that Cooper wouldn't have been tempted to leave the GOP and run as a Democrat were he in politics today. But he died in 1991 and, if he's in Heaven watching over us, is probably worried that his prediction about destruction of the Republican Party is coming true, heralded, at least in his own state, by the ascension of Rand Paul. And it's funny because if there is one political figure in Kentucky politics who is fit to wear Cooper's mantle, it is certainly Paul's Democratic opponent, Attorney General Jack Conway.

Tuesday Blue America is joining with friends and allies at Daily Kos and DFA and with several Democratic senators like John Kerry and Dick Durbin to urge Democrats, Independents and progressives to help Conway's intense battle against the darkest forces of political evil loose in America today. You can donate here at our Blue America Senate page. Jack's money bomb totals will be announced on Tuesday. Please do what you can to help keep this race competitive-- and give Kentuckians a chance to elect someone the whole country can be proud of.