RACE as the GOP’s Dog Whistle Political “Tool”

"Passion and prejudice properly aroused and directed...do about as well as principle and reason in a party contest."
-- Thomas Elder, prominent Whig politician, 1840

Origins of Race in GOP Politics: How the South Was, and Is, Won


From the masterpiece on American politics by Thomas Byrne Edsall (Washington Post) and wife Mary Edsall come these key insights:

"Within two weeks of the (1948) Democratic convention, the States' Rights Democratic Party (the "Dixiecrats) was formed at a gathering in Birmingham, Alabama. (Strom) Thurman and Fielding Wright, the governor of Mississippi, were chosen as the new party's presidential and vice-presidential nominees. Thurman, running on a segregationist platform, won only 1,169,021 votes, a twentieth if the 24 million votes received by Truman. But Thurman carried Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Alabama-the heart of the deep South, established what sixteen years later would become the beachhead of the GOP."

"The 1948 Thurman campaign was of profound importance, won the issue of race to break (the hold of) the national Democratic Party on the South, a step of critical consequence in a thirty-two-year process that would produce a regional realignment in presidential elections by 1980."

--Thomas & Mary Edsall, in Chain Reaction.

How did the Republicans become the party of choice for the segregationists in the former Dixiecrat "solid" South?

How could there be such a complete and dramatic flip from a "solid Democratic" to "solid Republican" South in such a short period? What gave rise to Republicrats?

In 1964 Barry Goldwater ran for President as a rock-ribbed die-hard conservative. "In the liberal, pro-civil rights atmosphere of 1964, the right-wing strategy of the Goldwater campaign was a short-term disaster."

Involved in Goldwater's nomination success, "the Draft Goldwater Committee used 'concepts and language so harsh that they were unfit for the day-to-day operations or dialogue of American politics," wrote Robert Novak. However, within one presidential cycle these concepts and language had become "publically accepted GOP strategy."

The shift from the support given Democrats to the Republicans in the Deep South played into Nixon's "Southern Strategy." Continued by Ronald Reagan with his trip to the Mississippi county (directly from his nomination at Detroit's National G.O.P. Convention, 1980) where civil rights workers were previously murdered, was Reagan's pandering when he spoke of state's rights. Read the account: "The G.O.P.'s own leaders admit that the great Southern white shift was the result of a deliberate political strategy. 'Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization.' So declared Ken Mehlman, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, speaking in 2005.

"And Ronald Reagan was among the 'some' who tried to benefit from racial polarization."
-- Paul Krugman in "Republicans and Race" Nov 1, 2007.

Reagan repeated his reiteration of the term "welfare queens" with targeted intent. One of Reagan's wedge statements made had especial appeal to the Southern Base; Reagan in 1980 said the Voting Rights Act was "humiliating to the South."

George H. W. Bush used the "Willie Horton ad", a racial device, and George W. Bush went to Bob Jones University to stake his claim to this line of subliminal, underlying "coded" race strategy.

Robert Novak Weighs In on Goldwater's Impact
The type of plans devised by conservatives in the early stages of the campaign to win in 1964 were, according to Robert Novak (THE AGONY OF THE GOP, 1964) the following:

"Policy A: Soft-pedal civil rights. While stopping short of actually endorsing racial segregation, forget all the sentimental tradition of the party of Lincoln. Because the Negro and Jewish votes are irrevocably tied to the Democrats anyway, this agnostic racial party won't lose votes among the groups most sensitive to Negro rights. But it might work wonders in attracting white southerners into the Republican Party, joining white Protestants in other sections of the country as hard-core Republicans.

Policy B: Assume a vigorously strong anti-Communist line...This wouldn't lose many votes among white Protestants and might snatch enough Catholic votes away from the Democratic Party to cut down Democratic margins in the big cities.

Policy C: Except for the civil rights question, stick to orthodox Republicanism on domestic issues."

How clever and effective; In fact Goldwater did all the wrong things to win the set of Southern States he won in 1964:

"Goldwater ran in 1964 as an ideological doctrinaire conservative calling for the sale of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the evisceration of the Rural Electrification Administration, a voluntary system of Social Security, and t he elimination of farm subsidies. None of these principled stands on the ideological right won him any states. In fact the states he did carry, each one of the government programs Goldwater sought to overturn had substantial, if not overwhelming, majority support."

The Edsall's expand:

"There was, in reality, only one issue that permitted Goldwater to carry five states in addition to his home state of Arizona: civil rights. Goldwater declared himself personally opposed to segregation, but even more deeply opposed on principle to federal intervention to end segregation. '(I)t is wise and just for Negro children to attend the same schools as whites,' Goldwater wrote in 1960, but, he added, "the federal constitution does not require the States to maintain racially mixed schools. Despite the recent holding of the Supreme Court, I am firmly convinced-not only the integrated schools are not required-but that the Constitution does not permit any interference by the federal government in the field of education."

Foremost and most importantly; the obvious and most important component of Goldwater's position and stratagem, Goldwater had cast the sole U.S. Senate vote against the Civil Rights Act.

This was the clear and singular act that made Goldwater the Deep South's 1964 Presidential Choice. The stunning reversal of popular vote from "solid" Democrat in the South to a "solid" vote for Goldwater, a Republican, transfixed GOP strategy going forward from that point.

It was a clarion signal to the Republican strategists going forward. Operatives discovered and would use the power of race to dislodge and covert voters who where, heretofore, thought unable to politically crack the Solid South.

The University of Michigan's Survey Research Center produced evidence that changes in the role of race in voting patterns were "significant and of lasting importance" the U of M study suggested that the "ISSUE OF RACE ACTUALLY PRODUCED AN IDEOLOGICAL CONVERSION OF POOR SOUTHERN WHITES FROM A DEEPLY HELD ECONOMIC LIBERALISM TO ECONOMIC CONSERVATISM." (emphasis added)

The U of M researcher goes on,

"By the early 1970's, poor southern whites had moved decisively to the right on these economic issues, becoming more conservative than Catholics, border state whites, and the middle and lower-status white northern Protestants . On the basic issue of government intervention to protect the less well-off, poor southern whites by the 1979's had become as conservative as upscale northern Protestants, a key Republican constituency."

The Edsalls wrote:

"As the 1964 Civil Rights bill worked its way from proposal to passage, and as the presidential campaign took its course, the public perception not only of Johnson and Goldwater, but also of the racial stands of the Democratic and Republican parties, changed radically. The biennial polls conducted for the National Election Studies (NES) reveal that the public before 1964 saw virtually no difference between the parties on issues of race."

Momentous Change Was Coming

"As recently as 1962, when respondents were asked which party "is more likely to see to it that Negroes get fair treatment in jobs and housing?." 22.7 percent said Democrats, 21.3 percent said Republicans, and 55.9 percent said there was no difference between the two parties."

"By late 1964, however, the public saw clear differences between the two parties. When asked which party was more likely to support fair treatment in jobs for blacks, 6o percent of the respondents said the Democratic party, 33 percent said there was no difference between the parties, and only 7 percent said the Republican party. Similarly, when asked in 1964 which party was more likely to support blacks and whites going to the same school, 56 percent said the Democratic party, 37 percent said there was no difference, and 7 percent identified the Republican party.'

"The events of 1964 gave rise to a process in which, over time, the partisan differences on race seen by the public would extend beyond presidential candidates to members of Congress, to the stands taken by the two party platforms, and to the attitudes of presidential convention delegates, party activists, and the much larger universe of voters who identify with the Republican and Democratic parties. BY 1964, THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY WAS ON ITS WAY TO BECOMING THE HOME OF RACIAL LIBERALISM, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WAS ON ITS WAY TO BECOMING THE HOME OF RACIAL CONSERVATISM."

From the Edsalls, Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall, " A Pivotal Year", CHAIN REACTION: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics, SEE this LINK.

"For the architects of the conservative revolution within the GOP, the southern reaction to the civil rights movement was a fortuitous and unplanned development."

"It was the civil rights movement, however, that gave the conservative insurgency a wider focus, a broader target, and an enlarged constituency. On a number of complementary fronts, the civil rights revolution interacted with the conservative movement to strengthen the right-wing drive within the GOP."

"Evidence that the Goldwater drive was mobilizing a new breed of Republican began to surface at party gatherings. At the 1963 Republican National Committee meeting in Denver, northern Republican leaders, proud of their party's ties to Abraham Lincoln and the emancipation of the slaves midway through the Civil War, were stunned to hear southern chairman carrying on 'boisterous conversation about 'n----rs" and "n----er lovers," wrote columnist Robert Novak in his book, THE AGONY OF THE GOP 1964."

Novak as quoted by the Edsalls:

"At the decisively pro-Goldwater 1963 convention of Young Republicans in San Francisco, there was according to Novak 'no doubt [the] unabashed hostility toward the Negro rights movement was fully shared by the overwhelming majority of the convention delegates...delegates from North and South talk,' Robert Novak observed: ' with a single voice on the race question...For the Young Republicans at San Francisco, their party was now a White Man's Party.'"

--Various quotes excerpted from: CHAIN REACTION: THE IMPACT OF RACE, RIGHTS, AND TAXES ON AMERICAN POLITICS, Thomas Byrne and Mary D. Edsall


What Role Will RACE Play in the 2012 Elections?
This election cycle will be peppered with all the coding and "dog whistles" associated with the GOP's tried and true use of RACE and ethnicity as keystone factors in legislation, politics and campaigning.

Even Henry Payne, The Michigan View in Detroit News, catches on; at least in part; when he bluntly concludes:

"So why are the elephants dooming their long-term viability? Having already alienated black and Jewish voters, they seem to determined to alienate the fastest-growing minority in America: Hispanics." Payne concludes: "...the GOP base wants to build a fence. And as Perry understands - and Bush and Rove before him - that look(s) to Hispanic voters like a fence around A WHITE REPUBLICAN PARTY." 

Closer to Home: Gingrich's Remarks and Race in Detroit
The crafty, often careless, but cunning Gingrich uses hyperbole and exaggeration for maximum effect. Brendon Berry, Thomas M. Cooley Law School, wrote this piece: DOG WHISTLES AND CODES: Covert Republican Message Making, May 21, 2011:

"Recent Republican race-baiting, in the person of Newt Gingrich and his allegorical references to Detroit and food stamps, raises anew the issue of Republican 'dog-whistle politics.' That Republicans habitually trip over themselves in the proverbial 'race to the bottom' with their appeals to the fears and anxieties of small-mindedness is well understood by any close observer of American politics. But the well-read and keenly alert are not the electoral targets or concerns of Republican message-makers. The people Republican strategists seek to reach-or at least not to scare-are the vast numbers of Americans who are not paying attention closely, those whose ignorance renders them susceptible to the game of bait-and-switch that the right-wing has been playing with Americans for decades."

Footnote on "Dog Whistle Racism": 

"Dog-Whistle Racism is political campaigning or policy-making that uses coded words and themes to appeal to conscious or subconscious racist concepts and frames. For example, the concepts 'welfare queen,' 'states' rights,' 'Islamic terrorist,' 'uppity,' 'thug,' 'tough on crime,' and 'illegal alien' all ACTIVATE RACIST CONCEPTS THAT THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN PLANTED IN THE PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS AND NOW ARE BEING ACTIVATED BY PURPOSEFUL OR ACCIDENTAL CAMPAIGN ACTIVITIES, MEDIA COVERAGE, PUBLIC POLICY AND CULTURAL TRADITIONS. So, what's dog whistle racism? It's pure political theater to push buttons to win elections and policies."
(emphasis added) 

For further information go to Dog Whistle Racism.


Original.