Jimmy Carter IV (Jimmy Carter’s grandson) has found another bit of tape that explains how modern Conservatives/Wingnuts/Republicans view the world. This artifact dates back to the Reagan years. It is audio of the 42 minute interview with Lee Atwater where he explains how the Southern Strategy works and why it is the core of the conservative movement. His words are fresh and he could have been talking about 2012 campaign conservatives ran against President Obama.
The folks over at The Nation have published the audio. Folks around here have often pointed to Atwater’s quote, but it is something to hear him say it (and more) in context.
The current Republican Party and conservative movement has not strayed very far from Atwater’s playbook–ever. I do not think they are capable of doing so. Division, fear, race-based politics and code talking are the only tools they know. Without them, they have nothing.
They have suffered a defeat, but they could regroup and be back. That is what they did with the Tea-Bagger marketing ploy in 2009. Now is the time to take the fight to them. It is way past time for their Southern Strategy to die. Their CONservative movement is based on structural racism and sexism. They hate it when that is pointed out. They squeal, whine and fuss whenever the truth of their movement is mentioned, but now is a great time to mentioned it. They are down and we should kick them as hard as we can.
Cheers
Corner Stone
Damn. That Atwater quote sounds just like Matt Stoller.
Maude
Time to pick the Republican party apart like turkey off the bone.
It doesn’t belong in the modern world.
They are Model T cranks compared to computer chips.
blingee
2 steps forward 1 step back. The re-election of Obama and gains in the senate was 2 steps forward…the next election in 2014 could be 1 step back if people don’t realize that nothing should end with the election.
The same sort of grassroots movement that got Obama re-elected needs to continue through to 2014 and beyond. The other side certainly is not going to back off. They are already back to their old tricks just days after the election. We can’t ease off on the pressure either.
The Moar You Know
Not yet. It still works.
If Romney hadn’t been a Mormon and a clueless asshole with a big mouth he’d have won handily.
Villago Delenda Est
A serious problem for them is that the label “conservative” now basically means “racist fuckhead”.
“Conservative” USED to be a pretty honorable position…it meant caution, prudence, having plans for contingencies, stuff like that.
Now it means defending to the death privilege and unfairness. It means defending inherited, unearned wealth. It means cheating people out of their money by playing to their greed. It means being dishonest in order to win. It means putting the love of money ahead of the love of anything else, to include your own children.
Ash Can
Funny you should mention this. Courtesy of LGF, Paul Ryan says that the reason he and Romney lost to Obama was…too many black people voted.
NonyNony
@The Moar You Know:
If he hadn’t been a clueless asshole with a big mouth he wouldn’t have won the Republican primary.
You really think that the Mormon thing is the thing that sunk him? You think Newt Gingrich would have done better? Rick Santorum?
Who from the GOP clown car outperforms Romney this year if only they’d picked him instead?
JCT
@Villago Delenda Est: Kind of reminds you what happened to the term liberal before the fuckwits got ahold of it…
And I agree with Dennis 100% — the goal here is to drive this momentum through 2014.
I really hope all of the groups (latinos, african americans, women (ESPECIALLY young single women), GLBT, workers, etc) who worked together to get Obama elected feel empowered by what they did and want to keep kicking these reactionary assholes off that cliff of theirs.
wenchacha
I’m sure that none of this has any relevance to today’s issues because Lee Atwater has been dead for a long time.
Now, which RWNJ will be the first to use this as the “because shut up, that’s why” argument?
El Cid
The election was certainly close enough that the strategy would have likely won had Obama and Democrats not run such an astoundingly effective registration & get out the vote campaign.
While you certainly can overcome tremendous hurdles, remember that the point of placing so many hurdles in your way is to increase the odds that you won’t.
A more traditional and insider network political consultant hack-led Obama campaign would have fallen to this, and the attack strategy would have been victorious once more.
I hope it takes a long time for the GOP to realize and truly come to grips with the reality that if they were clever, dedicated, patient, and careful enough, they could in fact slowly begin making inroads with African Americans and Latinos. And not just tokens.
But with luck, a lot of the neo-Confederate Bircher Snake-Handling Robber Baron types will refuse to let ‘those people’ into the coalition.
beltane
@Ash Can: My husband heard that on TV this morning. He’s a middle-aged, not very political white guy but the Ryan’s dog whistle woke him up more than the coffee he was drinking.
To paraphrase Churchill, the wingnut is either at your feet or at your throat. If we want to make sure they’re not at our throats again in the near future, we have to seize this opportunity to kick, kick, kick.
P. Clodius Pulcher
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/13/1161179/-It-has-come-to-this-We-will-soon-become-the-new-ni-ers
We’ve taken another step towards the n*clang event horizon.
Schlemizel
@Villago Delenda Est:
Its only fair. They have tarnished the fine word ‘liberal’ to the point is is a plague and a curse word. It would be justice if the term ‘conservative’ became an embarassment
agorabum
If you dare, you can go over to instapundit and here him repeatedly say that the GOP needs “more Lee Atwater, less Karl Rove”
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/157619/
Because Rove is this numbers guy, and Atwater is a “warrior”. For racism. And apparently that’s what the GOP needs…
So is Reynolds ignorant of the above quote? I doubt it. He just doesn’t care. Glibtarian-con.
hep kitty
@Ash Can: Who do they think they are? People who are entitled to vote in their own interests?
beltane
This is what they’re really afraid of.
Quincy
This is a great excuse to get the quote more attention. Despite the fact that we’ve all seen it countless times, non-political junkies have never heard it. In the midst of a national media conversation about the Republicans’ demographic challenges, it would be just great if somebody like Soledad O’Brien, or even better, Stewart, could have a Republican on and ask whether this has anything to do with the party’s problems. But I know I am dreaming.
Schlemizel
Meanwhile, I am trying to imagine a context or some inflection that could make this quote sound worse than just a flat reading already makes it sound.
I am going over to listen to it tonight but I can’t imagine being surprised. I hope I am right its already depressing enough as it is.
I hope all Lee’s pineapples are huge and knobby
Cacti
@The Moar You Know:
Disagree.
Rmoney got 59% of the white vote. That’s better than Dubya got in 2004, and the talibangelicals loved his dumb arse.
The cracker vote is going to keep shrinking about 2% for every presidential election in the foreseeable future. We’re in the decline phase of the southern strategy.
If the goopers don’t staunch the bleeding with hispanic voters, they’re going to need 65% of the white vote every cycle just to be competitive.
hueyplong
The ole perfessor is the poster child for the Confederate party. Of course he’s going to invoke Lee Atwater when the other viable alternative is to rock, sobbing, in the fetal position.
The Moar You Know
@NonyNony: None. But don’t mistake the designated bench of losers you saw in this years primary for the GOPs actual bench. Their powers that be had no intention of winning this from the get-go. I think they were surprised that it was as close as it was.
Take a look at who bowed out/declined/said no thanks this go-round. Most of them will be running in 2016, they will not be the Tourette’s crew you saw this time around, and they will run using the Southern Strategy, among other strategies. And they could win.
MattF
I’ve been waiting for someone to analyze how the Southern white vote compares to the non-Southern white vote, and, finally someone did a bit of analysis:
http://www.tnr.com/blog/electionate/110039/the-gop-has-problems-white-voters-too
In fact, Obama did better with non-Southern whites than earlier Democratic Presidential candidates did. So, it really is all about the South, and it really is all about racism, in case you had any doubts.
Schlemizel
@agorabum:
Well, I hope they listen to him because I think Rove is smart enough to actually come up with something that might help the GOP. More Atwater can only lead to fewer votes from here on in.
quannlace
Just read a conservative columnist’s take on the Election- “Romney lost cause he took the high road!” Yup. Guess she forgot all about the Primaries.
Can’t believe this chick also complained that Mitt didn’t bring up the birther issue, Rev. Wright and Ayers in his campaign. Cause, of course, the media would have jumped on him. Uh, no dear, the media would have laughed in his face.
El Cid
This isn’t fair — the Republicans also learned how to rile up the snake-handlers by scaring them with how the mean hairy feminist types were going to turn their little girls into n***er loving sluts who would either take the pill or use abortion to reduce the population of the white race, and also maybe talk back to Daddy and not be good secretaries at the church.
Cacti
As I mentioned in a previous thread, the last candidate to match Romney’s share of the white vote was Poppy Bush in 1988.
59% of the white vote won him a 53.3% popular vote majority, and a 426 EV landslide.
Fast forward 24 years, and it got Willard 47.8 and 206.
El Cruzado
@Cacti: Keep in mind that it will be harder for the GOP to get 2/3s of the white vote if the Democrats nominate a non-blah person (which is pretty likely).
Not saying that should be a desirable course of action, just that the strategy is pretty fragile when part of it is based on personal racism against a specific candidate.
beltane
@MattF: Thanks for that link. I just read an article in the Burlington (VT) Free Press about the death of the VT GOP. The article was too timidly written to come out and say the GOP is dead here because the Republican party is largely seen as the party of Southern reactionaries, but that is in fact what is happening.
Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
So say we all.
Apply pressure on whatever ‘fault lines’ we can find in the GOP, early and often, relentlessly, before they have a chance to regroup into some other slippery rebranding like they did from 2008-2010.
IMO it’s also a fine time to push the “MSM is useless, look how badly they sucked in the 2012 election!” meme. If the Left and Center could make the MSM fear them as much as they have feared the GOP since at least Reagan, this could only lead to a better world.
They might even develop a new interest in Facts.
Frankensteinbeck
@The Moar You Know:
They do not have powers-that-be. No one is in charge of the GOP. Rove was caught on the air admitting he’d drunk the Kool Aid. The sugar daddies poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the election and lost the Senate for their trouble. The Oompa Loompa sure ain’t in charge, and all you can say about McConnell is that he hasn’t humiliated himself on a regular basis.
If someone intelligent was in charge and they had good candidates, they would have thrown one in because they’d have backups for the next election. Romney was not even a useful sacrificial goat. Until the Teabaggers stop Teabagging, what you saw is what they’ve got.
Bubblegum Tate
Atwater’s desire to speak in abstractions is interesting to me because for the past several days, I’ve been bearing witness to a wingnut insisting that the key for the GOP is to convince voters to stop voting based on issues (“Issues,” she proclaims, “are just distractions”) and instead vote based purely on abstract theory: “Big government” vs. “Limited government.” That’s it. That’s the entire pitch. In her view, the GOP just needs to tell people to vote straight GOP ticket and never do any sort of research because GOP = “Limited government,” and that’s all anybody needs to know.
She’s absolutely convinced about this, and she lashes out with great hysteria at anybody who points out that it’s, you know, stupid.
Michael
South Florida wants to secede from the rest of Florida. Good lines:
So true.
Anoniminous
@beltane:
The GOP got destroyed in California this election. It is a powerless rump.
As goes Vermont, so goes the nation?
;-)
Cacti
@Frankensteinbeck:
I keep hearing Bobby Jindal’s name getting bandied about, but he’s another 100% anti-choice extremist.
muddy
I wish the guy finding the video was referred to by his name, and not just “Jimmy Carter’s grandson”. He’s done enough righteous work this year that he should be labeled on his own, with the grandson part as a subordinate clause or something.
Give the guy his props.
ranchandsyrup
@Ash Can: He 100% means that. It was (and prolly still is because they’ll never learn) an article of faith that if gopers get 60%+ of the white vote, they can’t lose.
changing demographics, how do they work?
Yutsano
@Michael: We get to keep Betty. This is not a negotiable point.
@muddy: I believe his names is James Carter IV. So the coyness may be to avoid confusion with the eponymous ex-President.
The Ancient Randonneur
Let’s put to rest a bit of nonsense I see repeated here in the comments of this blog and on other left leaning blogs. The GOP is NOT the party of old white men. Period. Yes, 62% of white men voted for Romney, but 56% of white women voted for Romney. Because women made up a larger portion of the white vote than men, MORE white women (at minimum 250,000) voted for Romeny than did white men. This country doesn’t have solely a problem with white men. We have a problem with white people.
Were it not for women of color voting overwhelmingly for Obama the female vote would have gone to Romney. The gender divide in this country isn’t really as big as it is made out to be when it comes to politics. The real divide is still race.
Don’t believe me? Go to either MSNBC or CNN and check out election results. Pretty shocking? Not really. I suspect you could break it down by state and figure out where most of the hate is coming from and I imagine it would map onto to that Hate Tweet Map just about one-to-pne.
And, for the record, I am a white male.
Cacti
@Villago Delenda Est:
The Economist documented this change after Obama’s win in 2008, noting that since Dubya, the GOP had changed from the conservative party, to the party of “white trash pride”.
IowaOldLady
The southern states once seceded over slavery. (They can say it wasn’t over slavery but when you look at various articles of secession, they sure talk a lot about slavery.) Now fools want to secede over the re-election on the nations’s first AA president. Don’t they hear the historical echoes? Aren’t they embarrassed?
El Cid
@Frankensteinbeck: I keep feeling that Rove really thought it would come down to OH & FL and that it would be close enough to have their allies do vote suppression and count magic to bring it home. I think he had believed that so much he couldn’t fathom that Obama appeared to have won without those two states.
The Moar You Know
@Anoniminous: A 25-year long process that began with Pete Wilson’s Prop 187 (if you ever meet him, be sure to think him for the nice present) and ended when the Gropenator (or is that Impregnator?) threw up his hands and declared very publicly that the California GOP could not and would not be reasoned with, had no interest in doing anything but torpedoing the state, and threw in his lot with the Democrats.
It’s been 32 years since Prop 13 passed, right before I started high school. My first year in high school was like high school was supposed to be, the next year we didn’t have paper or pencils. And it got way worse. Buildings falling apart and all that.
I’m just grateful I’m still alive to see the end of it. California’s got a lot of rebuilding to do and it is not going to be cheap or easy. I hope we can keep it long enough to undo the worst of the damage. I do not dare to dream that we can keep it long enough to fix everything and start making headway. But that’s what I pray for.
Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
@The Ancient Randonneur:
In my experience, a certain type of over-40 suburban white woman knows damned well that her rights will never be restricted, no matter how anti-woman a GOP government might be to all those Others.
And I’ve actually heard several post-menopausal women spout “I’m done, what do I care about birth control!?” out loud.
Out-group Empathy. Not all of us haz it.
muddy
@Yutsano: I knew what his name was, I was just saying that I thought it should have been used first, before grandson, and certainly not left out altogether. i.e. “James Carter IV, grandson of the former president, has found another bit of tape…”
If he keeps on finding these sweet tapes this way he will be referred to as James Carter IV without mentioning his grandad sometimes.
Chris
@agorabum:
If Rove was a numbers guy, he wouldn’t have had that election night meltdown when it turned out that all the polls were telling him the truth.
Rob in Buffalo
Back then they called “entitlements”, “legal services”?
gex
@Cacti: Yeah, but do the Democrats have a candidate that has performed an exorcism? That sounds just like what America needs!
El Cid
@IowaOldLady: As a Georgia resident, these people can’t have the South. There are too many good and decent people, including our nation’s majority of African Americans, and the fastest growing Latino populations, and lots of valuable natural resources and productive lands.
Let ’em find some empty area of the nation and let’s give them their own reservation, and they can use their awesome John Galt powers of hard work and white Anglo Saxon Protestant thriftiness and entrepreneurialism to build their own thriving 21st Century Dixieland.
But they don’t deserve and they can’t have all of this place.
Guess Who
We will pound you little shits into the motherfucking ground in 2016 along with whatever Gore, Kerry, or Dukakis you nominate.
FormerSwingVoter
OT:
Okay, I know most people have had their fill of Schadenfreude, but the mini-civil-war amongst the GOP in Connecticut is hilarious. Sounds like McMahon may have burned a couple of bridges here and there:
http://courantblogs.com/capitol-watch/mcmahon-aftermath-republicans-take-aim-at-each-other/
cckids
@Cacti:
No, no. They hated President Obama enough that they held their noses & voted for the “cultist”.
Never forget their true motivation. The Repub candidate was largely beside the point, as far as 35-40% of their base was concerned.
Chris
@El Cid:
I’d be willing to pay for the construction of an entire Biocity if they’d all promise to move there.
Anoniminous
@The Moar You Know:
I was there are the beginning, trying to tell people Proposition 13 was going to be a disaster. Reason and Logic were no help against the propaganda screaming “LITTLE OLE LADIES ARE BEING THROWN OUTTA THEIR HOMES AND ONTO THE STREETS!!!!!!!!!!!”
FormerSwingVoter
@Guess Who: Hush, sweetie, grown-ups are talking.
Redshift
@Villago Delenda Est:
In the colloquial sense, sure. It still does. In the political sense, it has always meant the defenders of wealth and inherited privilege.
gex
@FormerSwingVoter: Now I’ve always found profit to be a motivator, but not the only motivator. I like to profit by also doing something constructive for myself and others.
The GOP is straight up the party of proft = good, everything else = meh. So they have candidates and campaigns that just grab the cash and go? Sounds like the perfect people to represent the GOP.
@Chris: Can’t we finish seasteading or building a libertarian paradise in Honduras for these folks? It would be a small government paradise for them.
JCT
@The Moar You Know:
I was a junior in High School when it passed, I still vividly remember my teachers warning us what would happen and my otherwise quite liberal parents dismissing their concerns as “hysteria”. Things were clearly getting worse by the time my younger siblings got to University High and fast forward to today and my sister’s children both go to private schools (a first for our family) because the Alhambra schools in their area are a mess. Meanwhile, my mother still pays ridiculously low property taxes in an 90210 zip code.
I am very encouraged for my former state with this election. Now if only my new home state (Arizona, heaven help me) could get a fucking clue…
cckids
@El Cid:
Thank you. Agreed. Frankly, I don’t think they even deserve a reservation (unless it is in central NV, where there are bombing runs & alien abductions). They can just GTFO. And don’t let the border hit them in the ass on the way out.
Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
@FormerSwingVoter:
Bless His Heart.
Cacti
@Guess Who:
The angry tears of political derp are so yummy and sweet.
74% white vote! Unlimited corporate cash!
VICTORY!
Redshift
@FormerSwingVoter:
I don’t think so. We’ve had almost enough front-page posts about it, but really, has anyone had their fill? Personally, I can keep drinking wingnut tears of impotent rage for the next four years and I won’t have had my fill.
Awesome link.
Schlemizel
@IowaOldLady:
3 things
Even the non slavery issues they try to claim as causes all roll back to the only issue that mattered to them – slavery.
No – history is beyond them except what the gas bags tell them it is
No – that is obvious
The Moar You Know
@The Ancient Randonneur: Thank you. This election was way closer than it should have been and even closer than I’d like.
If you get a smooth talking jerk running on the GOP side (not a given) who knows how to keep the dogwhistles at an appropriate volume, that’s the ballgame.
Dems are in a good position save for House districts, where we are totally and completely fucked. We can stay in a good position but let’s not pretend we can take that for granted.
Chris
@cckids:
About a year ago there was still a lot of noise to the effect that Romney would have a big problem with fundiegelical voters.
Like I said at the time: it’s true that they had issues with him (though at least as much because of the liberal/Massachusetts heritage as the Mormon one), but the difference between him and That One was like the difference between cough medicine and a cyanide pill. There was never any question in my mind that they’d overwhelmingly turn out for him.
Heck, my fundiegelical-preacher-in-training cousin wrote in a third party candidate in 2008 and thinks Mormons are a false religion leading people away from Jesus, and even he was rooting for Romney this time around. Four years of the humiliation of being governed by a Kenyan Muslim Socialist Usurper cemented the base around the desperate need to have a white guy, any white guy if he so much as went through the motions of being a True Conservative, back on the throne.
danimal
@The Moar You Know: I can usually only stomach a few minutes, but I’ve had more fun listening to the right-wing evening shock jocks (John & Ken)in LA wailing and complaining loudly about how stupid Californians are. Here’s a hint: when you’re telling people how stupid they are you’ve lost, perhaps a little introspection is in order.
50K watts of anti-tax, anti-modernity, anti-immigrant, anti-government employee propaganda and hate; all in support of conservative purity, and now they have nothing. They lost on an initiative to raise taxes, they lost on a union-busting initiative, they even lost on adjusting the three-strikes law. Conservatives and Republicans in California have totally lost the narrative, and California used to be friendly territory for them. So goes Cali, so goes the nation.
jeremy
@The Moar You Know: Actually he wouldn’t have won. I don’t like how some on the left discount how Obama is a savy politician and a really good president. Many republicans even said Obama would be really tough to beat. Obama and his team is one of the best in politics and some need to give credit when it’s due.
The base of the republican party came out to vote for Romney and were rilled up but they lost because the electorate and the country as a whole is changing and becoming more diverse. It doesn’t matter if Romney is a Mormon what they saw was a white man up against a black man period. They didn’t care about his religion. The fact is that the southern strategy is losing it’s luster because the GOP base is decreasing in population.
IowaOldLady
@El Cid: Yeah, I tried to phrase what I said so I didn’t condemn a lot of good people.
It’s just that a hundred years apparently isn’t enough to clear the racism out of some cold hearts.
Chris
@gex:
Man! I don’t know what the people of Honduras ever did to you, but it must’ve been TERRIBLE for you to wish that on them :(
Shawn in ShowMe
@The Moar You Know:
You can’t win the Republican primary without being a clueless asshole with a big mouth so there is that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Guess Who:
Pretty much the same way that the Rmoneytron totally kicked Obambi’s ass.
The stupid. It continues to burn.
danimal
@Chris: The real electoral reprecussion will be when the fundiegelicals realize that, “Oh crap, I totally supported the Mormon cultist.” It’s shocking how much of their bile they were able to repress to keep a united front against the Kenyan usurper. But that bile will work its way through their system eventually.
Redshift
@Schlemizel:
One of my quixotic quests is to get people to use “fiscally responsible” instead of “fiscally conservative.” Let “fiscally conservative” refer to tax cuts, wishful thinking, and massive deficits, since none of those who use the deficit as a weapon have any actual interest in addressing it.
Michael
@The Ancient Randonneur: That’s a fair point. But I’d say the real divide is under-30s v over-40s. Whites under 30 when for the GOP 51-44…that’s not a huge margin in an increasingly-diverse nation.
Whites over 40 went ~59-38.
So its old white folk, basically, though men a little moreso than women.
? Martin
@The Moar You Know: I would be very happy if the legislature repealed Prop 13 and replaced it with a substitute. The huge property tax swings that Prop 13 were meant to address are a real problem, but a better solution would be to use something like a 5 or 10 year moving average for your rate. If they spike and then drop, the spike would be averaged out. If they spike and then stay high, you’d at least have 5-10 years before the effects were fully felt. The increased revenue from property taxes could be offset by decreases in sales/income tax – and that could be built into the bill.
There’s a lot of middle ground between Prop 13 and what every other state does that (rational) voters shouldn’t object to.
Keith G
Agreed.
Now for the next and most important step: What’s your game plan? Rah-rah typing is cheap. Spit-balling ideas that can be implemented and followed up on is what we need.
Ya see, the GOP will not do us the favor of staying down on the ground, and we won’t have candidate Obama in the future to paper-over our divisions and energize the margins.
So, what’s the plan?
Dennis G.
@muddy: You’re right. The correction has been made.
Cheers
The Moar You Know
@Redshift: Couldn’t agree more. 32 years since Reagan, now it’s finally my turn.
#48 up the page is helpfully donating if you care to partake.
Drink up!
Schlemizel
Even more! If I drank them the rest of my life it would not repay me for the bitter anguish they put this country through the last 20 years. I am savoring them drop by drop.
Even guess WTF’s sorry attempt to troll made me laugh out loud. The soggy pillow muffling his voice keeps echoing UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH . . . 74% WHITE VOTE . . . VICTORY and that makes me giggle like a school girl. As foolish as that turd was 2 weeks ago it is just the impotent rage of a two year old throwing himself on the floor kicking and screaming because it is bedtime.
Chris
@danimal:
Well, I always figured that if Romney lost, they would’ve doubled down on the anti-Mormonism when they fell back on their “we lost because our dude wasn’t a True Conservative!” shtick.
The really interesting thing would’ve been if Romney had won – whether that would’ve led to greater acceptance for Mormonism among fundiegelical assholes. I suppose it would’ve depended on whether his presidency was seen as a success or not.
Surreal American
@Guess Who:
Yeah, that worked out so well the last time, didn’t it?
Loser.
Add Romney to this list of losers:
Nixon, Goldwater, Nixon again(quitter), Ford, GHWB, Dole, McCain
Origuy
Send your comments to:
Lee Atwater
The Bolgia of the Evil Councillors
Bolgia 8
Eighth Circle
Hell
hep kitty
I still can’t believe that a sizable portion of the US still has a 60’s hangover
catclub
@Cacti: and I agree with Moar:
It is true:
“Rmoney got 59% of the white vote. That’s better than Dubya got in 2004, and the talibangelicals loved his dumb arse.”
I am not so sure about the talibangelicals, I saw Romney doing worse in the south than in the western states from OK to WY. That tells me the baptists did not come out in force.
So if he could somehow bring out moar white voters,it gets closer. And he might do that if he was a)not mormon and b)not an incompetent candidate. Huckabee (with all his known faults) might do that.
The Moar You Know
@? Martin: We could just repeal it for corporations – the guys who are sitting on the REALLY high dollar properties – and that would give California a fountain of cash so huge we wouldn’t know what to do with it.
Voters were fucking stupid and didn’t read the proposition. We had a real problem back then, a bad one, of people losing homes because their property taxes exceeded their fixed incomes – but it could have been addressed easily by just extending the tax cut to residential properties, not commercial, manufacturing, and business properties.
Prop 13 was designed to destroy the state government, no other purpose. It almost worked.
Shawn in ShowMe
@JCT:
Without the pageantry of the presidential race, the enormous media coverage, big budget advertising blitz, etc. there just isn’t a driver to get folks to the polls. “Preserving gains” isn’t a sexy marketing strategy.
What Dems need is a community infrastructure that we can rely on to turn out the votes in off-year elections, equivalent to the wingnut churches.
LesGS
@The Ancient Randonneur: I just read the New Republic article MattF @ 21 linked to. Obama had problems with *Southern* whites, both male and female. Obama won a greater percentage of whites in states like Iowa, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Colorado and Minnesota than Kerry or Gore did.
jeremy
I was not surprised the election was closer because the economy is still recovering and the unemployment is still above normal. If the economy was great the margin would have been greater. But Obama still won in an electoral landslide.
Villago Delenda Est
@Schlemizel:
In discussing the American Civil War, it’s good to recall that Southern historical revisionism started firing up in May, 1865, as they tried to come up with some justification for their rebellion that was something, anything other than the defense of the “Peculiar Institution” which is what they went into it four years prior proudly proclaiming.
Ever since then, it’s been all “State’s Rights”, tariffs, Northern aggression, Yankee carpetbaggers, regional rivalries, etc. Something, ANYTHING but slavery.
To this very day, even after the Stars and Bars was deliberately and with malice aforethought placed on state flags to defend segregation forever, you’ll hear bullshit about “heritage” in displaying it. In Germany, if you try to pull some shit about displaying the Hackenkreuz as a matter of “heritage”, you’ll be tossed into prison for it.
The Germans know exactly what their shameful symbol of “heritage” from the past means.
japa21
We keep talking about the Southern Strategy. Yet, looking at the election results, one wonders if even that can be maintained much longer. Obama got around 40-45% of the vote in many of the Southern states. In most of them, the latino and AA population is growing and more politically active.
If the Dems learn anything from Obama, it will be how to campaign. Plouffe and Axelrod and Messina will be in high demand in 2015.
With a white candidate, who will still pull in the AA and latino votes, some of those Southern states will start trending purple, then red (including TX).
Pretty soon the GOP will be a regional party but only in the mountain west (minus CO, NM and NV) and the plain states.
FFrank
Just send out an invitation to a couple of Pittsburgh based meetup groups about a drinking liberally happy hour here is a reply email:
Cacti
@hep kitty:
With a national median age of 36.8, we’ve mercifully reached the point where more than half of the country has no living memory of the 1960s, and no interest in continuing to wage the cultural battles of that decade.
catclub
@Chris: “The really interesting thing would’ve been if Romney had won – whether that would’ve led to greater acceptance for Mormonism among fundiegelical assholes. I suppose it would’ve depended on whether his presidency was seen as a success or not.”
I have a strong suspicion that in a Romney admin there would be LOTS of Mormons in high places, and lots of bad feelings generated in the fundies who did not get those high appointments. Bob Jones U and Liberty U diplomas fall in value to BYU diplomas. Luckily, we will never know.
catclub
@Shawn in ShowMe: Covens?
El Cid
@Chris: No, there was a project by the right wing post-coup Honduran regime, Honduran land and business elites, a few foreign investor and business groups, and Western libertarian ideologues who really were proposing 3 (or more) “Model Cities” which would be exempt from most any current or future democratic control by being privatized ‘free’ zones.
The Honduran Supreme Court, thankfully, saw this as the attack on the most fundamental definition of sovereignty.
Cacti
@Villago Delenda Est:
I kid you not. A Repub friend of mine from college in NC, posted a Veteran’s Day pic yesterday, honoring vets from all eras.
It included a confederate soldier.
Somehow, he didn’t find it wholly inappropriate to include veterans of an organization that fought to destroy this country, along with those who fought to defend it.
Schlemizel
@Villago Delenda Est:
I have been battling online with these Southron douchebags since 1992 and they are the same yesterday, the same today and the same forever. Their stories never change even when disproven.
My favorite was one nozzle that said he was descended from Light Horse Harry Lee (Revolutionary war hero and kin to that traitorous POS RE Lee) every time someone would provide documentation that his history was wrong he would point to his bloodlines as proof that he was right and reality had it backwards. I told him that might work if he were a race horse and considering his family he might have some horse in him.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
If you’ll recall, in February and March, the current leaders of the Religious Right were trying to find a not-Romney to rally around to stop the cultist from taking the nomination.
They feared their flocks would sit on their hands if Romney were the nominee, and the Muslim Socia1ist Atheist Kenyan Usurper would win by default.
Well, it turns out, even with their flocks getting on board behind the cultist, Muslim Socia1ist Atheist Kenyan Usurper won the election, anyways.
Their agenda was rejected, across the country. Gay marriage passing in several states. Marijuana legalization passing in several states.
Reality sucks. Which is why they deny it.
hueyplong
@FFrank:
Dear __:
Sorry you won’t be able to make it. We’ll be sure to send you an e-vite to the next liberal drinking event when, with luck, we’ll have had enough advance notice be able to accommodate your quirky preference for ground glass cocktails. As liberals, we like to be tolerant of a wide variety of tastes.
Your socialist pal,
FFrank
jeremy
@jeremy: unemployement rate.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
The theory I heard from a history professor in undergrad is that in the actual Civil War, things were the opposite from how we “remember” them today. The South was the side fighting over slavery (afraid the Yankees would wipe it out), and the North was the side fighting over states’ rights (specifically, the right to secede, which these states should not have in their view – the priority was “preserving the Union,” the cause that’s brought up least often these days).
Over time, history was rewritten and the two sides were switched because Southerners didn’t want to be remembered as racist assholes and Northerners didn’t want to be remembered as authoritarian assholes.
(I do think “preserve the Union” is a valuable cause in and of itself too, by the way. One of our front pagers had a post about that a year or so ago).
Cacti
@catclub:
Here in the mountain west/the heart of Mormonia, the joke goes that if you hire a Mormon to head up your HR department, you’ll end up with half his ward (local unit) working for you. Mormon charitable giving goes almost exclusively to other Mormons.
The University of Phoenix (Mormon corporate officers), had to pay a $1.875 million settlement to the EEOC for religious bias against non-Mormon employees.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
And I admire them for that. I really wish we had that sort of thing in this country, not just the South WRT slavery but the rest of the country WRT the Indian Wars, colonialism, our own history of racism, etc.
jeremy
@japa21: Yes. Obama and his team ran a near flawless campaign. Dems would be wise to follow that example.
Also like you said the reason why the Evangelical whites did not turn up like before is not just because Romney is a Moromon but because many of them are aging and passing away. The black and Latino vote is having a great effect.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s an enduring theory of mine that the religious right has never had nearly the clout it thinks it does.
Same thing happened with McCain. James Dobson in 2005 was trumpeting about how fundiegelicals had turned out the vote for Bush and he and the Republican Party had better not ignore them anymore, or they’d get real mad. He also said he wouldn’t vote for McCain “as a matter of conscience” some time after that.
2008 rolls around. McCain wins the nomination. And Dobson forgets all about it and meekly endorses him after all, because, I can haz seat at table of power pretty plz w/ cherry on top?
Cacti
@Chris:
Germany is fairly unique in that regard. Even looking to the WWII era, there are strong currents of denialism and revisionism in Japan, toward their atrocities against the Chinese, Koreans, and Philippinos.
The Moar You Know
@Cacti: I was banned from a guitar discussion forum for having the poor taste to note that Confederate soldiers were, in point of indisputable fact, traitors to the United States.
IowaOldLady
@The Moar You Know: True, but I try to remember that in any war, the grunts are not the ones to blame.
Mike G
Booman has a good post on Obama’s vote totals in the South and Appalachia.
Knott County, Kentucky was won by Kerry by a 27 point margin. Obama lost it by a whopping 47 points. Whatever could be the reason?
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/11/13/13107/278
Chris
@Cacti:
Yeah, I know. I’m not sure what the explanation is. Some would say it’s because America put a gun to their heads and forced them to be sorry, but if that were true, you’d expect to see the same thing in Japan, which you definitely don’t. The usual cultural chauvinists say the difference is explained by “western values” or some such shit, but if that were true, America and other Western countries would feel the same kind of guilt over their own crimes, and they don’t.
Not sure what explains the German thing. (“Exception,” if you will).
trollhattan
@Redshift:
Taco keeps filling my tub–skin hasn’t been this healthy in years.
gex
@jeremy: Heh. That last bit reads like blacks and Latinos voting is killing off old white people.
trollhattan
Also, too, I don’t know whether these demographic maps have been discussed earlier, so in case….
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/12/red-versus-blue-in-a-new-light/?nl=opinion&emc=edit_ty_20121113
The Moar You Know
@Chris: A very deliberate decision on the part of the Allies to forcibly march millions of Germans through their local concentration camps, complete with unburied bodies. Literally rubbing their noses in it. No denying that shit when you’re standing in front of and with your entire town looking at the pile of dead bodies that you’d known was there for years.
This was something you couldn’t have done in Japan, as their atrocities weren’t committed on their own soil. Germany was unique in that.
Jay C
@Anoniminous: @The Moar You Know:
I was living in CA during the Prop. 13 debate and remember quite clearly that (despite the “intellectual” arguments over the wisdom of the whole idea), while stock CA-GOP prejudices over “big government” were the ostensible campaign theme, “LITTLE OLE LADIES ARE BEING THROWN OUTTA THEIR HOMES AND ONTO THE STREETS!!” was pretty much the fundamental thrust of the pro-13 movement: and the sneering triumphalism of Howard (Evil Bastard May-He-Rot-In-Hell) Jarvis and his claque was construed as some sort of everlasting VICTORY! for the political principles of 1928 that the CA Republican Party has ridden on til – well, basically until this year’s debacle.
Chris
@The Moar You Know:
Oy vey, that WOULD do the trick!
Good on the Allies.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Mike G:
I believe Deval Patrick is the most dynamic speaker and the most level-headed politician on our bench. But because of the reason alluded to above, Martin O’Malley would win the popular vote by a larger margin. Same with HIllary.
trollhattan
@Jay C:
Still California’s political “third-rail” and deeply rooted (ugh, mixed metaphor). I haven’t actually seen a coherent restructuring scheme for Prop 13, but do think it can and should be tinkered with. Turning it over entirely won’t happen but as we saw with three-strikes, modifying landmark laws is possible here.
? Martin
@The Moar You Know: I’m not convinced that the residential provisions in Prop 13 are proper either. The current baseline is lower than inflation, so the state is actually subsidizing homeowners to not sell. In order for the real estate market to work, you need a certain degree of property turnover because supply is so limited. Prop 13 basically causes taxpayers to subsidize housing bubbles, which is fucking stupid. If the taxes get so high that you can’t afford to pay them, that only happens because your house has appreciated to such a degree that you can sell it, pocket a million or so, and buy something cheaper with a lower tax liability. It’s not like they don’t have a choice – they just want to keep their really damn nice house and not pay for the services that surround it. With a moving average (or a cap on annual increases), at least they wouldn’t get hit all at once and could plan and determine when the tax burden will get too high.
Note that this is ONLY a problem where housing prices are skyrocketing. Nobody is being thrown out of a $20K home. They’re being thrown out of a $2M home that they paid $100K for and can walk away with $1.9M in cap gains (much of which is now tax free due to changes in the cap gains laws since 1973). This is not a poverty issue. And if there are cases where there is, then provide an exemption for properties valued under a certain amount, or provide an exemption for people over 65 and take away the ability to pass on the lowered cost basis to your heirs.
There’s lots of reasonable fixes here, but maintaining a policy where a significant percentage of homes in Newport are ramshackle bungalows sitting on $1M+ in land and paying taxes based on a $30K assessed value from when Ford was president is just insane. Someone wants to plop a $5M home there and all of the economic benefits that come with it, from the $50K in property taxes and so on.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Moar You Know:
For those who didn’t have a KZ right in the neighborhood, there were mandatory viewings of footage taken in the camps. The Allies were very insistent that the German people own what their government had done to its own citizens, as well as “guest workers”, Russian POWs, Jews, and Romani.
The death camps (Vernichtungslagern) were mostly in occupied Poland, but there were camps for political detainees all over Germany itself, and as the military situation deteriorated for Germany, so did the conditions in those camps.
South of I10
The election may be over for the rest of you, but neither Jeff Landry nor Charles Boustany broke 50% in the primary, so now we have a runoff (I voted for Ron Richard, the lone Democrat in the field.) They are running against each other due to redistricting. You may remember Jeff Landry of “Drilling = Jobs” sign fame. Classy guy, right? This is the new Jeff Landry spot which is playing nonstop on the radio. I can’t believe I am going to have to go vote for freaking Charles Boustany to keep this asshole out of office.
Redshift
@? Martin: The moving average idea seems fine, but isn’t this an issue that the rest of the country has addressed by having exemptions for people on fixed incomes? (The real problem, I mean, not the whiners who just want to get out of paying taxes on their giant houses.)
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
@Villago Delenda Est:
Totally meaningless pet peeve of mine, but….
The Beauregard Flag is NOT the Stars and Bars.
Brachiator
@Dennis G.:
The Atwater quote is stale cheese by now. And the GOP became so deseperate that they had no problem at all shouting the N word.
After the election results poured in, Bill O’Reilly was moaning about the defeat of the white establishment.
Limbaugh is now following the lead of National Review scum, and calling for a return to white supremacy in which nonwhites complaisantly follow the lead of their white masters. We even had a Mitt Romney surrogate suggesting that Romney’s steely eyed Anglo Saxon example would be sufficient to make Middle Easter darkies settle down and do the white man’s bidding.
And what else was Romney’s 47 percent speech but a nasty putdown, and the idea that stupid women and lazy whites and Latinos were no better than Negroes?
Hauling out Lee Atwater and his crap about coded references ain’t even retro racism. The Tea Party and the worst conservatives have already crossed over the line into open expressions of bigotry.
jeremy
@gex: Sorry. I didn’t mean it to come off that way. I was just saying that the evangelical older white vote is not growing. And with the rise of the Latino vote and even the African American vote in parts of the South the dynamic is slowly changing. Also the migration patterns within the country are changing certain states like Virginia for example.
Paula
Speaking of Cons, I’m sure you guys have heard of the petitions to secede coming from various states, the top numbers of signers coming from:
Texas – 77,090 signatures
Louisiana – 29,309 signatures
Florida – 22,873 signatures
Georgia – 21,783 signatures
Alabama – 21,183 signatures
What I wouldn’t give for Obama to say something like, Sure, let’s see you try to produce a budget without federal dollars.
LanceThruster
What would the modern version be of LBJ asking George Wallace to be on the right side of history and offering to make it worth his while? IIRC, his capitulation to Johnson was to motivation for why he was shot (as well as Larry Flynt – because of the first interacial pictoral with Desiree Cousteau).
They’re really protective of they wimmin’ folk and not sullying the breed with miscegenation, no? I’ll admit that everytime I read of talk of succession and the attitude of “to hell with them, let them go,” I think of all the good, decent people scattered throughout our land in whatever concentration. Those people deep within the heart of darkness of red states and beyond are in outposts on the frontlines. We should never consider abandoning them. Change is slow, but if we keep our eyes on the prize, it will come.
Anyone who’s ever seen the doc on Loving v.Virgina can get a taste of this. What struck me the most, since I happen to jabber away, was what a quiet man Richard Loving was. He didn’t want or need the attention of being the focus of a landmark case, he just wanted to freedom to love who he loved. His wife Mildred kind of tried to pick up the slack in regards to giving their cause a voice, but partly because they were forced to justify their situation, rather than have the freedom to be without first getting “authorization.”
Villago Delenda Est
@The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge:
You’re right, I should have specified the Confederate battle flag, or the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia.
Either way, it was deliberately chosen to be a symbol of segregation. “Heritage” my ass. It’s a flag of treason. It should be banned everywhere in this country as the flag of traitors and racists.
Ohio Mom
@Origuy:
Villago Delenda Est
@LanceThruster:
Also “miscegenation”, it seems, is a one way street. All those light colored descendants of slaves out there came from someplace, and it wasn’t out the womb of proper southern women, that’s for fucking sure.
El Cid
Which Lee — Atwater, or Robert E.?
The Moar You Know
@? Martin: My personal problem with your moving average proposal is that within a few years it prices me right out of my house, and the only place I’m going to be able to afford to buy into at that point is closer to Arizona than San Diego.
This will make my commute impractical, to say the least.
Plus, why the fuck should I have to sell my house so some rich fuck can move here?
gene108
@El Cid:
That’s how Rove got Bush, Jr. elected in 2004 and over whatever line was required to become President in 2000.
Seems the evil mind of Rove hasn’t learned any new tricks (Thank Goodness!)
Calouste
@The Moar You Know:
Germany also had a big break with the past after WWII. They lost parts of the country, the country itself and the old capital were split in half, most of the states that existed before the war were completely reorganized into different entities. A lot of their institutions started from scratch. And they lost the war very heavily. Allied troops occupied almost all of the country at the time of surrender, a lot of the housing and infrastructure had been heavily damaged by a 4 year bombing campaign.
LanceThruster
@Villago Delenda Est:
Well, Jesse Helms apparently felt a gentleman doesn’t talk about such things (except in a generic sense to fire up the base).
I have a personal (though trivial) disdain for Sen. Helms. On my visit to DC I showed up for the opening of the Senate. I saw Rev. Lloyd Ogalvy (Cong.chaplain) give the opening invocation (a lengthy and obsequiesce incantation of, “Oh, Jeebus..we are lowly scum not worthy to be scraped from under your sandal”, and so forth). Then the pldege was recited and as an atheist, I loudly and proudly recited “One nation, indivisible…” and was clearly audible as out of sync with the “under God” detour. Helms shot me a look of rage an indignation in the gallery and was sure the congressional police would escort me out. It didn’t happen but was ready to defend myself as being an originalist rather than an attempt to disrupt the chambers.
Still felt good, though.
AxelFoley
HA, seems like President Carter’s gonna have the last laugh, thru his grandson, whom we refer to as Tha Carter IV over at Pragmatic Obots Unite.
El Cid
@gene108: Obviously, and I think he thought they could pull it off again. And keep it close enough and messy enough to win through skullduggery, official deceit, and the courts.
Obama winning without Ohio and Florida wasn’t part of The Plan.
Cacti
@Paula:
If austerity cuts are the order of the day, the “small government” red states should be first on the block.
Particularly Texas with its 15 military installations and the Johnson Space Center.
Jason
@NonyNony: @The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge: It’s worth pointing that the battle flag of the army of Northern Virginia was never the political flag of the confederacy, and hence its display as a “heritage” flag by numerous southern states makes no sense historically — unless you recognise its actual purpose, that of sending a signal as the most widely known and understood symbol of white supremacy. If they’d actually chosen to display the Stars and Bars, the racist intent would be slightly less blatant.
Chris
@Villago Delenda Est:
Well, a man should be able to have sex with whoever he wants, and if some nameless black woman is saddled with a baby for the rest of her life, then that’s her problem, isn’t it? Doesn’t really matter what happens to them. But if one of their sisters or daughters is saddled with a baby, then that is a crime. Not least because it would advertise to every eligible white guy in the neighborhood that she took a look at them all and chose a black guy instead…
(Always wondered how many of these guys would flinch on their “pro-life” views if the life in question was one that their daughter had with anyone other than a white guy).
GxB
@Paula: I’d like a trial separation. It would be great if the bean-counters could crunch the numbers and put the plain reality in front of their smug ignorant faces. It’d be a perfect plan except for their obliviousness to math, logic and reality. Still I say we do a citizen swap and let them go with our blessings.
The Moar You Know
@Chris: Never wondered about this at all, not one second. The correct answer is “all of them”.
Their little darling would be flown or driven to the nearest clinic and have the unacceptably dark fetus hacked out by any means necessary.
If the parents didn’t just straight-up kill her. That used to happen too.
That’s why Akin and Mourdock lost, you know. They were advocating for the possibility that a white woman might be forced to have a black baby. You’ll never get the white supremacy crowd on board that platform.
This of course is why the GOP has always left the “in case of rape” clause in their abortion restrictions.
Klaus Kinky
@Ohio Mom: Ever see, “Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story”? Ed Rollins, the guy Atwater pushed out as Reagan’s chief of staff (if memory serves), said that the shrink-wrap was still on the Bible Atwater was given when he died. He didn’t relate this in a spiteful way, but in a kind of, “Ah, shucks” manner, implying that Lee was still selling bullshit up until the moment of his death.
muddy
@Dennis G.: Appreciated. Also appreciated how gracious blunt can be, don’t see enough of that in the world.
Mike G
Texas also relies heavily on hosting corporate headquarters for US-wide operations. If the Redneck State was suddenly no longer part of the US, many of them would pack up and move a la Montreal during the Quebec separatist era of the 70s.
Chris
@The Moar You Know:
Never even thought of the abortion/rape debate that way. Oy. You’re probably right though. Well, if it’s another weapon against the anti-choice lobby, you take the weapons you can, but still, damn.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
@Jason:
I just wonder why that is, though. The Stars and Bars, to me, is the symbol of the political maggots who led the secessionist movement—and the red-white-red ribbon had been a secessionist cockade for years before the war.
As far as the Beauregard flag goes, it was used exclusively by the CS Army, and the accommodation both sides reached after the war was not to disrespect the men who had fought on either side. But the Stars and Bars, as a purely political emblem, you would think would be the one to be demonized.
The Other Chuck
@The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge:
If that were the flag that the Klan and the rest of the shitkickers were flying, then it would be. The political flag however has met a far more apropos fate with the vast majority of people: it’s been forgotten.
skye
@Villago Delenda Est:
School classes here in Germany still visit concentration camp memorials; all German schoolchildren are required to do that.
jasperjava
@hep kitty:
Some people still haven’t gotten over the ***1860’s***
Another Halocene Human
@Chris: I’d be willing to pay for the construction of an entire Biocity if they’d all promise to move there.
Good move, when it all collapses they’ll be 21st century Okies creating a new Orange County. DO NOT WANT.
Another Halocene Human
@jeremy: The fact is that the southern strategy is losing it’s luster because the GOP base is decreasing in population.
Honestly, that’s what they fought the Civil War over–fear of becoming the electoral minority and being overruled. Well, it’s finally happening.
Another Halocene Human
@The Moar You Know: That’s why Akin and Mourdock lost, you know. They were advocating for the possibility that a white woman might be forced to have a black baby.
Dude, I thought legitimate rape was understood to mean a blackity black man jumping out from the bushes and raping an innocent white woman.
Not “date rape” which is when a harlot falsely screams “rape!” at a red-blooded white boy when she’s about to be found out.
jeff
@muddy:
But his name is “Jimmy Carter”