Buchanan: GOP Needs More Race-Baiting, Not Less
Pat Sees White People (wikimedia)
A provocative article by Pat Buchanan argues that contrary to conventional wisdom, Republicans shouldn’t worry about alienating Hispanic voters, they should just focus on getting white people to like them more:
In 2008, Hispanics, according to the latest figures, were 7.4 percent of the total vote. White folks were 74 percent, 10 times as large. Adding just 1 percent to the white vote is thus the same as adding 10 percent to the candidate’s Hispanic vote.
If John McCain, instead of getting 55 percent of the white vote, got the 58 percent George W. Bush got in 2004, that would have had the same impact as lifting his share of the Hispanic vote from 32 percent to 62 percent.
And he sees race-baiting attacks as the way to do it:
Had McCain been willing to drape Jeremiah Wright around the neck of Barack Obama, as Lee Atwater draped Willie Horton around the neck of Michael Dukakis, the mainstream media might have howled.
And McCain might be president.
His specific argument about Sonia Sotomayor is that Republicans need to get more explicit about the idea that, as a Latina, she will make rulings that disadvantage white people and that white America ought therefore band together to stop her. This is already the subtext of their arguments but I guess he feels it’s not close enough to the surface.
At any rate, while Buchanan is being repugnant, I do think this is something conservatives are going to want to think about. Consider the case of Jeff Sessions (R-AL). We’re talking about a guy who’s too racist to get confirmed as a judge, but just racist enough to win a Senate seat in Alabama. And it’s not because Alabama is a lilly white state. With 65 percent of its electorate white, and 29 percent of its electorate African-American, Alabama is much more demographically favorable to the Democrats than is the country at large. But while McCain pulled 55 percent of the white vote nationwide he scored 88 percent of white vote in Alabama. And this is what you tend to see in the Deep South, white Americans exhibiting the kind of high levels of racial solidarity in voting behavior that you normally associate with African-Americans in the US political context.
Consequently states with small white populations like Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi can be solid GOP territory. Under the circumstances, it’s not entirely crazy for Republicans to believe that the right way to respond to shifting American demographics is by just trying to amp-up the level of racial anxiety in the shrinking white majority. An analogy might be to religion. When the country was overwhelmingly Christian, Christianity didn’t play much of a role in our politics. But as the Christian majority shrank it became more and more viable to explicitly mobilize Christian identity for political purposes.
102 Responses to “Buchanan: GOP Needs More Race-Baiting, Not Less”
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July 15th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Sort of a gross thought experiment, but I think what Buchanan is missing is the analysis that white people are sympathetic to that kind of race-based attack outside of places like Alabama. Large white majority states like Oregon find that sort of thing repugnant.
Like Lee Atwater said 20 years ago, how you had to code your racism a bit–that pendulum has shifted a lot more. Moderate whites–let alone liberals–hate that shit.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Consequently states with small white populations like Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi can be solid GOP territory.
Query how much of the Republican run-up in the national white vote comes from one region with a maximum number of electoral votes, all of which are already committed to the Republicans. If McCain had picked up 4% of the white vote in the Deep South (a guesstimation of Buchanan’s 1% of the vote nationally), McCain wouldn’t have been helped at all.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Plus all the racists already vote Republican.
Amping up the cracker won’t help them a bit.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:16 am
SomeCallMeTim- exactly. Buchanan must be getting senile; he used to at least be smart enough to understand how electoral votes work.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Hey, ethnic and race baiting has certainly worked in the past. It got Milosevic elected, it got Hitler elected Chancellor. What could go wrong?
July 15th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Karl Rove is a lot smarter than Pat Buchanan.
Karl Rove didn’t dredge up all of those black Republican sewer commissioners and Latino Republican Planning Board members to put in prominent locations on the stage at the 2000 and 2004 RNC conventions because he wanted to appeal to black and Hispanic people.
He did it because there is a substantial block of white, suburban voters who might be inclined to support Republican ideas about taxes, foreign policy, and gay people, but who don’t want to vote for the Southern Strategy racist party.
Pat Buchanan, on the other hand, is the guy who repeatedly told us that women love Sarah Palin, and this or that outrage by Barack Obama was going to destroy him.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:20 am
The flip side of that though is that if Republicans completely lost the Hispanic vote but the white vote stayed more or less the same, they’d lose Texas.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:23 am
The delusional hope of white solidarity aside —
Does Buchanan have any smart ideas on what to do in a generation when white people no longer compose a majority of America?
July 15th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Nobody during any one of Buchanan’s innumerable TV appearances has ever identified him as a racist, which is what he is and has always been, to his face. Why is that?
July 15th, 2009 at 10:25 am
This is a bit golden age. Christianity has constantly been used as a wedge device in our politics. Protestant vs. Catholic used to matter a great deal more, e.g., JFK.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Looking at post 7 —
I’ve been wondering if Texas may go back to its LBJ days in the not too distant future for some time now.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:27 am
The only difficulty I see with this ‘racial anxiety’ plan is that the whites in the rest of the country don’t share our history of experiences dealing with atrocities committed by the mexicans and the negroes. So they are much more difficult to mobilize using racial epithets and whatnot.
I don’t see how this can possibly mobilize conservatives voters as well as using (ex)Gov Mother Sarah Palin as a Sacred Vessel carrying the Message of God, who very much wants His Dominion restored to its rightful owners and for them to receive the energy resources they so richly deserve.
-RPTH
July 15th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Point Says:
“The delusional hope of white solidarity aside —
Does Buchanan have any smart ideas on what to do in a generation when white people no longer compose a majority of America?”
He’ll be safely in hell.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Although Buchanan is despicable, I also wouldn’t totally discount the idea that racial animosity is the way out of the wilderness for the Republicans. After all, they haven’t got much else.
But I really don’t see them succeeding in making Hispanics the new scary Black people. The historical tension just isn’t there, Hispanics are very integrated into society in most parts of the US, and perhaps most importantly for the GOP, the big right-wing money isn’t willing to fully fund heavy anti-immigration rhetoric.
When you mention Puerto Ricans, most Americans probably think of Natalie Wood and Rita Moreno; you just can’t pull off the Big Hate when that’s the material you’re working with.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Additional comment – the fact that Human Events printed this is just another datum in support of the fact that they’re simply right-wing scum, who can sound intellectual.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:36 am
atrocities committed by the mexicans and the negroes
Wow. They’ll give a pulpit to anybody these days.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:38 am
Folks, you simply must follow the link to @12 Rev. Hipple’s site. It is hil-fucking-arious.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:40 am
When you mention Puerto Ricans, most Americans probably think of Natalie Wood and Rita Moreno;
Unfortunately I think that’s wishful thinking, and not just because Natalya Zakharenko (aka Natalie Wood) was Russian/Ukrainian. How many under-30s know who Rita Moreno is?
July 15th, 2009 at 10:41 am
At any rate, while Buchanan is being repugnant
No, Buchanan is repugnant.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Ignoring the morality of such a repugnant strategy, it really doesn’t seem to work very well in game-theoretic terms.
If the GOP alienates Hispanics and nonwhites to the extent that they vote Dem by a 90-10 ratio, then the GOP has to win 64% of the white vote in a national election to turn an election into a dead heat. When since Reagan-Mondale have they approached that sort of dominance among whites?
And that’s a moving target, of course. Whites will still constitute a majority for many years, but it’s a shrinking majority.
And it’s going to be increasingly hard to get whites to see minorities as ‘the other’ when the people you went to school with and with whom you’re working on a daily basis are increasingly of a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds.
The politics of racial division are, in the not-so-long run, a ticket to irrelevance for the party that practices them.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:45 am
I shudder to think that I gladly shook Buchanan’s hand in 1995. It’s a testament to what a conservative upbringing can do to the psyche.
And at least Lee Atwater had the decency to eventually apologize for his nastiness, even if it took the specter of his own mortality to drag it out of him.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:46 am
Who cares what Pat Buchanan thinks? The guy was drummed out of the Republican Party for a reason.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:46 am
What nation are you talking about with the Christianity stuff? Last I checked the US is still 75% or so Christian. And back in the 60s when it was 90% or whatever, JFK sure had a tough road to hoe over his Catholicism.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Yes, exactly. McCain took the high road throughout the campaign, which is why all the racists voted for Obama.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:47 am
It’s an insane strategy. And frankly, though it’d make the Democratic party stronger (woo hoo Texas), I really really hope they don’t run with it.
That kind of toxic politics creates very deep wounds that go on for years. And as we’ve seen in Britain, it’s very unhealthy to lack a respectable opposition party that has an affirmative agenda. It’s worse here, because we just have the two parties. If one of them is the batshit insane party of racial resentment, trying to gin up a race war, it’s not really clear to me how we check the other party.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Nate Silver has analyzed an “Operation Gringo” strategy in terms of electoral votes; here and here. It’s not that completely crazy, but it basically requires the GOP to either win states that it’s hard to imagine that party winning anytime soon, or to somehow thread the needle of running a “gringo” strategy while still retaining Florida.
Naturally, someone like Palin couldn’t be expected to pull off that level of subtlety. Huck is good at seeming compassionate, so maybe he could, but he’d be flip-flopping on immigration issues (which he tried to do late in the ‘08 primary, with lukewarm results.)
Sad that the party has come to this.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Buchanan nicely depicts the face of the fearful White man who can’t quite understand that others might have power. The problem with this article is not just that he’s advocating race-baiting – it’s that he is advocating bigotry as a legitimate means of political discussion. To do so is fundamentally irresponsible – it’s not just bad political strategy to hate people, it’s dangerous. Whipping up bigotry from a bully pulpit simply cannot lead to good results.
Check out this video that’s circulating around that makes this point. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POYA9uev828
July 15th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Racism as a political strategy tends to gain more viability when the economy collapses — the wealthy need someone to scapegoat in order to divert the population’s attention away from how plutocratic greed ran the country into the ditch.
If the working class ain’t blaming the blacks or the hispanics then they might focus on the real culpits.
July 15th, 2009 at 10:58 am
Re Al at 22: “Who cares what Pat Buchanan thinks? The guy was drummed out of the Republican Party for a reason.”
———-
Hmmmm.
I wonder if Pat Buchanan is trying to get even by luring the Republican Party into committing electoral hari kari? heh heh
July 15th, 2009 at 11:03 am
I wonder if Pat Buchanan is trying to get even by luring the Republican Party into committing electoral hari kari? heh heh
At this point that seems a bit like luring lemmings over a cliff.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:07 am
#9 asks a good question; Buchanan went thru his racist rant concerning Sotomayor yesterday, and nobody else (Chris Matthews, Andrea Mitchell, etc.) challenged him; blank faces; I sometimes wonder if Pat owns a piece of MSNBC.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:07 am
“I think what Buchanan is missing is the analysis that white people are sympathetic to that kind of race-based attack outside of places like Alabama. Large white majority states like Oregon find that sort of thing repugnant.”
This is exactly right. Why Buchanan assumes that all white people are as racist as he is, is a mystery to me.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Nate Silver already ran the numbers on the cracker coalition and concluded it’s doable, but tough
July 15th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Who cares what Pat Buchanan thinks? The guy was drummed out of the Republican Party for a reason.
Well, for one, because he regularly appears on television to give his thoughts (on the network of liberal bias, no less!). And second, because he often says what a lot of other Republicans are thinking but don’t say because it would sound really bad. Let’s not forget that the culture war speech was a big deal that really formed a great deal of their electoral strategy over the past 15 years (and fully epitomized itself in Palin), and I’ve yet to see too many indications that they’re moving away from it.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:09 am
okay – so how in the heck would this work as an electoral vote strategy??? if they implement it, most of the west is gone, TX and FL – gone, Hell even Utah is now up for grabs..
It is insanity – but at this point the GOP is just a crazy cracker party, not a loyal opposition party and maybe it should disappear…
July 15th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Who cares what Pat Buchanan thinks? The guy was drummed out of the Republican Party for a reason.
Yeah, if by “drummed out” you mean “wasn’t satisfied with getting only 20% of the vote in Republican primaries.”
July 15th, 2009 at 11:22 am
It is insanity – but at this point the GOP is just a crazy cracker party, not a loyal opposition party and maybe it should disappear…
They’re becoming the Democratic Party of 1860, which felt the Northern wing wasn’t racist and crazy enough about slavery, so they had to run a Southern ticket, thereby guaranteeing beyond a doubt Lincoln’s election.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Does Buchanan have any smart ideas on what to do in a generation when white people no longer compose a majority of America?
I believe it involves guns. Lots and lots of guns.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:49 am
It should be mentioned that this was basically Pete Wilson’s re-election strategy for California governor in 1994, figuring he needed about 60% of the white vote to win by riding support for Prop 187 to victory while the Dems tried to play both sides on the question of immigrant-bashing. Of course, the CW is that this was a long term disaster for the GOP in that state.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Buchanan’s argument is completely nonsensical.
Catering to white racists in solid red states only gets the GOP more white racists in solid red states and solid Republican voters in swing states. A race-baiting strategy won’t help the GOP in crucial traditional swing states like Florida and Ohio, and newer swing states like Colorado, Nevada, and even Virgina.
Engaging in race-baiting will alienate a large percentage of young voters of all races, as well as a large percentage of independent voters….the very voters the GOP needs to grow the party.
Moreover, the analogy to the Christian vote fails logically when you consider the narrow win margins that strategy achieved. Sure that voting block made the difference in 00 and 04, but both those elections were won on razor thin margins. I have serious doubts that adding a race-baiting strategy to the mix would tip the scale in a close election, given the trend of the electorate.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Good. I hope the Republicans win Alabama by 95% and lose Arizona by 0.03%
July 15th, 2009 at 11:52 am
All y’all are missing the point. Buchanan’s strategy is a brilliant and time-tested manipulation of identity politics in a diverse society. Why do you think everyone in Iraq votes along ethnic lines? Because of demagogues and tribal hatreds. If Buchanan can convince a lot of white voters — and not just in Alabama but in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania — that the only way to keep power and economic clout is to vote for the “white party” — watch out.
It’s loathsome, but it’s alarmingly effective all too often. Humans are tribal creatures.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Business interests have a strong desire to have cheap labor. This makes it difficult for Republicans to go down Buchanan’s road. I don’t think Republicans can become an anti-immigration party unless they can get racists to pony up some additional cash.
July 15th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
And Matt, what the hell did they teach you at Dalton?
At Trinity, Poly Prep, Spence, HoMann, Brearley, Hackley and Riverdale (I went to Hackley, and I had close friends from when I lived in NYC at the others), they spend at least a week on Nativism, the Democratic Party, Temperance, the effects of the Great Hunger, etc. before the Civil War, and then another week after dealing with the Irish, Italian, Jewish immigrants, and their impact on politics.
Fuck, New York City requires a certain amount New York history in lower school, so I’m really confused as to how you missed all of this, and still did well enough at Dalton to get into Harvard.
July 15th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
I would also argue that the GOP already tried this strategy, and lost. We now have an African American president.
McCain and the media *did* drape Jeremiah Wright around Obama’s neck. Fox News—the most watched TV news station—did their best to paint Obama as an affirmative-action promoting, socialist loving Muslim terrorist, and the ground games throughout many locales engaged in blatant race-baiting. But in the end, those strategies failed. I’d say they even backfired in some instances.
I don’t see how running a race-baiting strategy, as a ‘I told you so!’ …reaffirming Obama as an affirmative-action promoting, socialist-loving Muslim terrorist works a second time around. I dunno. I see it backfiring.
July 15th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I’m glad Obama won, but could someone explain to me why going after Wright is race-baiting? (Wright was after all not some random guy, he was very close to Obama). Obama explained to the American public that despite Wright’s abhorrent views he can’t disown him (although later that’s just what he did), but would it have been that evil of the McCain campaign to make a fuss about it?
July 15th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
If one of them is the batshit insane party of racial resentment, trying to gin up a race war, it’s not really clear to me how we check the other party.
Never fear: the Democrats in Washington have proven an uncanny ability to check themselves.
July 15th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
How is it that Steve Sailer has missed this thread so far? Buchanan is only echoing what he’s has been asserting for years.
I’ll link to just one of Sailer’s many pieces advocating “inreaching” to whites instead of outreaching to minorities. It is also the most awesome obituary title ever.
“Jesse Helms: The Sailer Strategy Victorious”.
http://tinyurl.com/mugr73
July 15th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
I’m glad Obama won, but could someone explain to me why going after Wright is race-baiting?
Because the whole effectiveness of the attack comes from associating Obama with a stereotypical Angry Black Man. You know, the kind that blames whitey for creating AIDS and distributing crack, the kind that wants to take the white money and white women for themselves.
July 15th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
But wait, in 2000, didn’t all these Northern retired Jews living in Palm Beach vote for Buchanan? He must have something nice to say about Jews then?
/sarcasm
July 15th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Sailer has recommended the “Sailer Strategy”, but he knows that a.) It won’t last much longer, and b.) Whites in general don’t see themselves as being in solidarity, since they hold minorities in such paternalistic contempt that it’s the ultimate in “uncool” to admit that you worry about stuff like AA (After all, if you are in danger of losing your job to AA, you are obviously a subpar white person, who is only marginally more capable than a black or a hispanic!)
http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/white_pride_is_uncool/
July 15th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Adam – You mean “associating Obama with a stereotypical Angry Black Man” that he chose to associate with for 20 years.
So of course, you would disapprove of bringing it up if, say, John McCain had been attending yearly events sponsored by David Duke? After all, that’s just guilt by association!
July 15th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
b.) Whites in general don’t see themselves as being in solidarity, since they hold minorities in such paternalistic contempt…
Yet white males actually are a minority most everywhere except the Supreme Court and Congress. Thankfully, most of us don’t think in solidarity with Mr. Buchanan (or his sister).
July 15th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
[...] is the Dem strategy today. So I am going to return to the politics of the Sotomayor hearings. Matt Yglesias writes: Consider the case of Jeff Sessions (R-AL). We’re talking about a guy who’s too racist [...]
July 15th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
vanya:
I think WoofWoof knew that Natalie Wood wasn’t really Puerto Rican — that was, by my reading, part of the joke. I do agree that he’s showing his age, though. Just to show mine, who’s the right person? J-Lo? Is she Puerto Rican? Dominican? Still a big deal?
July 15th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
So of course, you would disapprove of bringing it up if, say, John McCain had been attending yearly events sponsored by David Duke? After all, that’s just guilt by association!
Adam clearly referred to stereotypes by using the word “stereotype.” He also provided examples. ‘Guilt by association’ was not the point. Racist tropes were.
July 15th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
In what universe was Buchanan drummed out of the Republican Party?
July 15th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
In what universe was Buchanan drummed out of the Republican Party?
posting al pasteeater doubleplusungood refs holocaustdenyingcracker rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling
July 15th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Mort,
Obviously, I was using “minority” not in the numerical sense but in the modern social sense of “people who score lower on tests than whites and asians”.
July 15th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
I’d have to answer your question with questions:
1. Who is George Bush’s closest friends?
2. Who was Bill Clinton’s pastor?
3. Who baptized Reagan’s kids?
4. Why does everyone know Wright but not Hagee?
5. Who was Gerald Ford’s friend with the crazy conspiracy ideas?
Obama was friends with Wright, but they didn’t agree on many issues. Since we are voting for Obama, what difference does the views of one of his friends matter? Is it because all black people think alike? Is it because black people follow black ministers in lock step? Are you saying that McCain, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, etc. didn’t have any friends with unpopular ideas? But for some reason, we never heard about any of these friends. Friends’ policy positions were never an issue until last March. Even then, McCain’s pastor (Hagee) had his own ridiculous ideas and speeches and they were never played on CNN. Because we all know that white people think for themselves but black ministers think for black people.
July 15th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
So of course, you would disapprove of bringing it up if, say, John McCain had been attending yearly events sponsored by David Duke? After all, that’s just guilt by association!
Again, the whole point of the attack is to associate Obama with someone who they caricaturize as a racial stereotype. The underlying message of the attack is “if Obama’s friends with someone who hates white people, then does Obama secretly hate white people too?” That’s pretty much the textbook definition of race-baiting, which was your original question.
That doesn’t mean it can’t be an effective attack. The reason it wasn’t used in the fall was not because a race-baiting attack was beyond the pale, but because McCain (correctly, I think) judged that he would lose more moderate voters who had already been satisfied by Obama’s speech on the issue than he would win. Most of the people susceptible to race-baiting attacks these days are already solid Republicans, which is why Buchanan’s advice is so bad.
July 15th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
was using “minority” not in the numerical sense but in the modern social sense of “people who score lower on tests than whites …
Well, some whites, anyway.
July 15th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
JM -
Hah! You make my case for me. The real interest of “anti racist” whites is and always has been to prove their social superiority to other whites (for whom, mysteriously, IQ scores are perfectly valid measurements). Blacks are simply props in this, assumed to be so inferior they simply don’t count socially.
This is, of course, white there will never be “white solidarity” of the kind Buchanan hopes for…
July 15th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
6. Was John Kerry ever accused of supporting abortion bans because of the church he went to, and the opinions of his parish priest?
July 15th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
I see you have returned the favor by making my case for me. Much obliged.
Yours in solidarity,
JM
July 15th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Yes, jimbo, a lack of white nationalism among non-wingnut white people can only be understand as a character flaw.
Nice Freudian slip, btw.
July 15th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
I once had a room mate very much like jimbo. He asked me, “Are you ashamed to be white?”
I looked straight at him and said, “Only sometimes.”
July 15th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Translation: Why does everybody give me that look when I talk about black people?
July 15th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Seriously, if they think stuff like this:
“You voted to stay with the decision of the circuit. And in fact your vote was the key vote. Had you voted with Judge Cabranes, himself of Puerto Rican ancestry, had you voted with him, you could’ve changed that case.”
is going to win elections, then the electorate is much dumber than I thought.
July 15th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
So many places to go with an article like this:
1. If one were to look at the column BEFORE this one in (choking back vomit) WND, Buchanan wrote this bizarre rant about “ethnonationalism” being the destruction of societies all over the world, but then weirdly longed for the tim when the majority of the US had “white European Christian beliefs”. In case his readers didn’t grasp what he was getting at, Buchanan followed with a rueful prediction that when America is no longer majority white, that it will suffer the same fate as other “ethnonationalist” countries.
2. I remain impressed with Buchanan’s ability to describe the working class as only being “white” without any of his MSNBC colleagues calling him out on it.
3. Has Pat stopped to think that the nearly 20-30 percent drop in Latino votes for the GOP from 2004 to 2008 had a rather pronounced effect on the all important Electoral College totals? McCain didn’t just lose Florida, he was beaten like a drum. One could also infer that the shift in Latino voting patterns greatly affected the outcomes in Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Indiana?
4. In the remote chance that Buchanan’s race-baiting strategy actually worked, how on earth could the GOP effectively govern the country after a hypothetical electoral cycle that they devoted to fanning racial hatred?
July 15th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Wait, he’s saying that like it’s a GOOD thing?!
July 15th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
For the Republicans? Uh, yeah.
It’s not like anything else works for them. No darkie, no victory.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Does anyone know how one would find out Buchanan’s current party affiliation? Because Al’s got a point. It would be weird to see him giving (apparently earnest) electoral advice to a party of which he not a member. In any case, he clearly still (or once again) identifies with the Republican Party and wishes it success.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Behold, Patrick Buchanan, the crown of creation. (With apologies to Jesse Helms)
http://stylemens.typepad.com/details__privileges/images/2008/07/07/review_helms.jpg
July 15th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Does anyone know how one would find out Buchanan’s current party affiliation?
I believe it’s the Constitution Party. They appear to have a very pro-white Christian male stance (especially the Christian). Ron Paul endorsed their candidate after he dropped out.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Well, it seems to work just fine for Zionist scum, so why wouldn’t it work for Republican scum?
July 15th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Good ‘ole Pat, never misses to spill out his racist crap under the veil of participating in a relevant discussion. A Steve Sailor who someone actually listens too if you will.
Matt Y:
Consequently states with small white populations like Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi can be solid GOP territory
Yes Matt, but by then the these kinds of states will be their only solid territory. You seem to ignore that whites in 25 years will nearly be a minority. What if the GOP picks up 2/3rds of the white vote and only 50% of the population is white but everyone else but the GOP base hates them because they support a racist platform? That’s not a road to victory, it’s a road to becoming the Whig Party of the 21st Century.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
He did it because there is a substantial block of white, suburban voters who might be inclined to support Republican ideas about taxes, foreign policy, and gay people, but who don’t want to vote for the Southern Strategy racist party.
Joe, good observation. When the GOP says it wants to be more “inclusive” it’s usually a dog and pony show for non-racist whites so they don’t feel guilty voting for them.
July 15th, 2009 at 4:58 pm
I totally agree.
My own senator, Lindsey Graham, is trying to outdo Sessions, IMHO. God, I wish he’d STFU.
And he never, ever does.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Biff (#70):
/sarcasm: guns, lots of guns./sarcasm
Seriously, I don’t think the big guns in the GOP are really worried about the “govern” part. As long as they’ve got the regulatory agencies on a leash, the fat cats get another 4 years to do that thing they do.
July 15th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
There’s a simple rebuttal to Buchanan’s argument that Palin and Sotomayor are treated differently because of race: Hillary Clinton.
Hillary is a white Christian woman. She is also a Yale-trained lawyer, demonstrably quite smart, and successful at nearly everything she does. Sarah Palin was briefly a sportscaster and mayor of a small town before serving less than two years in a minor appointed office and less than three years as Governor. And not a particularly good mayor or Governor, for a’ that. Liberals leave Hillary alone despite her piety and her pastiness alike.
That said, conservative elites attack Hillary plenty. By contrast, Andrew Sullivan’s theories about Trig aside, the attacks on Palin are pretty factual. Certainly more factual than any of a hundred Vince Foster theories one could float. It’s not very Christian of them, perhaps. But it’s all in the game yo. All in the game.
July 15th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Thanks. I stole it.
July 15th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Makes me wanna paraphrase a line from “Ballad of a Thin Man” by Bob Dylan:
“Because you know something’s happening in America, but you don’t know what it is…Do you, Mr. Buchanan?”
July 15th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
In 2008 the Democrats nominated a black man with limited national experience, a liberal reputation, controversial associations and an exotic, funny sounding name that coincidentally rhymes with the name of America’s public enemy number one. If that didn’t pump up and max out the whites-only Buchanan wing of the country, nothing the Republicans do now is going to top it. 2008 tested Buchanan’s theory, they lost – this ain’t your lily white-assed Grandpappy’s electorate anymore.
July 15th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Republicans are constantly implying what Buchanan is saying aloud.
What Buchanan fails to realize, is that a large number of people of all races respond poorly to injustice, and consider the racist policies of the GOP unjust. If they amp up the racism, they won’t just lose Hispanic votes, they’ll also lose non-racist independents.
If all Repubicans were this openly racist, they’d be doing progressives a favor.
July 15th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
[...] that Alabama, with a population that is 68.6% non-Hispanic white, can be (totally appropriately!) described as having a “small white population” speaks volumes about American culture, politics, and history. Leave a [...]
July 16th, 2009 at 1:41 am
So where is the coverage for those ‘pollsters’ who say democrats should target hispanics or blacks. Is this news- if you want more hispanics or blacks you are inclusive, but if you want more whites you are racist? What the hell have we come to? Such sycophants who can’t even seen their own logic is the contra to this. THere are just as many saying the opposite discrimination on the democratic side, but ti does’t mae headlines, God help you if you happen to be white.
July 16th, 2009 at 1:58 am
When I was eight years old I lived in Norfolk, Va. and was beaten up three times by high school boys because I was Jewish….I have not forgotten those beatings even though they happened 65 years ago….Listening to Buchanan race baiting today on MSNBC made my skin crawl…..He gives hatred and brutality a bad name.
July 16th, 2009 at 5:33 am
Blacks vited as a racist block in the last election. Wright is a racist. I see what goes around comes around. It is more than just for the white race to band together to protect themselves from black racism.
July 16th, 2009 at 6:00 am
donald bright
You didn’t get beaten up because you were Jewish, you got beaten up because you were smaller than they were. Mean people don’t think it’s fun to attack someone bigger than they are, because then they get beaten up.
Jewish, White, Black, Gay, Left handed…
July 16th, 2009 at 7:34 am
I abhor the provincial world-view espoused by people like Buchanan (no matter what color of skin they happen to favor), but can somebody please explain to me why Lloyd (#87) is wrong? Is it not natural for any group of people (in this case white) to feel resentment if other races are openly courted in the name of cultural inclusiveness but any courting of their own race is deemed racism? I’m not white, but I don’t see how pandering to anybody due to their race or religion or any other innate characteristic is an acceptable way for a society to demonstrate inclusiveness.
July 16th, 2009 at 7:34 am
[...] tip: Matthew Yglesias) Media, Politics, Social [...]
July 16th, 2009 at 7:41 am
Yes, Buchanan certainly is repugnant! To suggest that Republicans will gain electorally by resorting to race baiting, as Jeff Sessions has done to gain his Senate seat after failing to win a federal judicial appointment in 1986 , is predictable! If people like Buchanan and Sessions are unable to win elections or appointments on their “merits,” then resort to race baiting, as in the recent anti-Sotomayor ad, is the “fall-back” position! However, the recent Supreme Court reaffirmation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, will serve to make that position untenable. Only a reversion to pre-1965 voting exclusion of minorities will offer Buchanan and his ilk a prospect of success!
July 16th, 2009 at 9:16 am
can somebody please explain to me why Lloyd (#87) is wrong?
Because Democrats don’t court minorities AT THE EXPENSE OF white Americans — they court them all. Buchanan is proposing to court whites in ways designed to alienate minorities.
It’s the difference between treating everyone like a fellow citizen, worth engaging with your movement, and only treating those with a certain skin color as such.
July 16th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
So, Eric, let me see if I follow your logic about “racist black voting” in 2008.
When 90% of the black vote went for Kerry in 2004, that wasn’t racism
When 90% of the black vote went for Obama in 2008, that suddenly became motivated solely by racism?
Perhaps the “poor oppressed white man” strategy by the GOP over the last 30 years has resulted in alienating the black voters so much that they vote Democratic in basically the same numbers each election.
Remember the effect of permenantly ticking off a minority group as the GOP pursues this moronic “we hate Latinos” strategy.
July 16th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
can somebody please explain to me why Lloyd (#87) is wrong?
Here’s the difference –
“Let’s all of us Type Q people get together, because we like Type Q, and we hate / mistrust / fear all other types!”
and
“Let’s have Type Q, Z, A, and M get together (along with everyone else) so we can learn from each other, and celebrate both our similarities and our differences.”
I know the difference is subtle, but it’s there.
July 16th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Hello Ryan, dcp,
Thanks for those responses. It is not that I don’t understand the distinction you bring up. However, I still think this is a double standard that “progresive” society employs and here is why:
The National Council for La Raza (NCLR) is an organization that is actively courted by the Dems and often pilloried by the Right as “racist”. Here is the opening mission statement on the website of the NCLR – “The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) – the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States – works to improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans.”
NCLR makes no reference to improving opportunities for any one else and yet an organization that substituted “White” for “Hispanic” would be deemed racist. If this organization ran into a situation where a Hispanic-American had to face off against an Asian American on White American, who do you think they will stand in support of?
Isn’t this effectively a form of racism that is condoned by liberal society? Isn’t this the argument the likes of Buchanan and Beck use to stoke outrage among the Right? I still don’t see what is wrong with the basic premise of the Right’s argument in this case.
July 16th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
You didn’t get beaten up because you were Jewish, you got beaten up because you were smaller than they were. Mean people don’t think it’s fun to attack someone bigger than they are, because then they get beaten up.
Jewish, White, Black, Gay, Left handed…
Racist troll is racist.
July 16th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
97. I think what you are missing that historically, white Americans have enjoyed an institutional privilige in American society. As the majority ethnicity, they haven’t been subjected to systemic or state-sponsored discrimmination. Groups like the NAACP, La Raza, etc. came together as a “safety in numbers” type of organization. Frankly, asking for an equal place at the table isn’t that much to ask in the so-called “land of the free”, yet white Americans who otherwise claim not to be prejudiced get really bent out of shape over this.
In Indianapolis, they have the Black Expo every July, and local media is flooded with predictable “why not a White Expo” comments to local media. Funny, the same people making those cracks don’t seem to have a problem with ethnic celebrations like St. Patrick’s Day, Oktoberfest, etc. That’s because they don’t understand that being white in America for the most part means that you don’t really have to explain yourself or even justify your actions.
Minority groups are often expected to hold themselves to a standard that white Americans aren’t expected to. If there are a spate of crimes committed by white people (like school shootings), the tone of the discussion is “what can society do about it”. However, when it comes to black on black crime, all of a sudden the responsibility to address the problem belongs solely to black people. It’s subtle, and hard to see at first, but it’s pretty pernicious.
No offense, but you can’t combat racism by demanding that non-white people stay quiet and deferential to a fault.
July 16th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
#87: Ti does’t mae headlines because it makes sense for small groups with less power to band together to use it more effectively. This also makes sense when members of a group are disproportionately of the same economic and social class, so that they actually do have interests in common—as opposed to ‘white people’, which is a term encompassing so many people at so many levels of society that banding together can happen only over the common issue of race, as they really don’t have many group interests in common.
There are some white people who feel like they have no power; they feel this way because 1.) They don’t have any, not because they’re white, and 2.) Because they no longer have the overwhelming privileges, relative to even upper-class black people, that their fathers enjoyed (and the black people didn’t).
This sense of dispossession of 2.) is extremely useful to those (almost all) white men who benefit from 1.)—it’s better for a pobucker to think he’s powerless because he’s white and be riled-up about race than about class, and racial consciousness makes the rich, white, man seem more of a potential ally than the poor, black, one.
July 16th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Gerald, Biff – I see your points… but I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this.
Whatever may be the historical reasons for it, reverse discrimination is just as bad as the original act – an attempt to correct a historical wrong by committing another one in the present.
This comes from personal experience – I come from a country where I was on the so-called “privileged” side of the equation. Some of my equally “privileged” school mates were very poor, but didn’t stand a chance of getting into free government schools because of so called government mandated quotas. We’d see unqualified people fill those seats simply because they were born into a different sect. And then we’d see them flounder academically because they were completely unprepared to compete at that level. But hey, they didn’t really have to compete, because after the free government schools came the easy government jobs (also controlled by quota) and a paycheck for life. Then the cycle started all over again for their kids.
I don’t condone anything my “privileged” ancestors may have done to anybody else’s ancestors, but that was a long time ago. Am I and all future descendants to bear the guilt and burden of my ancestor’s actions in perpetuity? My country will never end the quota system due to vote bank politics, so the answer is, most likely, yes.
I see it no different for economically disadvantaged whites in America today – their ancestors may have been on the dishing-it-out side of a dirty equation some time back, but they are surely on the receiving side of a more urbane version of the same today. What happens when they are not even the majority race sometime in the future? Who will be at the receiving end of reverse discrimination then? Some other ethnic group perhaps? It just never ends…
Favoring any one group of people over another for reasons of innate unchangeable characteristics must end, if we are ever to break out of this cycle of tribalism.
Anyway… thanks for the discussion and peace!
July 17th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Chris, I think you have inadvertently stumbled on one of the ugly truths about discrimmination in America. The powers that be have no intention of letting either blacks or poor whites into positions of power. It’s a neat trick getting poor whites to agitate that they are the victims of some horrific discrimmination when the power structure has no vested interest in raising their lot either.