Reply #34: The Republicans have parlayed hate into a working majority [View All]

[RadioLeft]

I am originally from Baltimore, MD. But, I have lived most of my life in the South - Atlanta, GA and now Dallas, TX.

The Republicans have a proud heritage. In 1956, Maude B. Richardson seconded the nomination of Dwight Eisenhower for re-election at the Republican National Convention. She was the first African-American to address a national convention of a major political party in the United States.

But, by the 1960's that was changing. Lyndon Johnson got the Civil Rights Act passed. The Southern segregationists left the Democratic Party over the next few years.

Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" used the disaffection with the Democrats embrace of integration and civil rights to bring segregationists into the Republican Party.

By 1980, this transition was largely complete. The first campaign appearance by Ronald Reagan after being nominated at the Republican National Convention was Philadelphia, Mississippi. Philadelphia is the location of one of the most heinous civil rights incidents.

Twenty black churches were burned in Mississippi during the Summer of 1964. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were civil rights organizers in Mississippi that Summer. They were arrested and put in the Neshoba County jail in Philadelphia and then released in the evening. They were followed out of town by a KKK members and sheriff's deputies who murdered them and hid the evidence in a swamp. The film "Mississippi Burning" is titled for the church burnings that Summer, but, focuses on the murder of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner.

So, when Ronald Reagan went to Philadelphia Mississippi as his first campaign stop, it was to signal Southern racists that they had a home in the Republican Party.

There's bigotry everywhere. But, the Republicans exploited this bigotry to create a white majority in Southern states. And, they did it by playing on Southerners' fear that they would lose their jobs and lose control of their governments, schools, etc. to blacks.

This is really no different from the way that Bush played the "terror card" in the November election to exploit people.

So, while it isn't fair to say that all or even most Southerners or Red-Staters are bigots, it is absolutely true that the Republican Party exploits hatred and bigotry to create a solid voting block in the red states.

The real problem is the failure of the Democratic Party to convince working class people of all races, religions, and sexual orientations that they have more interests in common than they have differences.

As long as the Republican Party gets away with using fear, hatred, and Jesus to motivate voters, those voters will be unreachable by us.

If I were the next Democratic president, I think that I would force the issue of education and pour as much money and resources into public education as possible. When the schools and education level of people in red-states are improved, we will disempower the Republicans.

Why do you think that the Republicans oppose the minimum wage, excellent public schools, living wage, affordable housing, etc.? Because the more working people who are living in survival mode, working multiple jobs, and one check away from homlessness, the fewer of them vote, and easier it is to use fear to motivate them.

Take a look at this: IQ correlated to state. There's information about education level, school quality, etc. correlated to red vs. blue states as well as the IQ data.