From: elendil@mintir.new-orleans.la.us (Edward J. Branley)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.dan-quayle,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton
Subject: Re: The Republicans are confusing me again...
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 92 20:08:50 CDT
Organization: Minas Tirith BBS, New Orleans, LA

T3B@psuvm.psu.edu (Tom Benson) writes:

> In article <m9uBqB5w164w@mintir.new-orleans.la.us>,
> elendil@mintir.new-orleans.la.us (Edward J. Branley) says:
>
>
> >You are correct, except that's only school integration.  It wasn't until '64
> >and '65 (the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts) that the Democrats started
> >taking blacks seriously in national politics.  Of course, they had to, since
> >blacks in the south suddenly became a political force when obstacles to thei
> >registering to vote were beginning to disappear.  Of course, by the time
> >racial
> >tension could make itself felt in the Democratic Party (the '68 convention)
> >also had Vietnam to completely rip the party apart...
>
>
> Both parties have, like the rest of America, a deplorable history
> of racism, but the Democrats did make efforts before the sixties
> to heal the problem. For example, Harry Truman's advocacy of
> civil rights in the Democratic Party led to a walkout by the
> "Dixiecrats" and the commitment by the Democrats to fight their
> most conservative Southern racist leaders to establish equal rights.
> Sadly, the Republicans took advantage of the Democrats' civil
> rights initiatives to create their "Southern strategy," which
> brought Southern whites into the Republican Party for the first
> time in very large numbers, and won them the presidency, with
> one exception, since the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.
>
> The Willie Horton episode was a consistent extension of the
> Republican strategy to retain the presidency by appealing to
> racial fear.
>
> Tom Benson
> Penn State

I'm not terribly familiar with the effects of Truman's civil rights policies in
other states, but all they did in Louisiana was to cause the defection of a few
hard-core racists to States' Rights parties in the fifties.  So long as the law
was on the side of discrimination (up until '64), Democrats had it made here in
Louisiana.  Only after blacks become a factor in elections did anything change.
We didn't really have a two-party system here in LA until the late sixties.

As for Republican racial strategy, don't forget David Duke.  It is my strong
belief that George Herbert Walker Bush should offer Pat Buchanan his choice of
jobs in a second administration (behind James Baker, of course).  For all of
the bashing that Buchanan gave Bush in the primaries, it was infinitely better
than what the Democrats would be doing to him now had Duke been able to stick
it out.  Buchanan's vote was a consistent 30-35 percent protest vote.  Odds are
that Duke would have gotten that vote had Pat not been in the race.  Can you
imagine the hay that could have been made of Duke representing one-third of the
GOP?  Most of the attempts to repudiate things said by whackos in the GOP by
Bush and his ilk are so shallow that any repudiation of Duke would have been
just as weak.  People think that Buchanan is a Nazi, can you imagine what
things would be like if they got to see a *real* Nazi on national TV?

Yes, Bush owes Buchanan his political butt.  Now the GOP is merely the party of
Bush and the radical right.  Had Duke gained enough popularity to rate
addressing the GOP convention, the furor would have done them in.







|Edward J. Branley                         elendil@mintir.New-Orleans.LA.US|
|Seashell Software                                UUCP:  rex!mintir!elendil|
|3508 North Woodlawn Avenue                          Compu$erve: 71237,2227|
|Metairie, LA   70006       voice: +1-504-455-5087     bbs: +1-504-455-8665|
Newsgroups: alt.fan.dan-quayle