George Corley Wallace is remembered as a symbol of American racism. Folks remember the image of him standing in the school house door to block integration and his words “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”. Folks remember his two runs for the White House on a “Law and Order” platform that seemed to be entirely built out of racist code talking and dog whistles. Wallace worked hard to earn his status as an icon of racism.
And yet, I don’t think George Wallace was a racist. Rather, I think he was an ambitious man who decided that pandering to racists was his best path to power. In his early political life, Wallace was liberal–a progressive. He was an alternate Democratic delegate to the 1948 Convention and did not join most of the Alabama delegation as they walked out to protest the Civil Rights plank Harry Truman had added to the platform. He returned to Alabama and served on the Board of Trustees of Tuskegee Institute. He was elected a Circuit Court Judge and was remembered as being pretty damn fair regardless of race. In 1958 he ran for Governor and sought the endorsement of the NAACP while speaking out against the KKK and refusing their support. His opponent pursued the opposite strategy. Wallace lost badly and told a friend “you know why I lost that governor’s race?… I was outniggered by John Patterson. And I’ll tell you here and now, I will never be outniggered again.” In response, he tossed his values and beliefs overboard and perfect the pander to assholes as a winning political strategy.
And this brings me to Willard “Mitt” Romney. He is just as ambitious as George Wallace and like the former Alabama Governor willing to say and do anything in the pursuit of that ambition. Like Wallace, Romney has decide that pandering to racists and stoking their fears is a winning political strategy.
Now, you could argue that this is true of most of the GOP Presidential Candidates and there would be some truth to that. But many of the other candidates have built their entire political careers by shameless pandering to racists for their votes–they never had a moment where they could have been identified as a moderate let alone a progressive. For example, you could never identify a moment of his political career when Gingrich wasn’t pandering to assholes. It is all he has ever done. Newt is more like Strom Thurmond or Jessie Helms. Romney is different. He is more like Wallace.
The GOP clown car in this election cycle is filled with crazy and that has let a lot of Romney’s code talking and pandering slide under the radar, but it is there. In fact, if you strip away the pandering, there is absolutely nothing left to Romney. Nothing. He has built his entire campaign on a few regularly repeated lies like President Obama hates America that basically boil down to “he is not like us”. Last weekend he sent out mailers in Iowa. Both had images on one side and text on the other. Here is one:
The text side of this was a series of anti-immigration talking points. It was very much a “Fear of a Brown Planet” coded piece. The image of the other mailer used a photo of President Obama with his feet on the desk (I’m almost surprised that Romney didn’t photoshop in a bucket of fried chicken–but perhaps he’s saving that for the General Election). Ironically, the reverse of this mailer had Mittens talking about his “values”.
Willard has become so used to telling lies in his efforts to pander to assholes that he even created his own rules about how to take audio out of context in the service of his bullshit.
In his early political life, one might argue that Romney had values and beliefs. His father did and so it is quite likely that Willard had them as well. In today’s politics, his father would have been a moderate-to-liberal politician and would be as welcome in the GOP as Lincoln Chaffee. Whatever beliefs Willard once shared with his father have been tossed aside. All that matters now is winning and Mittens has decided that walking in the footsteps of George Wallace is a better strategy than walking in the footsteps of George Romney.
And yet, even as I write this I am concern that I am being unfair–to George Wallace. While there are similarities between the two and their chosen path to pursue power, it would be unjust to completely equate Wallace to Romney. After all, Wallace was a successful Governor of a State who was re-elected over and over. More than that, Wallace was aware of the downside to his strategy and had the self awareness to regret the path he chose. In the excellent PBS documentary, “Setting the Woods on Fire”, there is a scene where an old failing, George Wallace looks at the camera and says through a haze of cigar smoke “I was wrong, I was wrong…”. This is a level of awareness that I expect Mittens will never find because when you strip his ambition away, there is nothing there. Nothing at all.
Poor Mittens. He weakly imitates Wallace and hopes that there will be enough assholes who buy his pander to carry him to the White House. But if the Republican Nomination is decide by which candidate does the best job of pandering to assholes for their votes, then Mittens is doomed. In this Gingrich is a Master and Mittens is a frustrated child.
Cheers
hhex65
cheers, mate
Waynski
This. Another Republican with Daddy issues. Just what the world needs.
AA+ Bonds
I read this a lot to describe various people, that they’re not racists but opportunists who use racism to advance, and I’m always at a loss to understand how this doesn’t demonstrate racist contempt for non-whites by definition. As in, George Wallace was clearly a racist WHILE seeking the endorsement of the NAACP.
It’s like how a bunch of liberals tripped over themselves to claim that Rand Paul wasn’t a racist even though his argument amounted to the claim that racial segregation was merely an expression of white people’s God-given liberty.
mclaren
All of this entirely disregards the one blazing issue for Republicans: Romney is a member of a satanic demonic cult (at least, from their warped perspective).
Romney’s a heretic.
He will never get the vote of the Republican base. Never. Ever. No matter what he does, no matter who he bribes, no matter what lies drip out of his poison-encrusted mouth.
So this is entirely an academic exercise. Romney has zero change of getting the Republican presidential nomination, thankfully.
People who want to talk 2012 presidential grand strategy would be much better advised to start thinking about what the Eurozone’s breakup will mean for a double-dip recession, 12% unemployment by November 2012, and Barack Obama’s re-election chances. They’re not zero, bizarrely — despite the likely hideous economy in November 2012, any Republican nominated to run for president will probably be so insane that voters may well hold their noses and choose 4 more years of endless unwinnable wars and economic shrecklicheit in preference to an Arthur Bremer clone in the White House.
I mean..seriously. Can you imagine if one of the current Republican nominees won the presidency? Any of them?
This would be his inauguration speech.
srv
Always good.
JCT
Somewhat OT, but I saw a great Avedon show in DC last year, part of his “Portraits of Power” series. The curator did a stellar job with it, nearly two rooms were filled with portraits of local officials from the Deep South in the 60’s. In the proximal part of the installation there were two shots of Wallace in his prime — one just nailed him perfectly, cocky sneer and all. There was at least one more of him — much later on, somewhat decrepit, in his wheelchair with his African American attendant, looking as dependent as can be. You could walk through the installation and follow his decline. Just a great show. And in the last room — the last color portrait was Obama.
Oh, and Mittens is slime mold. Nothing more.
AA+ Bonds
Good catch on Mitt Romney’s “white hands” mailer, by the way.
brendancalling
i’m happy either way: Pigface Threewives or Mitt Headroom.
Linda Featheringill
Wallace as Faust? Hmmmmm.
But are you casting Romney as Faust?
Remember, Wallace’s pact with the devil worked for him. Do you think such a deal would work for Romney?
rikyrah
Willard is the EPITOME of the ENTITLED WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE.
His only true belief is that HE should be President of the United States.
NOT to further any set of honestly held beliefs…
BUT, because HE should be President.
period.
there is absolutely nothing there.
AT ALL.
Caz
Why write such a long, convoluted post when all you had to say was “Wallace was a racist. Romney is a racist. All conservatives are racists.”
And yet, you liberals never point to any facts or evidence that support your idiotic view that all conservatives are racists. Your argument seems to be “All conservatives are racists because, well, it’s obvious so I don’t really need to give any support, it’s just so damned obvious.” Really? Based on what? That conservatives don’t like Obama’s policies and Obama is black, therefore conservatives don’t like blacks?
Well Herman Cain is black, and liberals hate Herman Cain, so liberals must be racist. It’s obvious, isn’t it?
I understand why the leaders of the left do it – it’s part of their strategy to lie about anything and everything to bring down conservatives. But I don’t understand why you useful idiot followers do it. Are you really that gullable and ignorant that you just trust whatever your leaders tell you and assume everything you are told is a fact?
Liberalism seems to be not so much rooted in rational thought as it is in dramatic, emotional, passionate rhetoric. It’s like a religion, and your beliefs are based not on rational thought but on faith and contempt for non-believers.
This is why it’s so easy for liberal leaders to take advantage of you and use you to further their nanny-state, class warfare, socialist agenda. You don’t need facts or logic or reality – you just need to have faith in your leaders and hate for conservatives. Kinda like a cult, and Obams is your David Koresh. Quite pathetic really.
And like most religions, your mind is closed to the possiblity that you might be wrong. Anyone who might challenge your faith or bring facts to bear on the issues must be the devil and should be resisted and hated. So you never mature or gain wisdom – you simply accept what you’re told and you’re set in your ways, forever voting and supporting the way Koresh tells you to.
I’m glad I don’t go through life like that. It’s really sad.
AA+ Bonds
It is good to be reminded that the early Republican primaries are all about proper use of racist appeals, which is why Ron Paul is polling second in Iowa.
CT Voter
And this pretty much sums up Romney.
He’s so thoroughly without any core that he can’t even pander well. You gotta have some beliefs to snow your audience–to know when you’ve gone too far, or sound too phony. Romney’s got nothing. An empty shell wandering around, wondering how to get out of the Uncanny Valley.
And yet there are Democrats out there who believe that if he were president, it wouldn’t be as bad as if Gingrich/Perry/Paul/anyoftheotherclownparadecandidates were president. As if Romney could stand up to the foaming-at-the-mouth crowd of elected Republicans? If he’s elected, he’ll pander worse (if that’s even physically possible) than he does now so that he gets re-elected.
Mike in NC
As I noted in an earlier thread today, Village shitbird and WaPo neocon pundit Chuck Krauthammer is extremely upset by the prospect of the GOP nomination being a tossup between Newt and Mittens. Both are damaged goods to the insane 27% base and he pretty much writes both off, wishing they had embraced Chris Christie or Mitch Daniels.
Yes, seriously. Krauthammer is a complete rotten wingnut asshole but he’s no dummy, having foreseen the Sarah Palin VP nomination as the Kiss of Death to John McCain’s presidential ambitions in 2008.
Dennis G.
@AA+ Bonds:
It is a fine line, I’ll grant you that. In Wallace’s case I think the evidence of his actions in his early years and his later years argue for pander over racism.
And yet, this is only nuance. Regardless of why, the fact remains that the product of his life was harm. There is a great line in the Drive By Truckers’ Southern Rock Opera where they say that Wallace is in Hell. Not because he was a racist, but because he pandered to racists for their votes. Of the two, I would say the pander is far worst than mere racism.
Cheers
AA+ Bonds
@mclaren:
I see it a little more like this
Odie Hugh Manatee
Mitt probably figures that if he can’t draw in the better nature of his party then maybe to win he needs to appeal to their bad nature. With their devils on one shoulder and their angels on the other, if Mitt can’t appeal to their (evangelical) angels then he will appeal to their (racist) devils.
Whatever it takes to win, Mitt’s in it for Mitt!
Karen
@AA+ Bonds:
Wasn’t the “White Hands” mailer just a retread of Jesse Helms “White hands” losing a job to affirmative action?
Karen
@Dennis G.:
What does it matter, Dennis? Either the racism or the pander to it still hurts minorities and poor people.
General Stuck
I just thank the lard that LBJ got civil rights passed in the 60’s and the racists, real or panderers, left for the GOP. Now, both the panderers and real thing racists live in one party, that was already awful in a thousand other ways.
People talk about how scared Palin, or Perry, or even Gingrich is. Romney sends chills down my spine when I watch him interact with other people. He scares me because he is a wraith of sorts, with enough physical form and movements that pass as normal. But there is nothing else there, he doesn’t reflect human . He is nothing but an empty cipher, soaking up the information and images he needs to get what he seems to want. Which is nothing other than power, and servitude to the thing that brings that power the fastest. Money and politics. Barely contained between the balance of looking completely crazy and desperate, with the resentment that to get what he wants, he has to swim in this fish bowl we have for electing presidents, resenting that people will point out his pandering, that is more like assuming different personas it has gone so far.
Newt is different. He is all about vanity and the stalking of power, valuing more its trappings, than its essence, with not a desperate need for it like Romney. Newt just wants to rub our noses in it, and has walked onto a stage with just the right mix of general wingnuttery in himself, and authenticity as a wingnut, and massive flaws in competitors that just barely slips him under the wire with his own flaws for a chance at forgiveness and a second chance. This time, unbelievably as a candidate for president of the USA.
Newt won’t need to win a GE, the glare of the lights, and the fact he got the last laugh over his party detractors will be enough. And to beam on stage, like a satisfied lizard that caught the biggest bug.
I think the pressure of a campaign in a GE, would crumble Romney into something like John Mccain, or worse, that would be ugly to witness. Newt is already meaner than them all, and probly been so since he popped out the oven, looked around and starting wanting stuff.
I’m just rambling, and don’t really have a clue about republican politics and politicians these days. Somebody has to speculate what makes these crazy fuckers tick.
Jess
@AA+ Bonds: Good point. I’ve also often wondered about that line dividing unambiguous racism from merely pandering to it. Obviously there are people who actively push for racist policies, or take racist actions, just as there are those who actively resist them. But then there are the vast numbers of people drifting about in the moral gray areas between. Opportunists like Mitt who would be happy either to support or undermine social justice if it got them what they wanted. People who just don’t like, or who don’t want their daughters to marry, THEM, but who wouldn’t support discrimination (my grandfather was like that; was dismayed when I married a Jewish man). And of course all the people who are happy to live and let live, but who don’t want to be bothered thinking about social injustice and who get very touchy when they think someone’s “playing the race card.”
Is racism in the heart? Or in one’s actions? Is someone like Mitt better or worse than someone like my grandfather, who believed in social justice as long as he didn’t have to associate with those outside his tribe?
AA+ Bonds
@Karen:
Oh yes, that’s the reference I was making. Trust me, I lived in North Carolina at the time and watched a lot more TV than I do now.
jheartney
@Karen: I agree with Dennis, the pander is worse. The racist thinks he’s doing the righteous thing. The panderer knows he isn’t but doesn’t care.
Waynski
@brendancalling: Thank you for the Headroom reference. I thought I was the only one.
Mike in NC
Forgot to mention, but how could anything ever come close to surpassing Mitt Romney’s shameless pandering to the GOP nutjobs by promising to “double Guantanamo” in 2007? That drew applause better than letting some poor bastard without health insurance go die in a ditch. Fucking sociopaths.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@jheartney:
Both are horrible but the panderer is exploiting the racism for personal gain.
Knowing that others will suffer for it.
wilfred
Ross Perot made it loud and clear:
“If you’re a racist or a bigot, I don’t want your vote”.
Call it the Perot Pledge and have every candidate for every office say it publicly, at least once.
No assumptions about good behavior – just say it. Oh, and don’t leave out the bigotry part, either.
AA+ Bonds
I think it will be interesting to see how history treats Herman Cain 2012, if anyone remembers.
Purely strategic or not, the moneyed Republican establishment couldn’t let a black man get within shouting distance of their primary season without sandbagging him.
I mean, can you imagine what it’d be like if their white candidates were dogged by their pasts like that?
rikyrah
@General Stuck:
there is no there THERE.
he has no soul.
there is nothing real about his interactions with ‘regular’ Americans. I mean, he can’t even fake it.
James E. Powell
Romney’s problem isn’t just that Gingrich is a master of race-coding messages. Romney’s real problem is that the target audience regards does not believe his race-coded messages are sincere. Add to that his religion and he’s looking at a long, hard campaign.
His only hope, and what I suppose he is counting on, is that all of his rivals destroy themselves.
gnomedad
@Mike in NC:
I’ll give him points for pandering on his feet, but I think he topped it with with his “surrender to terror” withdrawal speech. And Stewart has the only possible reply.
Ron Beasley
Excellent post – I have a lot more respect for Wallace than I ever will for Romney. I’m old enough to remember his father – an Eisenhower Republican. Obama is to the right of those now extinct Eisenhower Republicans.
Corner Stone
@AA+ Bonds:
They planted Ginger White as a fuck buddy 13 years ago? Good God, we don’t stand a chance against that kind of strategery!
Jess
@Ron Beasley:
People keep saying that, but never back it up with examples. Do you really think that’s true across the board? Or only in a few cases? And, is it really Obama’s policies you’re referring to, or just the reality of what he can get Congress to support?
The Other Chuck
So, not racist, but just following orders given by racists, nein?
SIA
@General Stuck: What you wrote there is really good.
Brachiator
@Dennis G
By your asinine assertion that George Wallace was not a racist, you prove that you can not be taken seriously as a writer here.
You write about “pandering to whites” as though the misery of black people under segregation was nothing more than incidental collateral damage to Wallace’s desire to achieve political power.
General Stuck
@SIA:
Gracias senora!!
And Another Thing...
“The but so & so isn’t a racist” analysis, makes me crazy.
1) Absent looking into someone’s heart or soul, one can’t really know if someone “is a racist.”
2) It’s usually invoked by an apologist to rescue the perp from soc1al condemnation, and..
3) The racist speech/act is NOT ameliorated because the perp didn’t “really meant it.”
SIA
@General Stuck: Avec plaisir, mon général! :)
Special Patrol Group
@Dennis G. (et others):
Why yes, indeed. See also, too: Rush Limbaugh and his race baiting ilk.
Corner Stone
@Brachiator: Dennis G gave up any claim to “serious” quite a bit ago.
He’s got a schtick and he schticks to it.
AA+ Bonds
@Corner Stone:
Reading is hard, I know:
Corner Stone
@AA+ Bonds: Yes, you’re making a point. Somewhere, I am sure.
Solidify your game to earn back the AAA rating and I may give a shit what you have to say.
boss bitch
(rolls eyes) Oh for fucks sake.
eemom
@boss bitch:
exactly. Obama is “to the right” of those peddling racism for political expediency. You heard it HERE, ladies and gentlemen.
On the positive side, the speaker identifies as an adolescent wizard in a fictional world, so we do have that going for us.
jazzgurl
White people always talk so glibly about racist,or the panderer/pandering to racism,or playing the race card.Dennis my dear, you are talking about humans who, because of skin colour have been denied certain priviliges and have been subjected to abuse,both physically and verbally,that white privilege automatically exempts them from.AND, you have the nerve to insult further by drawing reference intellectually about pandering or overt racism?. Indeed sir,you jest,and, have shown you lack the depth or understanding of the damage that is caused by both!!
P.S Is Sarah Palin/Rush Limbaugh/most repugs racist, panderers, or do they ‘just’play the race card? Actually a sign displayed on their chest would help the oppressed to identify…dontcha think!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AA+ Bonds
@Corner Stone:
I’ll take this as an acknowledgment that you’ve been owned, and I thank you for the opportunity
Corner Stone
@AA+ Bonds: I wonder about sad little people like you sometimes. Not often, but sometimes.
Has Cole emailed you about being an FP yet? We’re all hoping you can work something out.
pseudonymous in nc
Mittens is, at heart, a management consultant. That is why he should never be president. Management consultancy is premised upon a particular species of bullshit — bullshit for lots of money — and Mittens is a supreme bullshitter.
And I say this, knowingly, as someone with a number of friends who are management consultants.
An Idiot
> And yet, I don’t think George Wallace was a racist. Rather, I think he was an ambitious man who decided that pandering to racists was his best path to power.
You may learn someday that there isn’t actually any difference there. Whether George Wallace sincerely believed everything he ever said or just said it to take advantage of the people that really were so full of hatred as to believe it, that doesn’t somehow change the objective facts of the policies he supported, that he spent his career unquestioningly obeying every lunatic whim of the KKK (while being careful not to actually mention that name, of course.)
The simple, sad fact is that stupid is as stupid does. There is no such thing as only being stupid “ironically”, and there is no such thing as “pandering” to people whose agenda one claims not to share. If Romney is willing to take orders from fascists, that wouldn’t mean he’s “tossing his values and beliefs overboard.” It would simply show that none of his values and beliefs were ever worth as much as a diet plan invented by Rush Limbaugh.
Lysana
It’s this simple, Dengre. When the man merrily used “outniggered” on the record, any question of his racism flew right out the window. You can’t rewrite that moment.
Plantsmantx
In response, he tossed his values and beliefs overboard and perfect the pander to assholes as a winning political strategy.
Oh, ok. He decided to be pragmatic, huh?
WereBear
I think it’s important to figure out pandering. There is a world of difference between a true believer and a panderer, and one of the most important, for our purposes, is ascertaining the ease of changing their advocacy.
Mitt swings in the wind like a frictionless bearing. His potential vote or influence can switch over to more sensible and moral policies than racism with much more ease than someone who is personally invested in this belief.
Knowing your “pander percentage” lets you know how much real opposition there will be when alleging support for something loathsome like racism will hurt a candidate; which it already does, in the sane world of the General Election.
Nick
George Wallace probably was a racist personally. Why? Because his son George Jr is pretty clearly a racist. I know that isn’t totally reliable but it’s much more likely that he was brought up that way.
I’d say it was much more likely that Wallace Sr’s “I’ll never be outniggered again” was motivated by “It’s all the damn blacks’ fault that I lost, and I won’t make the mistake of being soft on the bastards again” rather than “even though I personally have no racial prejudice, I feel no qualms about acting and speaking directly in opposition to my own personal beliefs so I can get elected to office and steadfastly pursue an agenda based around racial prejudice”.
Lee Atwater
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 forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other.
You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
nancydarling
I think Wallace’s racism was like that of the “kindly” old slave owner who fed his property well and didn’t whip them, but didn’t regard them as fully human either.
And I don’t think any one who is truly not bigoted and not racist would stoop to pandering. There have to be seeds of both in one’s psyche to be willing to use them.
jon
Here’s a simple rule: if you need to determine the origin of their racism to figure out if they’re a racist, you are very conveniently skipping over the conclusion you needed to make and are scurrying to make some sort of point to excuse racism.
xian
@Ron Beasley: on what issues is Obama to the right of Ike republicans?
nancydarling
@AA+ Bonds:
Don’t you mean libertarians, not liberals?
Brian R.
@Jess:
Well, in the sense that Eisenhower supported tax rates on the very richest in the low 90th percentile, sure. But virtually everyone today is to the right of that, so … what?
But beyond that, do you have any actual evidence to support that claim?
Eisenhower’s HEW Secretary refused to support a free polio vaccine on the grounds that it was “socialized medicine by the back door,” while Obama secured near universal coverage.
Eisenhower made Judeo-Christian religion an essential part of public life, launching the presidential prayer breakfast and overseeing the addition of “under God” to the Pledge and things like that. Do you think Obama is more right-wing on religious issues than that?
Ecks
@And Another Thing…: Solid point, and true enough. But at the same time there is the qualitative difference between types of racism. There is the virulent kind that wants racist laws passed in order to stick it to the uppity blacks, and there is the kind that is just willing to let racial injustice perpetuate if it happens to do other good things for them. They’re both evil, and they’re both racist, but the one is worse than the other. We’re not really used to the old fashioned kind these days, as we’ve manged to move society’s norms far enough in the direction of social justice that only the indirect kind tends to get expressed much.
Brian R.
Also:
Eisenhower’s cabinet was made up of almost nothing but millionaires and big business leaders. His secretary of state was a missionary’s son who put religious services into the Pentagon, and his secretary of defense was the “what’s good for GM is good for America” guy and his secretary of agriculture was one of the elders of the Mormon church.
You think Obama was to the right of those guys? Really?
Marc
People can change. The Wallace of 1968 was a vocal advocate of racist policies. He won his last gubernatorial election in 1983 with strong black support, and made a record number of appointments of blacks to administration positions.
This isn’t excusing what he did; his overall legacy is toxic. But people here seem to be advocating an odd position – that racism is a permanent condition, and that there is no such thing as a political opportunist. Explicity racist politics were extremely popular among Southern whites in the 60s and 70s. The true white supremacists – Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms – switched parties and never changed their rhetoric. Wallace was more complicated, and always had a populist streak in him. I think it’s worse to be amoral (Wallace, Mitt) than to be a true believer (Helms). But they aren’t the same thing.
Chris
@wilfred:
Wouldn’t matter. No one thinks of themselves as racists or bigots, not in the post-1960s age when those things are universally panned as the mark of a Bad Person.
All that would happen is they’d make that oath and then go “there, we said it. Now why do you libs still support affirmative action, hmmm? Why do you support special rights for
fags“proponents of an alternate lifestyle”? Why do you support Islam when we all know it hates Jews? YOU’RE the REAL racists!” And we’d be back to square one.Even back in the 1960s, the smarter Dixiecrats weren’t calling to reinstitute slavery – instead they claimed that the real danger was the Civil Rights Act, because it would “enslave white people,” and used that as their out, their excuse not to do anything about the very real racism going on all over the country. The same thing would happen here.
Brian R.
@Marc:
Yep.
Wallace had no core, only a chameleon’s ability to adapt.
From Dan Carter’s work on Wallace:
Chris
@AA+ Bonds:
Let’s not blame it all on the establishment: the voters had no intention of making him the nominee either. They let him stand at the top of the polls for a month because he was their black friend who wasn’t a racist and he pissed off liberals, but they seized on the first excuse that came along to drop him like a hot potato (hence the abrupt drop in poll numbers after the sexual harassment allegations).
I mean, does ANYONE actually think they dropped him because they were bothered by the philandering? They were so bothered by his philandering that they dropped him and ran to Gingrich instead? Yeah, sure…
Chris
@Brian R.:
@Brian R.:
To pile onto the Eisenhower-bashing train here, I’ll point out two more things:
1) He rose to power in 1952 partly by riding the McCarthyist wave into office. Yeah, we remember him for helping bring down McCarthy – but only after the elections, only after he’d become a liability, and only after he started gunning for Ike personally. Like Wallace/Romney with the racists, Ike may not have believed McCarthy, may not have liked McCarthy, but was perfectly happy to use him.
2) He turned over foreign policy to the Dulles brothers. Meaning you can thank Ike for those coups in Iran, Guatemala and the Congo, and the disastrous consequences that came in the following decades, the crowning glory of which was the Iranian Revolution. The 2009 Honduras coup? If Obama had been Eisenhower, he wouldn’t just not have condemned it, he’d have engineered it in the first place.
Not that Ike was all bad, far from it. I’d vote for him before any other Republican president in the last eighty years. But I’d also vote for any Democratic president in that same time period before I voted for him. (Hell, I think I’d have voted for Stevenson if I’d been around in those days).
gocart mozart
I think he regrets not changing religions 5 or 6 years ago. Now it would appear too opportunistic.
Brian R.
@Chris:
Nice points.
To continue the roll, Eisenhower’s election was bankrolled by Sid Richardson, one of the richest oilmen in the nation, and he was close buddies with the richest CEOs in the country and openly did their bidding on whatever issue they wanted.
Anya
@Chris: Also, too, Ike had a direct role in the ordering of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. My father is from Africa and my grandpa always talked bitterly about how the CIA killed Lumumba – a hero to Africans. His assassination left mental scars on generations of Africans, and is directly responsible for Congo’s current state.
gloryb
@Marc:
This.
I think some of us need to be reminded that Hugo Black, a great civil rights champion, was a member of the KKK in his youth.
Change is possible.
Mnemosyne
@Brian R.:
Not to mention that many Democrats were further right in the 1950s than a lot of people are willing to admit now. Strom Thurmond was a Democrat until 1964 — are people claiming that Obama is to the right of Strom fucking Thurmond, the man who ran for president on a segregationist platform?
sherifffruitfly
“I don’t think George Wallace was a racist.”
This is why we white folks should never, EVER say anything about race.
And most definitely no-one should ever believe anything we say about it.
El Cid
I think that people should clarify if they believe that only a sort of deeply psychologically-based view of white racial superiority counts as “racist”.
If that’s the working definition of racist, then pretty much most of mid-20th century French colonialism in Africa wasn’t “racist”.
I’m pretty sure that if I had been George Wallace and I had made a conscious decision to exploit vehement white racism and thus harm the lives of lots of people, particularly non-whites, I’d have to look in the mirror and admit to myself that that was pretty god-damned racist.
No matter how many times I told myself that it was unlinked from my basic anti-racist philosophy, prior defenses of the NAACP and anti-Klansmanship (plenty of Klan haters were racists, just better behaved ones), or any sort of eugenicist view.
If you were the one doing what you just described Wallace as doing, would you exempt yourself so easily?
Or is this the gentle protective screen we must continue to cast over all non-extreme-leftist historical actors to perpetually guard against anyone saying something too deeply mean about their psychological motivations, which apparently we’re always supposed to presume with some degree of innocence?
Brachiator
@nancydarling:
RE: I think Wallace’s racism was like that of the “kindly” old slave owner who fed his property well and didn’t whip them, but didn’t regard them as fully human either.
The notion of a kindly slave owner is a myth. And people here seem to forget that black people were murdered in Alabama while Wallace was governor.
This kind of crap reminds me of the current news story about the Kentucky minister who says he is not racist, but who moved to exclude interracial couples from his church.
A Ghost To Most
“Pander to assholes” ? Somebody has been listening to the “The Three Great Alabama Icons”. I highly recommend it as the soundtrack to this excellent post.
Blog needs more dengre.
Brachiator
@Chris
RE: Let’s not blame it all on the establishment: the voters had no intention of making him the nominee either. They let him stand at the top of the polls for a month because he was their black friend who wasn’t a racist and he pissed off liberals.
This is nonsense. You don’t know what GOP voter intention might have been, and now that Cain has dropped out, we will never know. Although some Ballon Juicers like to delude themselves with the notion that only Republicans are racists, the truth is more complicated. The idea that people were lying in polls about their support of Herman Cain just to prove that they were not racist or to throw liberals off the track is just dumb, and has never been supported by any evidence or verification. It has become an article of faith.
Similarly, the idea of Cain as “the black friend” is both stupid and offensive. I remember when conservatives used this smear against Obama supporters, and similarly claimed that Obama had no real chance to win the nomination, let alone the presidency.
Obviously, there are hardcore racists among GOP voters, and I loved the dilemma that Cain’s candidacy created for them. And I got a kick out of watching conservative pundits sell Cain to voters. It doesn’t really matter how insincere they were; the net effect undermines racism.
But I also get the impression that a lot of conservatives supported Cain in the same way that they supported Sarah Palin. They liked someone who offered simple answers to complex problems. Race or gender was secondary.
And the elephant in the room is that some conservative religious voters appear to have more of a problem with Romney’s religion than with Cain’s race.
Maybe we need some stuff here about conservatives who have a Mormon friend.
General Stuck
@A Ghost To Most:
Absolutely. And Dennis G, don’t let the moral scolds keep you from investigating the nuances of racism, past the point of emo adherence to a fixed notion, that doesn’t exist in real life. Peoples motives do matter, for accurate appraisal of the more insidious forms of racism. And you did not excuse Wallace’s policies of racism, but rather explored the different realms of public policy and the fact that some leaders arrive at racist policies in different ways. Sometimes deeper knowledge of motivations is required to understand and defeat bigotry in the public realm of a democracy.
rob in dc
@General Stuck: This was a truly excellent comment. It’s hard to fathom what the motivation of these freaks is. Do they believe their own nonsense (are they stupid)? Are they tossing red herrings to distract half the electorate from the real powers that be?
It’s hard to say anymore. The republican party has gone so deep down the rabbit hole that nothing about them makes sense anymore. Listening to them speak is like listening to a conversation between cheshire and the hatter, they always refer to inside knowledge about things that have only happened in wonderland. At this point its safe to assume crazy and dangerous and write them off as anything else. There is nothing to empathize with, nothing to convert, the whole party needs to be purged from top to bottom.
Until then they are the most dangerous cancer in our midst. Obama represents boilerplate sickness and corruption, Republicans are stage 4 cancer readying for another turn to try to wipe this country out… Scary times.
General Stuck
@rob in dc:
Thanks, and I get what you are saying here, but it is difficult for me to lay the sickness and corruption at Obama’s doorstep, as he has only arrived on the crime scene recently. The rot and sickness, to me, is more defined by its entrenched state in the legislative branch, especially the senate. All of the republicans, and enough dems in the senate to keep it at that boilerplate level, with only the possibility of going toward stage 4 cancer, as you put it.
We don’t know what Obama would do, if the people sent him a much more progressive congress, especially in the senate, with a safe filibuster proof liberal senate. Until then, he and any other dems potuses with good intentions, are severely limited by a threshold still squarely in the plutocrats favor. I personally think Obama is much more liberal than he presents himself for the purposes of getting at least something done, but don’t know for sure.
El Cid
@General Stuck: Of course, “emo’s” and not-emo’s alike must have something in mind when they use the term “racist,” else words are less useful than they ought be, and it seems bizarre that flat statements about what isn’t racism are somehow more nuanced than other, non-flat-statement approaches.
General Stuck
@El Cid:
Your comment makes no sense to me and sounds like a dialect of gibberish. I stand by what I said that I think is crystal clear/ no more or less.
drkrick
@Marc:
That’s a record number of appointments of blacks in Alabama, right? I suspect that was a pretty low bar.
@Brachiator:
The minister was against the rule but lost the first vote – it was pushed by some asshole racist member who couldn’t handle a mixed couple (the woman was raised in the church) singing at a service. That guy will no doubt quit the church after the rule is reversed proclaiming that “I didn’t leave the church, the church left me.”
El Cid
@General Stuck: Funny, I was going to mention that your comment displayed a desire to wrap the original poster in swaddling clothing and protect him from some nonexistent threat.
You used the term “nuanced” as if a particular use of a blunt term “racism” — which was used in the original post — was the correct one, and another use was some sort of crude non-nuanced approach.
A discussion of George Wallace’s actions in the world are neither more nor less “nuanced” if his actions lead someone to characterize him as “racist” or not. It’s neither a more nor less “nuanced” approach to analyses of political actors to strongly emphasize their internal psychological states and likely self-descriptions than not.
Definitions of key terms are part of an argument, not some dividing line between the all-good crowd of non-emo sages such as yourself and the torch-bearing rabble who find a point objectionable and state as much.
General Stuck
@El Cid:
Why don’t you shit or get off the pot. And say in plain english that you are accusing Dennis G of apologia for a known racist. Instead of pusssyfooting around with half baked pseudo intellectual mumbo jumbo you are famous for. My comment wasn’t to you, it was to Dennis, you know, the guy who has been wading into the briar patch with in depth posts on racism, while you were wanking about po little emoprogs being treated rough around here. Which I suspect my use of the term “emo” set off your tender leftist butthurt.
Dennis has been doing good works delving into the swamp of our racist heritage in this country, and you are a smarmy wanker who rarely says anything beyond whining about how your kindred spirits on the prog left are being mistreated.
That, and profering pig ignorant conspiracy theories of jews wanting to take over the middle east.
And said exactly nothing that I recall when this blog was being over run with good emo progs using any racist meme they could think of to attack Obama, before ABL and Dennis came on board.
I don’t apologize to anyone for supporting a front pager, or commenter that is being unfairly attacked, imo, by PC hacks like you. If you can’t handle some dispassionate analysis, then kiss my Obot ass.
Piss off. You and all the other shitheads looking for something to be outraged about on this thread
Zach
Your leaving out an important parallel. Remember that other major issue that certain folks wanted to be decided in laboratories of democracy rather than at the Federal level?
Marc
Is there anyone who honestly thinks that Dennis was *defending* George Wallace?