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Richard Nixon’s lasting damage to the GOP
Gun nuttery is very Republican, and as prevalent as other extreme right-wing traits within the reincarnated party of Nixon...
-Snip-
It was Nixon who devised and pursued what came to be called the Southern strategy. This was, in the admirably concise wording of Wikipedia, an appeal “to racism against African-Americans.” Nixon was hardly the first Republican to notice that Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights legislation had alienated whites both in the South and elsewhere — Johnson himself had forecast that Southern whites would desert the Democratic Party. But Nixon was the GOP’s leader and, in January 1969, the president of the United States. The White House, it seemed, would not do a damned thing for African Americans.
-Snip-
At one time a good many African Americans voted Republican — the party of Lincoln, after all. Jackie Robinson initially supported Nixon (he later got disgusted), as did Joe Louis. The former heavyweight champion had even supported a Republican in the 1946 congressional campaign against Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas, a liberal civil rights advocate, whose district was substantially black. As late as the 1970s, there were African American enclaves in Maryland that voted Republican. I was a political reporter back then, and it was like stumbling upon a racial “Brigadoon.”
-Snip-
The damage Nixon did to his own party, not to mention the rights of African Americans and the cause of racial comity, has lasted long after the stench of Watergate dispersed. It not only persuaded blacks that the Republican Party was inhospitable to them, but it, in effect, welcomed racists to the GOP fold. Dixiecrats moved to the right.
Excuse me for extrapolating, but segregationists are not merit-scholarship winners. Racism is dumb and so are racists. The Democratic Party showed racists the door. The GOP welcomed them and, of course, their fellow travelers — creationists, gun nuts, anti-abortion zealots, immigrant haters of all sorts and homophobes. Increasingly, the Republican Party has come to be defined by what it opposes and not what it proposes. Its abiding enemy is modernity.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-richard-nixons-lasting-damage-to-the-gop/2014/08/04/c28d552e-1c0c-11e4-ae54-0cfe1f974f8a_story.html?utm_term=.24262c6c1a99
It was Nixon who devised and pursued what came to be called the Southern strategy. This was, in the admirably concise wording of Wikipedia, an appeal “to racism against African-Americans.” Nixon was hardly the first Republican to notice that Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights legislation had alienated whites both in the South and elsewhere — Johnson himself had forecast that Southern whites would desert the Democratic Party. But Nixon was the GOP’s leader and, in January 1969, the president of the United States. The White House, it seemed, would not do a damned thing for African Americans.
-Snip-
At one time a good many African Americans voted Republican — the party of Lincoln, after all. Jackie Robinson initially supported Nixon (he later got disgusted), as did Joe Louis. The former heavyweight champion had even supported a Republican in the 1946 congressional campaign against Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas, a liberal civil rights advocate, whose district was substantially black. As late as the 1970s, there were African American enclaves in Maryland that voted Republican. I was a political reporter back then, and it was like stumbling upon a racial “Brigadoon.”
-Snip-
The damage Nixon did to his own party, not to mention the rights of African Americans and the cause of racial comity, has lasted long after the stench of Watergate dispersed. It not only persuaded blacks that the Republican Party was inhospitable to them, but it, in effect, welcomed racists to the GOP fold. Dixiecrats moved to the right.
Excuse me for extrapolating, but segregationists are not merit-scholarship winners. Racism is dumb and so are racists. The Democratic Party showed racists the door. The GOP welcomed them and, of course, their fellow travelers — creationists, gun nuts, anti-abortion zealots, immigrant haters of all sorts and homophobes. Increasingly, the Republican Party has come to be defined by what it opposes and not what it proposes. Its abiding enemy is modernity.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-richard-nixons-lasting-damage-to-the-gop/2014/08/04/c28d552e-1c0c-11e4-ae54-0cfe1f974f8a_story.html?utm_term=.24262c6c1a99
Gun nuts: fellow travelers of Nixon's "born again" GOP under the influence of Trump and the Tea Party.