Racism-- Still A Pillar Of The Republican party

Ted Cruz's father might not be as much as a racist neanderthal as he comes off. I mean, some people think he just acts that way to make his son seem relatively less racist and neanderthal. Or, if that doesn't work… well, people look at the old man and say, "poor, Ted; no wonder he turned out that way. When right-wings-- father or son start talking about "the average black," you know you're in for some stomach churning.

The hate-filled preacher Rafael spoke at Western Wilco-- the Western Williamson County Republican Club in Cedar Park, an almost all white, almost all-Republican suburb of Austin. The medium household income is $67,527, considerably higher than the state average of $49,393.

During the speech, Cruz spoke at length about a recent conversation he said he had with a black pastor in Bakersfield, California.

“I said, as a matter of fact, ‘Did you know that Civil Rights legislation was passed by Republicans? It was passed by a Republican Senate under the threat of a filibuster by the Democrats,’” Cruz said. “‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’ And then I said, ‘Did you know that every member of the Ku Klux Klan were Democrats from the South?’ ‘Oh I didn’t know that.’ You know, they need to be educated.”

Cruz cited a book Please Stop Helping Us by Jason Riley, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board.

“I am going to try to encourage everybody I can to buy a book written by a black journalist. His name is Jason Riley. He wrote a book called Please Stop Helping Us, talking about how all the handouts to blacks have kept blacks in the poorhouse. And I’ll tell you what, I am going to make it my task to buy 15 to 20 copies of that book and hand it out to some black leaders to read.”

“Jason Riley said in an interview, Did you know before we had minimum wage laws black unemployment and white unemployment were the same? If we increase the minimum wage, black unemployment will skyrocket. See, he understands it, but the average black does not.”

The elder Cruz added “every ethnic group” wants “the ability to succeed,” saying Democrats “sell this guaranteed utopia” that is “guaranteed mediocrity.”

“What we need to sell is the American dream,” Cruz said.

He pissed off Digby, who agreed that someone needed to be educated alright-- but not African-Americans. She dug up this video from another Texan, one who really did pass Civil Rights legislation… and not a Republican:

This truly is the stupidest right wing trope out there, and that's saying something. This silly thing ran over the week-end on the same subject. I don't know if they're idiots or think everyone else is an idiot but the idea that black people don't understand that the parties switched places-- due to civil rights!-- in the 1960's and 1970's is mind-boggling.

Here's a little friendly reminder of how the pre-eminent Republican strategist of the Reagan years explained the Southern Strategy and the evolution of the GOP on these issues:

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, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”



…By the way, Republican avatar Ronald Reagan opposed every major piece of civil rights legislation adopted by Congress, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. But he was cheery about it.

I know this is overkill. It's obvious to any sentient being that the racist Southerners who had been Democrats out of tradition stemming from the Civil War were disillusioned and adrift once the leadership of the Democratic Party endorsed civil rights for African Americans. And anyone with a 6th grade education knows that the Republicans then took advantage of that opening and grabbed on to that racist faction with both hands. Maybe Ted Cruz's daddy really doesn't know that. Somebody should tell him. He sounds like a fool.

He sounds like a less slick version of his son.

Deranged Southern Racism Is Tearing The Country Apart Again

The battle to break the racist, neo-Confederate dominance of Congress is more likely to be won north of Gettysburg than south of it. Ari Berman, author of Herding Donkeys:

After the 1994 elections, white Southern Republicans accounted for sixty-two members of the 230-member House GOP majority. Today, white Southern Republicans account for ninety-seven members out of the 233-member House GOP majority. That’s a pretty remarkable shift and one that is not likely to end any time soon. “In all but one election since 1976, the proportion of Southerners in the House Republican caucus has gone up,” says Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report.

Of the fifty-four members of the congressional Tea Party Caucus-- which is most vociferously telling John Boehner not to compromise-- 33 are from Southern states. Of the eighty members of the so-called House GOP “suicide caucus” who urged Boehner to defund Obamacare, “half of these districts are concentrated in the South,” writes Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker. As long as ultraconservative Southerners from lily-white districts hold the balance of power in the Congress, we shouldn’t be surprised that obstruction and dysfunction is the result.

Democrats aren't going to fix Republican extortion and terrorism by winning backward and uneducated, hate-filled districts like the northwestern Georgia hellhole described by Trip Gabriel in Saturday's NY Times. GA-14 has a PVI of R+26, one of the worst in America and Obama only scored 25% of the vote there. Rome, Dallas and Dalton are the three main population centers and Tom Graves won reelection last year with 73% of the vote against Democrat Daniel Grant. Grant's best showing was in Chattooga County, where he took 34% of the vote. In every other county Graves scored 70% or better (86% in Pickens County). I'm sure you remember this clip; it's worth looking at again and reminding yourself what exactly is driving the GOP mania to wreck America:



Of the dozen reddest districts in the country, the only two that didn't secede from the union are in Utah. The rest are a collection of Klan-infested, willfully unhealthy, willfully uneducated red garbage dumps in Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Alabama. Obama didn't hit 30% in any of them last year. In one, TX-13, he didn't hit 20%! These are not the districts that are going to thwart what Charles Krauthammer dubbed the suicide caucus.

But the suicide caucus can be stopped-- in mainstream, patriotic states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey… states that fought the southern racists once before and beat them… and need too do it again in 2014. These are all districts that Obama won in 2008 and/or 2012 that have Republican congressmen. These aren't members of the suicice caucus… but each and every one of them is empowering the suicide caucus and the southern racists who literally seek to destroy the union again. Replacing each of these 40 swing district Republicans would drive the GOP out of power and, hopefully, make them really reassess who and what they are and what they would like their party to be in then real world. The districts are listed from most blue to least blue. Bolded districts are the ones Steve Israel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz refuse to battle over.

• CA-31- Gary Miller- D+5
• CA-21- David Valadao- D+2
• NJ-02- Frank LoBiondo- D+1
• NY-10- Chris Gibson- D+1
• CO-06- Mike Coffman- D+1
• IL-13- Rodney Davis- even
• IA-03- Tom Latham- even
• NV-03- Joe Heck- even
• NJ-03- Jon Runyan- R+1
• NY-02- Peter King- R+1
• PA-08- Michael Fitzpatrick- R+1
• MI-06- Fred Upton- R+1
• CA-10- Jeff Denham- R+1
• WA-08- Dave Reichert- R+1
• FL-13- Bill Young- R+1
• FL-27- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen- R+2
• WI-08- Reid Ribble- R+2
• WI-07- Sean Duffy- R+2
• PA-06- Jim Gerlach- R+2
• MN-03- Erik Paulsen- R+2
• PA-07- Pat Meehan- R+2
• VA-02- Scott Rigell- R+2
• MN-02- John Kline- R+2
• PA-15- Charlie Dent- R+2
• MI-08- Mike Rogers- R+2
• WA-03- Jaime Hererra Buetler- R+2
• NY-11- Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm- R+2
• VA-10- Frank Wolf- R+2
• MI-07- Tim Walberg- R+3
• NY-23-Tom Reed- R+3
• CA-25- Buck McKeon- R+3
• WI-01- Paul Ryan- R+3
• MI-11- Kerry Bentivolio- R+4
• IL-06- Peter Roskam- R+4
• PA-16- Joe Pitts- R+4
• CA-49- Darrell Issa- R+4
• IL-16- Adam Kinzinger- R+4
• MI-03- Justin Amash- R+4
• NE-02- Terry Lee- R+4
• MI-04- Dave Camp- R+4

The DCCC is wasting its time trying to elect conservative hacks in far more difficult districts that Obama didn't win in either race and where Steve Israel will waste millions of dollars next year, the same way he wasted millions of dollars last year. His archetypal race is over OH-06, a red district with a PVI of R+8, where he recruited Jennifer Garrison, "the Sarah Palin of Ohio," who is anti-Choice, hysterically homophobic, anti-union, anti-environment, and pro-NRA. Polling shows she has no chance to win, but Israel will spend God-knows-what to try stocking the Democratic caucus up with more conservatives. Is Nancy Pelosi so asleep at the wheel that she doesn't think to ask Israel why he's running after a deep red district where Obama only got 43%, while ignoring Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's district entirely, where Obama won 53% last year?

Late this evening, the Washington Post hot the Republican extortionists over the head with this blistering editorial.

What have House House Republicans managed to accomplish in a week of government shutdown?

Damage the livelihood of millions of Americans? Check. Government secretaries, food-truck operators, cleaners who work in motels near national parks: They’re all hurting.

Waste billions of taxpayer dollars? Check. It costs a lot to shut agencies, Web sites and parks, and it will cost a lot to reopen them. Meanwhile, the House has voted to pay the salaries, eventually, of hundreds of thousands of employees whom it has ordered not to work. That’s an odd way to manage an enterprise.

Interfere with key government operations? Check. The National Transportation Safety Board can’t investigate an accident last weekend on Metro’s Red Line that claimed the life of a worker. That could make future accidents more likely. On the other side of the world, U.S. allies from Tokyo to Singapore are wondering whether they can rely on a nation whose president has to go AWOL from a key summit meeting in their region.

Rattle the markets, slow an economy in recovery, interrupt potentially lifesaving research at the National Institutes of Health? Check, check and check.

Derail the hated Obamacare? Ch...-- oh, no, wait a minute. That was the GOP’s ostensible purpose for this travesty of misgovernment, but the online insurance markets created by that law opened on schedule last week and continue to operate. In fact, the Republicans managed only to distract attention from the computer glitches that would have gobbled up all the news attention if the government weren’t shut.

In a revealing moment Sunday on ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopoulos replayed a clip from last year in whichHouse Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) explained the foolishness of the tactic that he is now, a year later, pursuing. “It’s pretty clear that the president was reelected,” Mr. Boehner said then. “Obamacare is the law of the land. If we were to put Obamacare into the CR [continuing resolution] and send it over to the Senate, we were risking shutting down the government. That is not our goal.”

Cowed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and bullied by the most conservative members of his caucus, Mr. Boehner has done exactly what he said made no sense. Now he doesn’t know how to get out of the predicament. A shutdown is bad; a default on the debt, which looms 10 days from now, could be catastrophic. The speaker is demanding that President Obama negotiate, while setting “red lines” for those hypothetical talks (“Very simple. We’re not raising taxes.”). It’s not an impressive strategy.

A DWT reader offers an interesting discussion of the contrast between Democrats and Republicans in what they're willing to do to gain and hold power

I was delighted to find this comment added to the comments discussing my recent post about the late Harry Dent, the Nixon-era political operative who more than anyone else masterminded and oversaw the Republican "Southern strategy," and his late-in-life acknowledgment, after years of heated denials, that of course that strategy was based on racial animosity. Our anonymous commenter has such interesting things to say about the power dynamics of Repubs vs. Dems that I didn't way any DWT readers to miss them.--Ken

The Republicans' Southern Stategy has ALWAYS been based on white fear/resentment toward blacks. It is the basic glue of Southern Republicans. I have lived in the South and worked for Republican and Democratic politicians my entire career. Nothing has really changed. It is the unspoken but understood undercurrent of Southern politics which I often refer to as the "they are not with me" rule. They don't have to say it, everyone just knows. Go ask some white male redneck with a pickup and gunrack and he will tell you very clearly why he is a die-hard Republican despite not having health insurance, a job with benefits, a mobile home he can barely afford, etc. How many black faces do you see at NASCAR?

The thing that MIGHT change this year, is that the average voter outside the hard-core South is more threatened by Bush and his henchmen than Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, assorted rappers and carjackers all put together. Quite an accomplishment, really. Good job, Georgie boy.

The funniest thing I saw in this story about Dent, Thurman and the whole sorry bunch was the discussion about Nixon's Supreme Court nominees. Suffice it to say that one of his nominees (who didn't make it) proved to be of the Larry Craig School of Bathroom Etiquette. It was pretty funny watching this unfold, since the R's were scared to death he would be confirmed and then pull a Larry Craig/Mark Foley on them. Didn't happen, since the D's, as usual, did the right thing and stopped it before the sorry mess destroyed a man and his family (not that his family was unaware of all this).

I remember sitting in a meeting listening to the rather unsavory details, thinking that the D's should let it go and let the R's twist in the wind when everything hit the proverbial fan (or men's restroom in this case). The D's fundamental problem boils down to the following. The R's only care about retaining power at all costs and would never let a man's reputation stand in their way. The D's just don't think that way and always throw in the equation some bleeding heart comments about doing the decent and honorable thing. This is why the R's continually kick their butts. It's unfortunate, but that is the reality of the situation. Have the D's learned their lesson yet? We shall see.

The stakes have gotten much higher. Let's hope the D's have finally grown some balls.

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Isn't it nice to know that in the end Harry Dent, architect of the GOP "Southern strategy," sort of took it back? Never mind, Harry!

I think we're all familiar with the "Southern strategy," the concept by which Republicans took full advantage of Southern white resentment at the civil rights revolution and the minimal empowerment of blacks. It's what got Richard Nixon the GOP nomination for president in 1968 and then put him in the White House, and it was then used to turn the South into the Republican bastion it remains to this day.

I think too that anyone with memories of the Nixon White House knows the name of Harry Dent (seen above in 1969 with President Nixon in the background, back to the camera, talking to Rep. George H. W. Bush), a key Nixon adviser. But I for one didn't appreciate how the South Carolinian Dent and the Southern strategy intersected. Harry Dent was, more or less, the architect and living embodiment of the Southern strategy.

In the New York Times Magazine's annual "The Lives They Lived" issue, out tomorrow, our friend Rick Perlstein has a terrific piece on Dent and his role as the chief conceptualist and enforcer of the Southern strategy--first as right-hand man to South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond (he was, it seems, the man who persuaded Strom to bolt the Democratic Party for the GOP in 1964 in support of Barry Goldwater's candidacy) and later as Nixon's "Southern strategist."

The funniest touch is Rick's tribute to Dent's "gift for soothing the egos of powerful men": "On the Nixon Oval Office tapes you can hear him agreeing with whatever the president says almost before he's through saying it." The rest isn't funny at all.

Of Dent's White House service, Rick writes:

Most of Dent's days were spent working the back channels, assuring Southerners that the administration would stonewall federal court desegregation decisions. After Nixon's first Supreme Court nominee, South Carolina's Clement Haynsworth, withdrew under a cloud of corruption allegations, the president ordered Dent to "find a good federal judge further South and further to the right." Dent obliged him with G. Harrold Carswell, who once campaigned for the Georgia State Legislature with the credo, "I believe that segregation of the races is proper and the ONLY practical and correct way of life in our states." Nixon, following Dent's example, argued that the opposition to Carswell's nomination was mere regional bigotry against the South. Liberals, not without reason, regarded Dent, Time reported, as "a Southern-fried Rasputin in the Nixon administration."

Dent was apparently touchy about charges that his career was built on race-baiting, cultivating and politically exploiting racial animus. He seems to have been capable of great indignation at such imputations. But in the end, in a twist that falls somewhere between touching and stomach-turning, "he came clean," as Rick puts it:

The lay preacher in Dent suffered from a guilty conscience. In his 1978 memoir, "The Prodigal South Returns to Power," Dent wrote that his politics were never racist. "The aim of the Southern strategy," he claimed, was merely "to have the South treated just like any other section of the U.S.A." Three years later, when he retired from law to preach the Gospel full time, he came clean. Yes, he admitted, of course he had exploited race to aggrandize Southern power. "When I look back," he said, "my biggest regret now is anything I did that stood in the way of the rights of black people."

Well, thanks for setting the record straight, Harry. I guess, sort of like the late Gilda Radner's SNL Emily Litella character and her addlepated "Never mind," that's supposed to make it all okay.

[P.S.: Would you believe that there's a Wikipedia entry for "Never mind"?]

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WILL THE GOP TRAINGULATE ITSELF INTO A REGIONAL SOUTHERN PARTY INCAPABLE OF COMPETING IN NATIONAL ELECTIONS?

If you read Tom Schaller's brilliant book Whistling Past Dixie, you know that giving up all but the most flimsy pretense of seriously contesting the African-American vote was part of the Republican plan-- what is often called "Nixon's Southern Strategy"-- to lock up the South. The Republicans have winked and nodded their way into the politically polar opposite of what one would expect from the party of Abraham Lincoln-- in the South, for starters, they are unquestionably the party of racism, bigotry, hatred and the respectable face of the KKK.

The strategy-- and the Democrats inability to effectively counter it-- came to its climax in 2004 when they were able to claim control over all three branches of the federal government plus an unprecedented number of Southern legislative seats and gubernatorial chairs. They are likely to continue gaining southern legislative seats and to fatten their hold on much of the former Confederacy, but they have set the stage for turning themselves into a backward, theocratic regional party that will be incapable of competing nationally.

And instead of foreseeing the systemic electoral disasters ahead, the most reactionary elements of the party-- firmly in control-- have set out to worsen the problem by targeting the fastest growing voter bloc in the country, Hispanics. Today's Miami Herald points out the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats in Univision's Spanish-language presidential debates. The Democrats will engage with Spanish-speaking Americans on September 9. The Republican debate, scheduled for September 16, was cancelled yesterday.

Only John McCain had agreed to participate in the Republican debate. "All eight Democratic candidates are slated to show up Sept. 9, and party leaders plan to highlight the contrast. The New Democratic Network, a nationwide political group, is planning news conferences and inviting Hispanic leaders, including Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, former Cabinet member Henry Cisneros and U.S. Rep. Luís Gutiérrez of Illinois."

Last year a market research firm, LatinInsights, reported that about 9% of American voters are Hispanic and that about half of that 9% prefer to speak Spanish. Until recently the Republicans have made tremendous progress in winning a substantial share of this fast-growing segment of the population-- from just 21% in 1996 to 35% in 2000 and to what will probably prove to have been an apex of 40% in 2004. But even before the xenophobic explosion of Know Nothing bigotry and hatred inside the Republican Party-- which has crippled Republican efforts among Hispanic voters-- the trend had reversed. Here are the key findings from the LatinInsights report:

Key Finding 1: Hispanics are disappointed with Bush and unhappy with Republican government. Recent electoral gains made by Bush in this community have been wiped out.   
No matter how the numbers are cut, President Bush and the Republicans have seen a dramatic eroding of their standing with Spanish-speaking Hispanic voters.
   
In 2004 Kerry beat Bush 59%-40% with all Hispanics, and 52%-48% with those Spanish-dominant. In this survey Hispanics confirmed the closeness of the 2004 result. When asked who “did you vote for in 2004?” the result came back 38%-36% Kerry-Bush.
   
When asked how they would vote if the Presidential election were held today, this group gives Democrats a remarkable 36-point advantage (59%-23%). For Republicans this is a dramatic drop from the 52%-48% Kerry-Bush result with the Spanish-speaking sub-group in 2004. 
   
Bush’s standing with this group has plummeted. In the 2004 cycle, Bush regularly received a 60% favorable rating from Hispanics. In our survey this was reversed, as 38% see him favorably, 58% unfavorably, with 40% very unfavorable towards the President.

Democrats have a very significant advantage in favorability, with a 65%-25% favorable/ unfavorable result. Republicans come in at 41%-51% favorable/unfavorable. For the first time in any Hispanic poll we’ve seen, The Republican Party is seen more favorably than Bush. It is would not be a stretch to now say that President Bush has become a drag on the Republican Party with Hispanics.

On almost every major issue, not just immigration, overwhelming majorities of Hispanic voters think the Republican approach is wrong and harmful. That includes Iraq, the economy (rated #1 and 2 by Hispanic voters in terms of importance). "Of 20 major issues tested, Democrats outperform Republicans on 17, including 'family values,' 'better use of my tax money' and 'respects more my religious beliefs.' The loss of faith of Republican government to achieve things of value for the Hispanic community should be a major concern to the governing Party." 

Seven years ago there were over 28 million US households in which Spanish was the most-spoken language. Over 40 million Hispanics live in the U.S. Only 4 countries in the entire world have more Spanish speakers than the U.S. (Mexico, Colombia, Spain and Argentina). In 2000 there were 5 states where over 20% of the population spoke Spanish as a primary language, New Mexico (43.27%), California (34.72%), Texas (34.63%), Arizona (28.03%), Nevada (22.80%). Since then Colorado and Florida have probably crossed the 20% line as well.